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MY ENVIRONMENTS: 1939-2008 By Ivan W. Parkins The
tiny conservation organization that I helped to establish, and headed, in my
pre-WWII high school caused me no grief.
We were only cooperating with an adult group to maintain game bird and
fish populations in our part of Indiana.
Hungry “sportsmen” in the 1930s had decimated those populations.
Following the war, my initiation into college teaching was
different. I came to it with some
background from Professor Rex Tugwell, who had been prominent as a New Deal
environmental planner. Also, I read
RESOURCES FOR THE FUTURE, the report of President Truman’s commission on that
subject. It appeared to me that
beginning students, as part of an introduction to social sciences, should be
made aware of how technological and industrial advances had altered, but not
eliminated, man’s dependence on his environment. That produced no complaints from students
or administration. But, in the small
and informal faculty discussion group, to which I had been admitted as the
junior member, better established “intellectuals” informed me that such stuff
belonged in high school civics. As the
university’s leading classicist put it, “Nature leaves me cold.” By
the time that I retreated from teaching, I was unhappy with the growing
“environmentalism movement.” It seemed
to me that it was becoming, primarily, another of those avenues by which
higher education was “coaching” college students, not how to be more
thoughtful and responsible individuals, but how to win over and direct the
larger American public. In
nearly every matter of great public interest today the total information
available is so complex and voluminous as to require severe selection before
any practical use can be made of it.
That is what makes disinformation so dangerous. And environmentalism has become a
frightening channel of disinformation. I.W.Parkins 7/2008 |
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GREAT AWAKENING? By Ivan W. Parkins Is
environmentalism a third manifestation of the Great Awakening phenomenon that
American historians have identified?
The first, in the eighteenth century, was mainly religious and
educationally focused, a wave of enthusiasm that contributed to America’s
sense of identity and desire for independence. The second, in the nineteenth century, was
religious and academic, and it contributed to the anti-slavery movement. Now, Iain Murray contends,” . .
environmentalism [has] begun to replace liberal Christianity as the Left’s
motivating religious force.” He further asserts that environmentalism, in the
fashion of Martin Luther, values “faith” more than good works.
Murray’s book, “The Really Inconvenient Truths,” carries the subtitle
“Seven Environmental Catastrophes Liberals Don’t Want You To Know
About—Because They Helped Cause Them.”
The first and most gross catastrophe is the ban on DDT, with its huge,
and continuing, toll of human lives, especially among Earth’s poorest people. I had
not remembered that a DDT ban was enacted in Michigan the year that I moved
here. That preceded the international
ban by five years. And, Dutch elm
disease is a continuing problem.
Murray refers to research that shows sexually mutilated and declining
fish populations suffer far more from the traces of birth-control chemicals
in urban sewage than they do from industrial wastes. Environmentalists remain much more
interested in attacking industry than in the real problem. One
especially interesting passage in the book describes the history of a natural
wonder, identified, purchased, and preserved (with public access) for more
than two centuries. It is Natural
Bridge in Virginia, and its original “warden” was Thomas Jefferson. Not
only is environmentalism now highly organized, its top organizations pay
their CEOs annual salaries ranging from $125,000 to $700,000. Murray cites ten such organizations with
recently reported top salaries averaging just over $200,000. Most
significant of his criticisms is the contention that environmentalist work
and money is focused, not directly upon protection of the environment, but
indirectly, into lobbying and law suits directing governments to behave in
ways that the environmentalists favor, largely towards socialism. Is
environmentalism, today, a third Great Awakening, or is it a larger edition
of THE BIG SLEEP—confusing, corrupt, and deadly? |
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ENERGY—DRILLING—CONGRESS By Ivan W. Parkins The
price of energy is a secondary problem, the real problem is how to assure an
adequate supply. And, while prices may
change suddenly and substantially, due to reductions or increases of the
supplies available in the world, the supply upon which we can depend will
only decline until we produce more.
Finally, there is no painless and certain way to produce more and
distribute it quickly.
Meanwhile, and in spite of our great national wealth, we cannot afford
to continue sending hundreds of billions of dollars abroad to pay for
something vital to our economy that we could produce at home. Other countries, although they may value us
as customers, are not unreasonable to resent depleting their resources so
that we can save ours.
Conservation is necessary, and will help, but our industries have been
doing more with less energy for years; it’s essential to their profitable
operation. The greatest conservation
measures now available have to do with less individual travel, and at lower
speeds. But less non-essential travel
carries with it an implication of reduced business for travel and tourist
types of enterprise. And, population
growth is also a factor. The
chief way that we can get large additional amounts of energy relatively
quickly, using existing technology and infrastructure, is additional drilling
for gas and oil. For instance, the
multi-billion dollar Alaska pipeline is already being underused because of
bans on additional drilling. In
this, as in other matters such as school vouchers and various security
issues, the positions that our “liberals” take are actually reactionary. They serve special interests such as unions, predatory lawyers, and
ideological cliques, rather than the very evident and empirical interests of
the United States. Such political
factions are able to compete in our politics, mostly as Democrats, because
they have dominated our public information system, academic and artistic as
well as journalistic. They do not
serve the justice, tranquility, security, or economic welfare of America. The
recent adjournment of Congress while critical legislation is pending points
to where in our government our phony “liberals” have been especially
successful. And to why a major
up-dating of our Constitution has become essential. |
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Page 12 |
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ENVIRONMENTALISM THE NEW RELIGION OF THE LEFT The following series of articles have been compiled to
illustrate how the left has used environmentalism through disinformation. |
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Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring Or How Misinformation Has
Destroyed Many Lives Recently, it was the birthday
of Rachel Carson. Her SILENT
SPRING inspired the ban on
DDT. In just fifteen months we will have Lyndon Johnson's
centennial. He escalated the Vietnam War. Should we
now have? Buzz, buzz, and fatal sting, To go
with:
Hey, hey, LBJ, What's so gross about
this? Several
African countries have reintroduced DDT to combat mosquitoes. That
again is helping to curb malaria. Meanwhile the post-ban increase is
estimated to have taken a million lives per year, or some tens of millions
total. I.W.Parkins, 7/07 |
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PARKINS POINTS TO PONDER: The
First Amendment to our Constitution is not what the First Congress proposed
for that spot. Partisan
divisions of Congress and the Presidency in the second half of the twentieth
century differed extremely from those in the first half. Since
1930, no Republican President has enjoyed a partisan congressional division
as favorable as Clinton’s was in 1993-1994, but all other Democrat Presidents
have fared better than Clinton. If
the average Representative were to spend 1000 hours per year meeting
face-to-face with individual constituents, it would not be possible to spend
10 seconds with each constituent. In
just 5 weeks of 2006, Israel lost approximately twice (as a percentage of its
population) as many soldiers in Lebanon as our military fatalities in five
years of the “War on Terror”. Just
the increase of
violent deaths domestically, among American youths in the 1960’s and ‘70’s,
exceeded our combat fatalities in Vietnam. According
to the World Health Organization’s calculations of increased malaria deaths
following the ban on DDT, that policy has already been more deadly than
Hitler’s “final solution”. The
pension funds held by state and local governments, and by corporations, for
their employees exceed the National Debt. None
of the above is a secret, but none is emphasized in the mass media. |
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LETTER TO THE EDITOR, The Morning Sun, 10/11/92 Much
noise, but not much light, is being focused upon the American economy.
Slogans and epithets, such as “trickle-down economics,” are more
likely to mislead than to inform voters.
Those who ridicule “trickle-down economics” advocate that government
tax the wealthy more heavily and redistribute the money to likely
consumers. That approach has now had several
trials in America, plus numerous and more extreme applications abroad.
Its chief beneficiaries have been the politicians and bureaucrats who
managed the redistribution systems.
There is evidence that American wealth is not moving rapidly enough
into productive capital investments, i.e. that it is not trickling down. But, that seems to be due largely to
government interferences, e.g. punitive threats against lenders (sparked by
the S & L crisis), taxes on capital gains, and excessive environmental
and product liabilities.
The above impediments to productive capital investments within the
United States are the work (chiefly) of the same political elements who
ridicule “trickle-down economics.”
The slack economic conditions abroad also inhibit economic growth in
America (Japan’s stock market hovers below 50 percent of its high, while ours
is above 90 percent). But a lack of
confidence, and reluctance to spend the money they do have, among American
consumers is probably the largest contributor to stagnation in this country.
Opinion polls show that most Americans are more confident about their
own futures than about America’s.
Why? How many of them know anything
about national economic trends other than what a few television celebrities
and politicians tell them?
The greatest trickle-down in our economic system may be an information
rather than a money problem. . |
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©Ivan W. Parkins 2010, All articles, text, web pages property of
Ivan W. Parkins. Use of any material
requires permission of the author
and can be obtained by contacting,
info@americanpoliticalcommentary.com |