Dark Ages: Earth Hour Here, Earth Decade N. Korea
Dear Mr. Roberts, President of World Wildlife Fund:You and members of your organization worry that industrialization and economic growth are harming the earth's environment. I worry that the intensifying hysteria about the state of the environment - and that the resulting hostility to economic growth - might harm humankind's prospects for comfortable, healthy, enjoyable, and long lives.
So I commend you on your "Earth Hour" effort. Persuading people across the globe to turn off lights for one hour supplies the perfect symbol for modern environmentalism: a collective effort to return humankind to the Dark Ages.
Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux, Chairman, Department of Economics, George Mason University
P.S. The WWF should award some special prize to the North Korean government, for that government keeps North Koreans not in any meager "Earth Hour," or even "Earth Day," but in what WWFers might call "Earth Decades." See picture above of a society keeping its carbon footprint tiny. Of course, in doing so it keeps itself also desperately poor, often even to the point of starvation.
3 Comments:
As a former donor to the World Wildlife Fund, this letter echoes what I observed about the organization under its present leadership, namely, a shift in the last several years toward populism away from scientific research and cooperative efforts to work with government, NGOs and private citizens to enhance environmental stewardship and wildlife conservation.
Working with farmers to reduce pesticide usage, developing sustainable forestry practices so that a rainforest has more value standing, or working to preserve habitats...these are important initiatives but they have become increasingly marginalized. Instead, WWF has been putting most of its energy and resources into political activism.
The WWF reflects the resurgence of the baby boomer generation whose identity has largely been shaped by the reactionary 1960s. No one wishes to be told how they "should" be living by the WWF or anyone else.
Unfortunately, this reactionary posture does not seem able to make any trade-offs or offer practical, economical solutions to problems. For example, between nuclear and coal fired power plants, between hydro-electrical generation of existing dams which create zero carbon emissions and decommissioning of dams, between genetically modified crops like golden rice and mass starvation, etc.
If one does not wish to offer workable solutions, what does one have to offer.
This post is accurate and written in a very clear and convincing manner.
The comment by anonymous is as good as the original post.
The Masked Millionaire
www.TheMaskedMillionaire.com
You DO know why the dinosaurs are extinct, right?
The World Wildlife Fund put a plan in place to save 'em.
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As to the original article, I'd point out that desperately poor states like NoKo are known to be abysmally bad polluters.
Anyone who knows what happened in the USSR at Kishtym knows how little care the Soviets showed for the environment in the 50s, and anyone who knows about what they did through the 80s to Czechoslovakia would also know this.
When people have to choose between filth and starvation, they pick filth every time.
The only way to have a people care about things like "carbon footprints" is to make them rich enough that they don't mind the added expense, and can pay it without going hungry.
History proves, you don't make a people rich with socialist policies.
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