The tragedy of the commons
Environmentalism is critical to understanding how status quo economics work in practice. In the martplace, we try to keep assets and profits to ourselves, while letting someone else deal with our liabilities. Think of that Disney cartoon of the bears cleaning up litter in Yellowstone park: each bear is given an area of land to clean up. As a result, they all push the litter into the small bear's area.
As a result, the money spent on cars going to GM, but the smog and accidents is paid for by everybody who lives in city limits. The executives of GM, of course, live in tree-shaded, safe houses in the suburbs.
Volvo discovered that people like to have a chance of survival in an accident. A good way to survive a collision is to weigh more than whatever you're colliding with. Sure, the compact car, or bicycle, or baby carriage you're colliding with won't survive, but that's not your problem. If they were smart they would buy heavier cars than you, and then you'd have to buy heavier cars than them, and then...
The Freudian growth cult
Dennis Gabor, Nobel laureate: "Growth had become synonymous with hope, and [we] cannot live without hope. Under the day-to-day pressure of business even highly intelligent people refused to think in the long term, and if they thought about it at all, they unconsciously repeated St. Augustine's prayer "Lord, make me good, but not yet!" Let exponential growth continue in my time!"
In the US alone 12 square miles of farmland were paved over daily as of 1980 (A recession year!) - that's another square mile every two hours, or all of the land in New Jersey, Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampsire, Rhode Island, and Delaware combined in the 1970's alone. (P. Ognibene "Vanishing Farmlands: Selling out the soil" Saturday Review May 1980. pp 29 ff) How long can we keep that up exponentially?
As of 1981 5 million tons of topsoil were washed away annually - 25% worse than during the 1930's "dustbowl" catastrophe.
Antibiotics and pesticides are rapidly become useless - those with immunities survive and reproduce (but then, many conservatives don't believe in evolution) As a result, we need more expensive chemicals, and more of them - a boon to the industry that should be considered an outright conflict of interest. As early as 1980 unknown numbers of people had died, mainly because of antibiotics added to the feed of livestock. (T Monte, "Antibiotics in feed becoming useless in human therapy" Nutrition Action Feb. 1980 pp 3-6) The profits go to the meat industry, and the problems go to those completely unrelated - even vegetarians can catch super-diseases bred by profit-seeking business.
Some links:
What are some anti-enviromental myths?
Is global warming a theory or fact?
But isn't God's wonderful creation indistructable? As undentable as Buchanan at the Million-man-march...
Won't the enviroment just heal?
The same way an amputation heals - not the best way possible. Right now we're adapted to nature and most of nature is adapted to us. If we screw around, things can only get worse. Would you rather deal with cows, or some kind of toxin-immune bug?
But in the past people where wrong so doesn't that mean that all science is wrong?
What do "libertarians" think of the concept of extinction? (Maybe they thought "Jurassic Park" was a documentary)
What causes ecological problems? (Anarchist point of view)
What's the link between capitalism and ecological problems?
What do conservatives think about the enviroment?
Who are eco-anarchists and what do they propose?
Does economic power affect pollution controls?
Can "education" solve ecological problems under capitalism?
"My views on the environment are rooted in my belief in Creation," Says Rush Limaugh "I refuse to believe that people, who are themselves the result of Creation, can destroy the most magnificent creation of the entire universe." See him get debunked in Is the Earth indestructible?
Here's a quote that looks startlingly similar to Rush's:
"I believe in God and a miracle, God will not let his people of Israel be wiped out...The comrades who lean towards the revolution and the Soviet Union, you believe capitalism is done with...have faith and we will have freedom!"
This was said by a Jew who died in the holocaust within months of saying it. (p100 Uprising in the Warsaw Ghetto by Esther Mark)
Anyway, I'd say that a more likely quote for fundamentalists would be "my belief in Creation is rooted in the aristocracy's view on the environment...
To say that we can transform the world from forest to farms, yet not harm the world, is absurd. Since Rush Limbaugh is also one of God's "great creations" I'd like to see him test his faith with a vacation in Chernobyl...
That brings up another point: mention the Soviet Union and other Stalinist countries and suddenly God's wonderful creation isn't all that invincible. Now the conservative doesn't consider it religious treason and heresy to admit that actions actually have consequences.
How conservatives do research
In order to disprove the world scientific community's consensus that global warming is a fact, the following tangle of disinformation occurred:
In 1980 Science magazine had an article about a volcanic eruption in California about 700,000 years ago. It created chlorine - which all got washed down with the next rainfall.
I wish my research was this easy
With this, conservatives "proved" the entire world scientific community wrong. Using the above article as the source, Dixy Lee Ray talked about an Alaskan volcano and its eruption in 1976!
Only a thousand miles and 700,000 years off
With this kind of diamond cutter's precision, you can feel safe that Ray was a Washington State governor and Atomic Energy Commission chair!
Rush Limbaugh then used this book to claim that an eruption in 1991 created a completely different amount of chlorine - which of course, would go back to earth in the first rainstorm after the eruption anyway, though he doesn't mention that.
But it's true, it's in a book!
The misresearched book Rush misresearched was "the most footnoted, documented book I have ever read". Before you laugh, read the last bit again. "I have ever read". There's plenty of fad diet books that might be more footnoted, but then, he obviously doesn't read much about dieting, does he?
Come to think of it, books are the last thing I can imagine Rush Limbaugh devouring. Republican movies like True Lies really seem more his style of brainwork.
The most footnoted, documented web site you've ever seen
Earwax [1] tastes [2] bad. [3]. I mean "really...bad" [4]. So bad [5] that [6] it makes [7] me puke [8]. (Click numbers to see bibliography.)
My site's footnoted and documented because I'm too lazy to think for myself
"Chlorine from natural sources is soluble, and so it gets rained out of the lower atmosphere," (Science 6/11/93). "CFCs, in contrast, are insoluble and inert and thus make it to the stratosphere to release their chlorine."
"Science also noted that chlorine found in the stratosphere--where it can eat away at Earth's protective ozone layer--is always found with other byproducts of CFCs, and not with the byproducts of natural chlorine sources." -From an EXTRA! article
"Ozone depletion is real, as certain as Neil Armstrong's landing on the moon," Dr. Sherwood Rowland, an atmospheric chemist at the University of California at Irvine, told EXTRA!. "Natural causes of ozone depletion are not significant."
But then again, lots of Rush fans believe the moon landing was a hoax.
Actions and consequences to the "libertarian" party
First of all, take a look at libertarians on enviromentalism. Basically they say that they're environmentalists because they believe that once every cubic foot of air and water is owned by corporations, those corporations will sue each other over damage caused by pollution. All I can say is, why haven't lawsuits eliminated pollution already? How will people who can't afford lawsuits protect themselves? And finally, do you really think we don't have enough lawsuits and lawyers already?
"On Guam, in the Marrianas, the savage fighting upset the ecological balance. Flies that were normally kept under control by the numerous frogs, but so many bred on the thousands of Japanese corpses that littered the island that the frogs were completely gutted." Page 29 The Sharp End of War John Ellis
What would happen on "Libertopian" Guam? If it could be proved that all of the flies came from Japanese corpses, then the Japanese could be sued. Or DDT could be used, but whoever "owns" the flies could then sue. Or everybody could be sued for not owning enough frogs. Of course, after the court case in the privately-owned courthouse (with a privately-owned jury) is done, it's up to the privately-owned police to get collect the fines, which of course is "gunpoint robbery"! Thus privately-owned security guards would shoot the privately-owned police, who would shoot back, resulting in more corpses and more flies to breed upon them.
What's the link between short term profitablity and envirmental destruction?
Is population the main cause of enviromental destruction?
Are pollution regulations expensive?
Can green consumerism solve our problems?
See also: Greenwash