The Environment

Dr Philip Stott, the professor emeritus of bio-geography at the University of London, told The Telegraph: "What has been forgotten in all the discussion about global warming is a proper sense of history."

http://www.portal.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2003/04/06/nclim06.xml

“Some scientists have suggested that there is a cycle of mass extinctions, with a major die off every 26 million years or so. This would imply that there have been some 23 extinction events since the Cambrian, a figure which is at the upper limit of most estimates. While we remain unsure of the total number, there is general agreement over the existence of 6 major extinction events.”

BBC Extinction Files http://www.bbc.co.uk/education/darwin/exfiles/massintro.htm

Environment Historical Context Table

Numbers are approximations. mya=million years, kya=thousand years. Different kinds of events are marked with different print styles. Ice periods. Extinctions. Cosmic Catastrophes.

Before all of these, there was a mass extinction as anaerobic bacteria died out because of increasing quantities of oxygen in the air. This was probably caused because they produced oxygen as a waste product. Scientists today estimate there are between 500 and 1000 1k or greater asteroids in near earth orbit. Solar sunspot activity has been positively identified as a causal agent in cycles of climate change. Four other major causes of major periods of climate change are; changing continental positions, uplift of continental blocks, reduction of CO2 in the atmosphere, changes in the earths orbit (100,000 year eccentricity cycle, 41,000 year axial tilt cycle, precession of the equinoxes) . Our climate today is actually a warm interval between ice ages in the middle of a major ice period.

The first time the extinction event came up in discussion on the Internet it was in a Hi IQ forum limited to people scoring in the Top 1%. The person bringing it up said that there had never been an extinction of species of the magnitude which humans are causing in the world today. This was a highly intelligent Liberal scoring in the Top 1%. I mentioned four or five periods of mass species extinction and asked him to put his moral outrage into some kind of logical context. On a cosmic scale the species loss the Earth is suffering today is no more important than the dancing of dust motes on Mars. He never replied. These environmental issues have meaning only in human terms. The Earth is too small and insignificant on a cosmic scale for them to have any absolute moral implications.

Why the concern over Global Warming, Species Loss, Pollution, etc.? Simple enough, if we mess up our environment we are likely to go the way of the anaerobic bacteria who first dominated the Earth. This would be a bad thing in human terms. Our friend the Liberal was not able to put the issues into such concrete terms. He was convinced that species loss was a Moral Evil and that Humans were Evil and that Natural was Good. It is very hard to put Moral values into a profit and loss statement. Moral values seem to be absolutes and allow for absolute judgments divorced from any rational problem solving process. Best of all, from the Liberal point of view, Moral values let you make Moral judgments of your fellow human beings. Moral values justify crusades regardless of the cost. The environment is one of those issues where the God Complex which typifies Liberal thinking is most apparent. Good and Evil have been pronounced from the Sacred Temple of Political Correctness. The Rightness of the Left is obvious to all Right Thinking Liberals. Only those who believe in False Gods from outside the One True Faith could dare to doubt the Truth.

Counting costs does not justify absolute Crusades. You balance issues. You choose the greater good over the lesser good, or the lesser bad over the greater bad. Sometimes you get lucky and you get to choose a great good and reject a great bad. This is almost black and white enough to be called Moral. Most of the time you have to make choices in a gray world. The more complicated the issues being discussed the finer the shades of gray. There are probably few subjects more complicated than the environment, ecology, and climate. These are mega-complicated subjects. Things like chaos mathematics are required to even do approximate analysis, and the factors and their interaction is still so complex that weather forecasts beyond 5 days are simply impractical.

When Liberals use ‘science’ they use this extremely complex system of mathematical models to create a worst case scenario and then trumpet doom in loud voices. Models like these can show that a butterfly flapping it’s wings in Indonesia can cause a hurricane in North America. Applying Liberal ‘science’ to butterfly’s would require us to exterminate all the butterfly’s in Indonesia as a public safety measure.

Despite this, Liberals know that Humans not natural forces are the cause of the current period of Global Warming. The fact that we are still emerging from the Little Ice Age that ended around 1700 is meaningless to them. The fact that sun spots are contributing to the increase is meaningless to them. We are currently in about the 12^th millennium of an interglacial period. Interglacials usually last around ten millennia. Greenland Ice Core evidences suggests that rapid climate fluctuations preceded the last Ice Age. If these fluctuations triggered the Ice Age we should be looking at using our greenhouse gas emissions to counter them. If they were symptomatic of oncoming glaciation we should be looking at maximizing our greenhouse gas emissions to maintain a warmer climate. To a large degree the jury is still out on what is actually going on.

It is probable that humans are in some way contributing to Global Warming. Still the emotional assumption that Humans are responsible shows a tremendous arrogance on the part of Liberals. Plus a need for self-flagellation and a desire to flagellate others. We are Gods, all that happens is the result of our tremendous importance in the Universe. Similarly, the loss of species is an Evil, and must be stopped. These causes make for good crusades and allow the endless Moral condemnation of their fellow Human beings. Humans are Evil and Nature is Good. This kind of reasoning is the Secular Humanist version of Original Sin. It is possible that Original Sin type thinking is attractive to Secular Humanists as well as other versions of religious fanatics because it is empowering. It feels more powerful to feel guilty about something than to feel helpless and that you have no control over anything. It is a mistake to assume guilt and then do something on the basis of guilt which might make the situation worse.

The Social Contract was not formed for the good of Nature. The implicit purpose of the Social Contract is to improve life for Humans by improving on the State of Nature. This is the only meaningful context in which the Social Contract or State can act. It is only within this context that Political action can legitimately be taken. The State is a tool meant to accomplish a specific purpose. Using it for some other purpose abuses or perverts the powers of the State. Political philosophers from Aristotle to Locke have condemned such actions by the state as perversions as was demonstrated in the section on the Social Contract.

In this particular case the specific abuse is violation of the Separation of Church and State. The Greens advocate invading the privacy of a Citizen and dictating to him what he can or cannot do with his own property when there is no clear evidence that he is in any way injuring other Citizens for what are basically religious beliefs about the value of animal and plant life.

The amount of good or bad that a given policy or action will have on the Citizens of the Social Contract is the only legitimate criteria that can be applied to the actions of the State. It is the Good of the Citizens which must govern such matters. This calls for evaluating each environmental issue on its own merits. The good that it does the Citizens against the harm it does the Citizens. Protecting the environment is not a good in itself. Protecting the environment is not an end in itself. Protecting the environment is a means to an end, that end being the good of the Citizens.

It is on this basis and only on this basis that evaluations of a given environmental issue can be made. Republicans are generally interested in freeing business up to make short term profits without concern for the environment. This is a short term good and a long term bad. Democrats are concerned with preserving the environment without any consideration of the cost of the programs they propose. They have a completely irrational definition of the word environment. The life of every species of snail is sacred. The trouble with the Liberal belief in their being God is that they also believe they are omnipotent and can do the impossible. Cost is no object. How dare anyone talk about cost when the Sacred Environment is being discussed. The Republicans will destroy the environment if unchecked, the Democrats will destroy the country and economy.

The preservation of the environment is a necessary long term good. This does not mean that you can preserve every kind of snail that has ever existed. It does not mean that you can spend a billion dollars on the environment to prevent a thousand dollars of harm. Frequently the Greens adopt irrational definitions of what is good for the environment and end up doing more harm than good. Environmental issues must look at the short term good vs. the long term bad.

The oil in the Alaskan National Wildlife Refuge is a case in point. The Green position is a purely religious one. The refuge is pure, pristine, untouched by man. If man drills for oil there he desecrates the Sacred Purity of Nature. No definition of real harm that is likely to be done is relevant to this position. It is purely religious and completely emotional. Drilling for oil there is a short term good. Eventually the oil will be exhausted. Possibly it is best to not drill there in order to keep that oil for the US long term interests. Reserve it for a period in the future where it will be more desperately needed. There is no clear cut good in drilling in the Alaskan Wildlife Refuge. Modern technology has become capable of drilling for oil in ways that are basically non-invasive. It is probably certain that the drilling can be done in a manner in which no permanent harm is done to the refuge. This is a matter of setting rules which force oil companies to do the drilling in a manner which prevents such harm. If the rules make drilling for the oil too expensive, it will not be cost effective and the oil companies will not drill there. Fundamental principles appear to be that Citizens should be able to act for their own profit when they do not injure other citizens. If oil companies can drill in the refuge without harming the interests of their fellow Citizens by inflicting permanent harm on the environment then they should be allowed to do so. If the possible future worth of the oil in the refuge is greater than it is today, then the Citizens have a vested interest in preserving it for future emergencies and drilling should not take place in the refuge. These are the kind of questions that should be discussed on environmental issues. The religious sense that Humans are Evil and Nature is Good, and the Sacred Purity of Nature will be Profaned by Human Trespass does not provide a basis for a rational environmental policy.

One of the best books on environmental policy is “Hard Green” by Peter Huber http://www.hardgreen.com/. Mr. Huber is a brilliant man, and this particular area is one in which he has great expertise. You can access a number of articles he has authored on various subjects from this website.

In an article he wrote for Commentary he said,

Mr. Huber is a solid voice supporting rational protection of the Environment from the conservative side of the political spectrum. Greens would do well to read him and reach a position which takes his criticisms of them into account. I saw Mr. Huber on C-Span discussing his book Hard Green with members of Congress. I was most favorably impressed and found his email address on the web. I told him that I didn’t know if I agreed with him or not, but I knew he was a genius, because being a genius myself I knew one when I saw hem. Despite Mr. Huber’s obvious brilliance much of his book must be taken as rhetoric. His descriptions of historical figures and events can be a bit disorienting. He writes about historical figures in a context which makes them almost unrecognizable and occasionally seems to refer to myths and parables as actual factual events. Reading Mr. Huber’s book gave me a profound feeling of unreality. I felt like the character in a TV show on “Sliders”, “The Outer Limits”, or “The Twilight Zone” who has been translated into a parallel universe where history is similar to but different than what happened in the real world. In all fairness to Mr. Huber, many persons reading this book may have the same feeling upon occasion.

It is worth developing a specific example of this to illuminate the fact that both the Right and the Left are living in worlds of their own creation largely divorced from reality in environmental issues as in most issues. The ‘Commons of England’ is a common Right myth about how communal sharing of property resulted in the destruction of the land generally held in common by villagers in Merrie Olde England. This myth is attributed by Mr. Huber to Garret Hardin as a parable, and is attributed by Mr. Hardin to William Forster Lloyd an amateur mathematician writing in 1833. Mr. Hardin develops the doctrine of Malthus to address the problems of population growth. The entire text is online at http://dieoff.org/page95.htm. Mr. Huber enthusiastically accepts the truth of the principle involved but refutes the Malthusian conclusions. In this, as usual in matters of general principle Mr. Huber is quite correct.

This myth has been introduced into discussions in forums for the Top 1% in IQ where the people introducing it claim it to have been contained in economics textbooks. The article first appeared in “Science” Magazine, 162 (1968), 1243-1248. The Commons involved are not the historical commons of England. The situation described is entirely imaginary, and real commons, operated by real herdsmen, throughout history have never experienced the specific problems envisioned in the popular myth. It is propagated in the Right as a real historical fact. It is not an historical fact for reasons developed in earlier sections of this book on the origins of the Social Contract, and how small population groups are effectively self-regulating. Agricultural commons of the type described in the myth are shared by population groups small enough to be self-regulating, and the abuses described do not generally occur.

The principle involved is valid, outside the context of small community commons, in the context of high population density cultures. Communal sharing of things tends to produce various negative effects on the things shared. This principle goes back at least to Aristotle.

This principle is well developed in historical example from the early American Colonies. William Bradford’s account of “The Plymouth Plantation” clearly demonstrates the failure of a communal economic system in the earliest American Colonies. One section is titled “End of the Common Course and Condition”. It is online in sources such as the Modern History Sourcebook at http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1650bradford.html, and it is in volume one of “The Annals of America” put out by Encyclopedia Britannica in 1976. It goes;

This is the fundamental principle which makes Adam Smith’s ‘Invisible Hand’ work and caused Communism to fail. It is a principle recognized by the best political philosophers of history and well established by thousands of failures of communal villages and utopian towns throughout history. Hardly a state in the US does not have a half a dozen towns in it which were founded as utopian communal societies only to fail, as the Plymouth experiment did in a few years. New Harmony, Indiana is the closest one to where I live. Many early Mormon settlements also attempted this kind of society and the history of their failures is essentially the same as the history of the failure of this experiment in the Plymouth Colony. The flaw with utopian communalism is very well established in the writings of political philosophers and the historical experience of humanity.

(It is necessary to note that corporations are not private property. They are the common property of the shareholders. These shareholders are interested in short term profits and not in safeguarding the long term good. The executives are interested in pumping up the price of the stock they own over a short term, not in the long term welfare of the company. The employees are interested in maximizing their pay not in the preservation of corporate properties. A publicly held company is a form of commons. The criticism of common property applies to big business as well as to the state. Conservatives will invoke Enlightened Self Interest to say that people will not invest stupidly for short term interests. This defense applies as well to other forms of common property. It applies to the degree that the chance for short term profits is small, long term maintenance is valued, and these things are understood by the people involved. Villagers sharing a few fields in common and knowing each other are far more likely to apply ESI than the disparate interests involved in publicly held corporations. Enron, WorldCom, etc. recently illustrated this for all Americans to see. Under the principles of the psychologically based economic theories of Adam Smith, publicly traded corporations do not qualify as private property or as part of the private sector. Classing them as part of the private sector on the basis of the Invisible Hand theory of Adam Smith is one of the shining examples of pure hypocrisy on the part of the Republican Party. A discussion of how tax law may be used to encourage the kind of investment which promotes a sense of ownership which limits this destructive tendency is in the section of this book on matters of taxation.)

The English Commons on the other hand, which are largely assumed by adherents of the Myth of the Commons from the Right to be the Commons referred to, were confiscated by the large landowners to run sheep on, as England developed its wool industry to promote foreign trade. They were not destroyed by their common use by English villagers. This confiscation of the common law property of peasants by the Nobility and Mercantile Classes was one of the major causes of the Revolution which brought Cromwell to power and resulted in Charles I being beheaded.

The Revolution did not stop the enclosure of the Commons. This process was being driven by strong economic forces and could not easily be halted. In this sense the historical reality of the destruction of the Commons of England is a classic example of the wealthy and powerful using their wealth to abuse the poor and weak by stealing what was under Common Law their legal property. This abuse of power to confiscate the Commons shared by the poor to benefit the wealthy and powerful has been repeated throughout history. It has been a contributing cause to almost every period of revolution and social upheaval in history, not merely that of England. Readers of this book will find quotes from Plutarch, Aristotle, Hobbes, Locke and others throughout this book detailing and describing this phenomenon. Seeing it paraded as a defense for the rights of private property and proof of the impossibility of communalism is something of a shock to the reader of history.

The village commons did not exist as part of a general communistic system. Each individual owned approximately as much land as he or his family could manage as private property. Certain other agricultural tasks could be accomplished more efficiently on lands held in common by the village as a whole than by each individual farmer owning his share of the commons as an individual. Thus commons occur repetitively throughout history in small village economies. The abuse of the commons predicted by the model developed by our 19^th century mathematician as a parable never occurred because the use which individual villagers could make of the commons was effectively limited by their other resources. Lacking a financial incentive to abuse the commons and being subject to the pressure of neighborly convention and opinion, such abuse of the commons by the commons did not occur.

The destruction of the commons always occurs as the result of the wealthy lobbying the local King, Tyrant, or Senate for the right to privatize the commons for their own profit because the commoners simply didn‘t deserve the land. This is what led to the enclosure of the Commons in England, the creation of Latifundia in Rome, and it occurred in Attica prior to Solon’s democratic reforms. The myth of the commons obscures this constantly repeated historical fact, and this may explain its popularity with the Republican side of our political spectrum which is made up of those most interested in privatizing the commons for their personal profit.

Mr. Huber writes from a world filled with subtle disinformation of this sort and while he is a good source for principles to be applied in specific environmental questions, his general statements of ‘facts’ must be taken skeptically. In his world, Malthus was a liberal, Teddy Roosevelt was a conservative, and many other major historical persons were the champions of the opposite of what their doctrines championed in their times. It is true that today these old outdated doctrines used to justify social Darwinism in the 19^th century are paraded with pride and prejudice by the Liberals to justify political coercion and totalitarian government by the Liberals. Reading Mr. Huber’s book one gets the impression that this is not a change but the way things always were. Doubtless Mr. Huber is aware of this, of the fact that these doctrines held by Liberals today to justify draconic environmental measures were used to justify draconic social measures by Conservatives in the past. This is probably obvious to Mr. Huber, but persons less knowledgeable of the history involved might be seriously misled by his book.

This book is primarily concerned with Political Philosophy and detailed Environmental Policy is beyond its scope and the expertise of the author. Only general principles can be discussed.

1) Protecting the Environment is a means to an end not an end in itself.

2) The end is the good of the Citizens.

3) Environmental programs should not do more harm than good. Cost benefit analysis, not religious principles should guide the allocation of resources for environmental projects. Under this head “A Conservative Environmental Manifesto” towards the end of Mr. Huber’s book is recommended reading.

4) Environmental agencies should not have arbitrary powers. Any government agency which exercises dictatorial powers over the Citizens tends to condition them to accept such authority and they become Subjects. This violates the penumbra against the Federal Government passing such laws developed in the section on the 3^rd Amendment.

5) Environmental policies must respect the Rights of the Citizens. Citizens owning private property have a vested interest in the maintenance of that property. They are less likely to abuse and degrade that property than other entities. Violation of the rights of Citizens attacks their sense of personal sovereignty and tends to reduce them to Subjects thus attacking the psychological roots of democracy. Citizens act on a smaller scale than other entities and can thus do less harm to the environment.

6) Protecting the Individual is more important than protecting Corporations. Corporations are publicly held property not private property. The psychological dynamics suggest that abuse and destructive exploitation of the properties they hold is more likely. Violating their property rights does not attack the psychology of freedom as it does when applied to private individuals. They act on a larger scale and each can do more harm to the environment than private individuals. There must be a different standard for environmental issues applied to Corporations than that applied to Citizens.

7) Citizens should be free to act in their own interest so long as they do not harm other Citizens.

8) Species loss is a permanent injury to the Environment and should be avoided when possible according to the ecological value of the species. Life moves from viruses to more and more complex organisms. The less complex the organism, the more rapidly it produces new species. Insects and invertebrates speciate rapidly. It is physically impossible and literally unnatural to prevent the natural speciation and extinction of life at this level. Attempts to preserve every species of insect or snail that has evolved in a limited habitat appear irrational. Indeed, it is an attempt to impose an artificial, man-made stability upon a part of nature which shows great flux and variation. The destruction of minor species in extremely limited habitats is a natural, in fact, inevitable occurrence. Attempting to make this illegal through artificial interference by man is as unnatural as attempting to make wolves into vegetarians who don’t eat deer.

The current mass extinction is a process largely out of the control of humanity. The major part of it, which by any stretch of the imagination may be considered human in origin, is caused by inefficient use of resources in third world countries. This can be halted only by improvement in their ability to use their resources efficiently. Such improvement takes time and inclination. Poor desperate people are responsible. The ability of foreign governments such as the US to halt this process is limited. Attempts at foreign welfare intervention may frequently do more harm than good by creating populations dependent on foreign handouts and destroying any developing internal economies.

Another source of extinction is the introduction of species from one ecosystem into other ecosystems. These alien species have few natural predators, multiply rapidly, and destroy the local ecological balance. This results in species loss. This process can probably not be halted completely. It can only be managed to reduce damage. The ecology will recover, it has hundreds of time in the past. Attempting to artificially stabilize this process at great cost may, in the long run, only slow that ultimate recovery.

9) Any system of power generation large enough to supply the needs of current human population will have a large environmental impact. Any system of food generation large enough to supply the needs of current human population will have a large environmental impact. Zero impact environmental policies are impossible. The only realistic goal is to aim at the best or most positive impact.