is a book now being written by William Tucker ("Environmentalism and the Leisure Class," Harpers Dec. 77). Publication is still a year away, but a brief excerpt "Environmentalism: The Newest Toryism" appears in the Fall 1980 Policy Review ($2 from Heritage Foundation, 513 C St. NE, Washington, DC 20002; the same issue also contains a sad, but brilliant article "Sick Man of the West" by Paul Johnson). Tucker, like this writer, was one of the few to discern in the early 70's that environmentalism, though its believers do not always realize it, is a cover for an anti-technology, anti-business class seeking to protect its privileges. We hope the book will contain more on the coercive, totalitarian tendencies of the environmental movement, and its frequent use of deception.
Lovins, for example, masquerades not only as a physicist, but also as a free marketeer. Answering Dr Bertram Wolfe in the current Foreign Affairs, he again claims that the free market will kill, or already has killed, nuclear power. Interestingly enough, the cost of nuclear power, which took a jump in 1979 due to the frivolous shutdowns before and after TMI, still averaged 7% less than coal (not to mention oil) per kWh in that year (DoE study released in August). But when Lovins talks about the free market, he does not mean dollars and cents; more likely he means what his environmentalist sponsors call "raising the social cost of nuclear power"
¾and that, judging by Seabrook and other places, means criminal tresspass, wanton destruction of property, and other stormtrooper tactics.Other environmentalists are less reticent about their totalitarian inclinations. "Individual rights must be balanced against the power of the government to control human reproduction" we read in a textbook that was widely used
¾no, not in the Third Reich, but at American universities. "There are other sound reasons that support the use of law to regulate reproduction... If relatively uncoercive policies should fail to maintain a low American birth rate, more coercive laws might well be written..."You will doubtlessly have recognized the enlightened pen of Dr Paul Ehrlich (Ecoscience: Population, Resources, Environment); but he is not alone. John Holdren, whom we named Knight of the Double Standard (AtE May 1980) shares these noble sentiments. [He didn't take very kindly to our award and fired off a fuming letter of 3 typewritten pages, from which we excerpt the more reasonable parts: "Dear Prof. Beckmann:... Sincerely, John P. Holdren."] Holdren has evidently for years been Paul Ehrlich's understudy, and his name now appears as co-author of the 3rd (1977) edition of this liberty-loving work.
Once again, when it says "Environment" on the cover, look for the Herrenvolk inside.
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Vol. 8, No. 3
Newsletter: Access to Energy Newsletter Archive Volume: Volume 8 Issue/No.: Vol. 8, No. 3 Date: November 01, 1980 04:18 PM Title: Electing peace
Copyright © 2004 - Access to Energy Newsletter Archive
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