Anti-Industrializaion
I recently read POV The Anti-Industrial Revolution by Ayn Rand. She expounded in it her insight into the true motive of the green movement, anti-human, and death to man. While I agree with her assessment, I wonder sometimes if we too quickly disregard anything attached to the movement. I am a farmer and sometimes question blind industrialization. I believe it is reasonable to question long term implications of industrial methods. Animal welfare in particular is of interest to me. Industrial methods tend to disregard natural instinct, and only focus on operator or farmer considerations. Recent studies commissioned by "green" movements make some good points and suggest sound design changes that are beneficial to the animals while maintaining profitability. Most farmers I know value the life of their livestock and appreciate our place in the foodchain. My point is that we can learn from various viewpoints if we are open to reasonable dialogue and using sound judgement when evaluating systems. I do feel like Rand held this position, but sometimes question conservatives and their knee-jerk response to "green" advocates.
Engineer, woman, autistic.
Her brilliant designs combined practicality and economy in meat processing with humane treatment of the animals.
Their proposition is that any progress using materials has downside.
The proponents jet to global scattered conferences in resorts to talk about carbon and want to restrict others from earning their living.
In fact, the moving of materials may have beneficial, neutral or negative effects so the basic idea is fallacious.
The crap talk about carbon is grossly illogical and ignorant.
The more carbon (actually CO2) in the atmosphere the better, all life on earth benefits.
Further,
-the CO2 released from burning coal and gas came from the atmosphere, it is being returned
-of the amount of CO2 now in the atmosphere only 3% is from human activity, we need to free more
-the green movement is an outgrowth of the national socialist movement, their ideas are based on medieval myths favoring collective authoritarianism, spirits and feudalism and are anti-life.
In the movement today there are people who are genuine conservationists, some have left and more will follow as they wake up.
http://leftexposed.org/2016/06/789/
http://leftexposed.org/wp-content/upl...
http://www.financialpost.com/m/wp/new...
It is an excellent piece of work. I highly recommend it. It is included among many other great essays in Return of the Primitive.
Respectfully,
O.A.
Environmental and environmentalist are separate concepts. Environmental means that which concerns the environment. Environmentalist means a host of things, but most obvious among them is the supposed ethical primacy of the natural world.
On the one hand, "from the forest comes the ax". Human beings developed in the natural world and evolved consciousness. On the other hand, man has developed not in peaceful coexistence with nature, but has developed by employing his mind to meet the requirements of his survival. The treatment man as a kind of malignant growth upon the natural world is dependent upon unspeakable nihilism, but also upon personification of the world. The primacy of consciousness camp has attempted to strengthen their theory in a supernatural consciousness, in a social consciousness, and now in a natural consciousness. In each of these assertions, the crucial problem remains to be solved. Who has access to that consciousness?
But the world does not "choose" what is good and bad any more than it chose the speed of sound to be less than the speed light. It is the nature of the entity in question that determines its properties. Man is (or should be) a moral being. To him alone right and wrong can be validated, to him alone the concept of ethics applies. This is not to beg the question as to whether animal abuse exists or applies. Of course, it does exist. And man should deal with animals and the environment as he should all else: with rationality.
Some people try to take advantage of the facts to argue we really don't have a right to our property since our actions affect others. They say we should all be one big family. At the other end of this spectrum, people just deny reality. They start with the desired answer that the world is so vast our actions don't affect one another and then find evidence to support their wish. One wonders how many people we could have on earth before these people would accept our actions affect one another.
Rejecting that, accepting reality when it's undesirable, trying to quantify our actions and make people whole for any damage we do is right in line with what I took away from the books.
Mary Ruwart is a pharmaceutical researcher who is active in the Libertarian Party. She has a couple of books out with a sort of "new age" viewpoint. She is not alone in starting from the premise of property rights when discussing the environment.
We inherited a medieval English view of rivers, for instance. You can do whatever you want to the river that runs through your land. In the American West, out of necessity, a different legal theory was born. You cannot damage your neighbor's property. If the river on your land is "yours" then the part on his belongs to him and you cannot decrease its value or utility.
Ultimately, of course, we get to a "butterfly effect." My next door neighbor might reasonably object to my nuclear-powered electrical generator. But can someone 1000 miles away complain about my wood-fueled fireplace?
That discussion is highly important in face of the "green" movement as more pollution comes from the wood fires of poor people than the cities of the rich. Now. I say "Now" because 100 years ago, Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, and other cities knew "darkness at noon" as coal smoke blotted out the sky, sooted over everything, and caused lung diseases in the general population.
It ain't easy... but it needs to be parsed.
I think the best we can do is compare values. If we took basket of houses near nuclear plants and far from them, we would probably find some slight disparity. When they make the decision to build the plant, they could make everyone whole for the lost value. Maybe a $200k house turns into a $180k house. You cut the owner a $20k check. It's up to her if she wants to sell her $180k house and buy $200k house. She can do whatever she want. She's been made whole.
"But can someone 1000 miles away complain about my wood-fueled fireplace? "
We could do a similar calculation comparing property values in similar areas with soot pollution and without it and then work out how much each unit of wood burnt contributes. We would also add any increased global warming due to the soot's absorption of sunlight, if research indicates it's significant. Users of wood-burning stoves would weigh this cost against the cost of a filter system to capture the soot.
"That discussion is highly important in face of the "green" movement as more pollution comes from the wood fires of poor people"
It feels onerous to ask the poor to pay. When the industrial revolution happened, it started with inefficient processes that produced local pollution and large amounts of green house gasses. Now that industry was successful in creating enormous value and some costs to the environment, we found more efficient processes. The rich people are telling the poor people of the world they don't get the same environmental free ride during early stages of development. That's an unfortunate fact of history, though. If we give poor people a pass on pollution, esp greenhouse gases which incur costs on people living far from the poor, it's just an indirect transfer of wealth from the rich to the poor.