Sack the flaks

Environmentalism and pacifism often occupy the same heart; a heart which frequently harbors distaste of abundant energy sources as well.

They share other traits. Both have universal appeal: nobody wants a polluted environment, and nobody wants war.

Both have leaders who have succeeded in duping their numerous followers: they preach love of nature when they mean de-industrialization; and they preach peace when they mean surrender.

There are other similarities, but one stands out painfully above all others: They are winning the hearts of the young.

They are winning them for two perverse reasons.

The first is that their followers believe themselves morally superior; that they want pristine nature and lasting peace, whereas industry prefers green cash. Their belief in moral superiority makes them virtually immune to facts.

The second reason is even more perverse: business and industry half believes in its moral inferiority, too. Browbeaten into absurd guilt complexes because they are shamefully ignorant of the ideological and moral strength of capitalism, their public relations departments put out smooth drivel about "balancing" environment against economy, and risks against benefits. They lack the courage, the knowledge, and often the sheer common sense to tell the misled public that the environment never had a better friend than property rights and free enterprise (see some examples in this issue); or to tell them that if you want peace, prepare for war.

Balancing environment against energy is Carterite gibberish. To maintain a healthy and beautiful environment, you need more energy, not less (consult history and the Third World for counter-examples). How do you balance two benefits on the same side of the scales?

Balancing risks against benefits is more gibberish. How many dollars to a human life?

Nader and Lovins have no stauncher ally than the business executive who says "Your morals are admirable, but we gotta make a living."

Yet it is in the field of morality, the very field where industry is losing, that the deindustrializers and defeatists are most vulnerable; not because their moral principles are wrong, but because their stand is diametrically opposed to the very values they cherish.

You want to put human lives over dollars? Then support nuclear power, for its cost in human suffering is smaller than that of any other source of electricity yet invented. You want to be incorruptible in matters of health? Then expose the cover-up of the radon issue, and unmask Ralph Nader's health groups promoting a policy of higher radioactivity for infants on the breast than for uranium miners on the job. You want social justice? Then fight the National Resources Defense Council's policy of stifling growth to protect a power-hungry elite from the upward mobility of the little man. You want to stop those who would befoul the environment? Then stop the Sierra Club, which pollutes the air by lobbying for amendments to the Clean Air Acts that will clearly increase air pollution as long as they fulfill the more "important" purpose of bankrupting the utilities.(*) You want gentleness, not brutality? Then stand up to the most brutal tyranny that ever threatened your country. You want decency? Then remember those who died to protect you from past tyrannies and secured gentleness over brutality for you. Sack the flaks who know how to peddle laxatives, but who are ignorant of the ideology of freedom; who know that capitalism produces more goods more efficiently, but not why it is morally superior.

Those who would fight the system of free producers by appealing to love of nature and by painting the horrors of war are begging to be defeated on their own moral grounds: However well motivated, the environmentalists damage the environment; however well motivated, the pacifists promote war.

* B. Ackerman, Clean Coal/Dirty Air, Yale Univ. Press, 1981.