Berlau covers in detail a number of other issues, with arguments that are sure to rile environmentalist tempers. He argues that cars are a Godsend and that big cars save lives. He suggests that environmentalists (especially such people as "population guru" Paul Ehrlich) have a not-so-hidden agenda of stopping people from having children, viewing children as a kind of pollution. He supports the view that far from there being a shortage of trees, "There has never been a better time for forests and wildlife" (155). He argues, indeed, that because we have fossil fuels, we don't have to chop down trees for fuel.
Moreover, he holds that the biggest threat to forests is the environmentalists themselves, because they fight the harvesting of old growth, leaving forests more prone to disastrous fires. He also makes the case that far from the Bush administration's being to blame for the high death toll from hurricane Katrina, it was the environmentalists who are to blame for this also. In 1977, the Environmental Defense Fund and the Louisiana-based environmentalist group Save Our Wetlands stopped the construction of flood-control gates (like the ones used in the Netherlands) that likely would have saved New Orleans from the flooding.
Finally, Berlau argues that the so-called mainstream environmentalist movement covertly encourages ecoterrorist groups such as Earth First! and the Earth Liberation Front.
Berlau's book is nothing if not provocative; it is certainly an enjoyable read. You are compelled to at least a grudging admiration for an author saucy enough to have chapter titles such as "Rachel Carson Kills Birds" and "Hurricane Katrina: Blame it on Dam Environmentalists." But there are some areas in which I find the book lacking.
For one thing, I'm surprised that Berlau didn't explore some other areas of dubious environmentalist action, such as the push for ethanol and the often bizarre and useless recycling schemes that have been foisted upon cities across the nation. I would have loved to see him review the decisive role of the environmentalist movement in killing off the American nuclear power industry, something that has cost us dearly in lost lives and treasure. It is ironic to hear environmentalists pontificate about global warming, after having helped increase our reliance on (foreign-produced) fossil fuels.
Also, Berlau's book is a little too tendentious. Have the environmentalists done nothing right? I mean, nobody would hold that all or even most of what environmentalists have done has been bad for people. And while Berlau doesn't say that the environmentalists have done nothing good, he might have noted some of the cases where they clearly have. For example, their push for cleaner air clearly was crucial in helping improve air quality in many cities. More to the point, he should have explored in more depth the central problem here, namely, the lack of balance shown by environmentalists. Nobody denies that we need to protect our environment, that unbridled business activity can create negative externalities such as pollution and other environmental damages. Certainly Berlau doesn't deny this.
As he points out, most people, by far are conservationists — they fervently desire a clean and protected environment. But they balance that desire against other values, such as the health and safety of their fellow human beings. That is the difference between normal respect and concern for the ecosystem, and the sort of unbalanced and fanatic desire for a completely untouched environment that motivates many of the movement's leaders.
For instance, it would be one thing to oppose the routine use of DDT, say, for commercial agriculture, if there is scientific evidence that it is harmful to animal life. Killing off species to save a few pennies on the cost of a pound of apples is unconscionable. But it is quite another to ban it altogether, even barring its use for disease vector control, and routinely oppose all other pesticides for that use, knowing that hundreds of thousands of people — who are animals just as much as are other species — will die in consequence.
Again, stopping the widespread spraying of structures with asbestos by unprotected workers (who later develop horrible lung diseases) was clearly the sane thing to do. But that's not the same as demanding that every last trace of asbestos be ripped out of buildings on the chance that someone may develop lung disease late in life, knowing that as a result thousands may die in fires who would have been spared if asbestos, carefully produced and controlled (as it is abroad), had been used in ships and skyscrapers.
Berlau might have devoted some analysis to asking why such an unbalanced approach to the vital aim of conserving the environment exists in the environmentalist movement. I would suggest that there is a major strain of pagan or secularist religion, Gaea worship, that informs the movement. This strain of thought, a weird sort of neo-Romantic pantheistic nature cult, has been prevalent since Rousseau in the Enlightenment era, but it exploded throughout the culture in the 1960s. Not all environmentalists share this worldview, but it is the one that drives the movement. And it is one that often downplays the value of people — devalues them and, indeed, de-animates them. That is a topic I would love to see explored in depth.
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