Global warming, climate change, all these things are just a dream come true for politicians. I deal with evidence and not with frightening computer models because the seeker after truth does not put his faith in any consensus. The road to the truth is long and hard, but this is the road we must follow. People who describe the unprecedented comfort and ease of modern life as a climate disaster, in my opinion have no idea what a real problem is.
Americans are reclaiming ‘environmentalism’ from the radical left.
Certain words and phrases take on new meaning as time goes by, often due to the politicization of our language. A clear example of such evolution is in regard to what it means to be an environmentalist.
This article was originally published at The Empowerment Alliance and is re-published here with permission.
Americans are reclaiming ‘environmentalism’ from the radical left.
Certain words and phrases take on new meaning as time goes by, often due to the politicization of our language. A clear example of such evolution is in regard to what it means to be an environmentalist.
Decades ago, concern for the environment largely centered on keeping the land free of clutter, the water protected from contamination, and the cities unpolluted by soot and smog. One of the major environmentalist movements of the 1960s was fronted by then-First Lady “Lady Bird” Johnson, who initiated a campaign to “Keep America Beautiful.” Johnson explained that her passion for beautification was in perfect concert with other important objectives.
“Getting on the subject of beautification is like picking up a tangled skein of wool,” she wrote in a 1965 diary entry. “All the threads are interwoven – recreation and pollution and mental health, and the crime rate, and rapid transit, and highway beautification, and the war on poverty, and parks – national, state and local. It is hard to hitch the conversation into one straight line, because everything leads to something else.”
The campaign to clean up the national landscape was bolstered by a heavy rotation of public service television ads showing litter along highways, waterways and parks, and imploring people to “Keep America Beautiful.” Most famous in the long-running campaign was an early 1970s ad ending with a closeup of actor Iron Eyes Cody, a teardrop falling from one eye as he surveyed a polluted environment. (Cody turned out to be an Italian American, not a Native American as portrayed, but that’s another story.)
But as the “global warming” movement came into vogue, the definition of environmentalism began to shift. Leftwing media, politicians and organizations began to define environmentalism almost solely on the basis of adherence to its greenhouse gas theories and its demonization of the fossil fuel industry. In their world, anyone supporting our most reliable and dependable energy sources – natural gas, fuel oil and coal – disqualified themselves as environmentalists. In fact, they were accused of being “anti-environment.”
Too often, the left’s political targets played right into their hands, struggling to defend themselves and sometimes even downplaying or ridiculing the importance of a clean environment. By allowing “environmentalism” to be redefined and coopted by the radical left, true environmentalism was lost. Fortunately, a recent action by President Trump will help reverse course.
While the passage and signing of the “One Big, Beautiful Bill” grabbed most of the attention over the Independence Day weekend, an executive order signed by Trump on July 3 may have an even more lasting impact. The president’s “Make America Beautiful Again” order, “establish(ed) a council tasked with conserving public lands, protecting wildlife populations and ensuring clean drinking water,” as the Washington Post described it, while adding that the order remained “silent on climate change.”
While the Post and other leftwing news outlets cling to the “climate change” definition of environmentalism, Trump’s executive order is a first step toward reclaiming the term and unifying the country around the concept of a cleaner world.
Trump’s order decrees that all federal land management agencies will “promote responsible stewardship of natural resources while driving economic growth, expand access to public lands and waters for recreation, hunting, and fishing, encourage responsible, voluntary conservation efforts, cut bureaucratic delays that hinder effective environmental management, and recover America’s fish and wildlife populations through proactive, voluntary, on-the-ground collaborative conservation efforts.”
Trump’s order was inspired by the years-long efforts of 27-year-old Benji Backer, a “conservative environmentalist” who leads a group called, “Nature is Nonpartisan.”
“This issue needs to get out of the culture wars,” Backer told the Post. “People just are so divided over President Trump, right? But if he could do one thing that brings people together, and it’s protecting the environment, it would change the course of the issue forever.”
By returning “environmentalism” to its original purpose of protecting the air, land and water, the Trump administration will open the doors for those targeted by the left as environmental villains, welcoming everyone – right, left, middle – to actively engage in real environmentalism.
Those who provide America and the world with our most affordable and reliable energy sources have long cared about preserving the environment, in particular by investing in new technologies that make traditional energy cleaner than ever.
For example, advances in horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing technologies used to extract natural gas have allowed the United States to lead all major industrialized countries in carbon reductions. Home heating oil burner emissions have been reduced to near zero levels, while the sulfur content has been reduced from 1% to about 0.5%. And rapidly evolving coal plant technology means that modern pollution controls reduce nitrogen oxides by 83%, sulfur dioxide by 98%, and particulate matter by 99.8%.
As Benji Backer says, it’s time to move environmentalism out of the realm of the culture wars. Americans across the political spectrum love the environment and understand the need to protect it. Led by the president’s “Make America Beautiful Again” commission, the day is here when we can once again declare in unison that we are all environmentalists.
Gary Abernathy is a longtime newspaper editor, reporter and columnist. He was a contributing columnist for the Washington Post from 2017-2023 and a frequent guest analyst across numerous media platforms. He is a contributing columnist for The Empowerment Alliance, which advocates for realistic approaches to energy consumption and environmental conservation. Abernathy’s “TEA Takes” column will be published every Wednesday and delivered to your inbox!
This article was originally published by RealClearEnergy and made available via RealClearWire.
On Episide #131 of The Climate Realism Show, we invite Steve Goreham on to discuss. Steve is the executive director of the Climate Science Coalition of America and author of four books, including “Green Breakdown: The Coming Renewable Energy Failure.”
America’s educational system used to cover the “three Rs” — reading, writing, and ‘rithmetic – but that has long been abandoned from elementary school through college and even medical school and replaced with ideological indoctrination. Now the University of California, San Diego is requiring students to take a class in “climate change” to earn a degree. Classes such as “The Astronomy of Climate Change”, “Gender and Climate Justice”, “Indigenous Approaches to Climate Change,” and “Environmentalism in Arts and Media” are on offer. What is driving the push for shoving climate alarmism into every academic subject under the sun?
On Episide #131 of The Climate Realism Show, we invite Steve Goreham on to discuss. Steve is the executive director of the Climate Science Coalition of America and author of four books, including “Green Breakdown: The Coming Renewable Energy Failure.”
Heartland’s Anthony Watts, H. Sterling Burnett, Linnea Lueken, and Jim Lakely will also cover some of the Crazy Climate News of the week. Join us LIVE at 1 p.m. ET so you can leave your questions and comments for the show in the chat.
“Environmentalism reflects an antipathy for a complex, technological, and free society where survival is bought at the cost of ambition, learning, thinking, taking risks, and working hard, within a free, competitive marketplace.”
“Environmentalism reflects an antipathy for a complex, technological, and free society where survival is bought at the cost of ambition, learning, thinking, taking risks, and working hard, within a free, competitive marketplace.”
Despite all the benefits of modernity, the primitive tribal “ideal” of self-denial still persists, most explicitly within the environmentalist movement.
Because of its enduring popularity, many view its environmentalist advocates as sincere idealists, but simply too extreme. Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, their supposed “ideal” isn’t ideal at all. No, I’m not criticizing them for being too committed to a principle. I’m accusing them of being committed to the wrong principle.
Ask yourself the following question: Where is there a place for humans and their works in a world where pristine nature is deemed ideal, and the productive use of nature for human gain is deemed immoral?
In essence, environmentalists are attacking our very right to live, period. That position permits no compromise. To concede an inch of ground to it is to surrender, in principle, the entire battle for our lives, well-being, and happiness.
For too long, defenders of modernity have tacitly conceded the realm of philosophy—and the mantle of moral idealism—to its critics. Too few have demanded that the environmentalists answer such philosophical questions as:
Why does untouched nature have “value” in itself?
What, exactly, does that mean?
By what standards do you maintain that the human use of a natural resource constitutes an illegitimate claim, or an aesthetic desecration?
And by what standard is a life of scarcity and self-denial virtuous?
So long as the “ideal” of a pristine nature unspoiled by self-interested human use remains unchallenged, that ideal will remain the compass that sets the direction of national debate and policy. And its logic will demand that we slowly, inexorably surrender more and more of our property and profits, more and more of our rights and freedoms.
That’s certainly the vision of environmentalist leaders. “We must make the rescue of the environment the central organizing principle of civilization,” declares Al Gore. The changes demanded by this organizing principle, he says, will be “wrenching” and “will affect almost every aspect of our lives together on this planet.”1
Yet that prospect doesn’t appear to faze him or his environmentalist colleagues in the least. Paul Ehrlich, for example, makes it clear that the environmentalist goal isn’t to make poor people better off. Since he believes that rich people, by using more resources, cause many times more “ecological destruction” than poor people, Ehrlich concludes: “Actually, the problem in the world is that there are too many rich people.”2
Environmentalism reflects an antipathy for a complex, technological, and free society where survival is bought at the cost of ambition, learning, thinking, taking risks, and working hard, within a free, competitive marketplace. One sees the true environmentalist motive clearly captured in the book title Returning to Eden—a woozy yearning for an egalitarian garden, where fruit drops from the tree into one’s lap, where the struggle to survive ceases, where all animals lie down in peace and harmony. The Eden of environmentalism is a risk-free place where idle wishes will be the coin of the realm.
Defending the Human Quest
But we don’t live in a mythical Eden. We live on a planet where the struggle to survive is an implacable fact of nature. And those of us who do wish to survive—and thrive—can no longer afford to remain on the moral defensive. We can no longer afford to remain agnostic and mute about the philosophical issues at the root of the attacks on our lives and livelihoods. We can’t expect to rally public support against the environmentalists if we fail to challenge, openly and unapologetically, the moral assumptions underlying their efforts.
No, a moral assault must be met head-on—with a moral response. To clarify the public debate, we must do two things. First, we must begin to understand and uphold the moral rightness of the human use of nature. Second, we must begin to understand and uphold our own moral right to do our work, and to profit from it.
So far, the critics of modernity have been winning the public relations battle. But there’s nothing inevitable about that. I don’t believe that the public is fundamentally predisposed against a rational view of Man and nature. They’re merely confused by arguments that pit the alleged moral claims of nature against the moral claims of human nature.
But defenders of Man have one huge advantage over their adversaries. The anti-human premises of environmentalism clash with every person’s life, well-being, happiness, and—perhaps above all—his self-esteem.
As a case in point, science writer Jeremy Burgess, himself an environmentalist, wondered aloud: “Is it just me, or does everyone else feel guilty for being alive too? …Eventually, and probably soon, we shall all be reduced to creeping about in disgrace, nervous of our simplest pleasures.”3
This, then, is the emotional reward of environmentalism: a metaphysical inferiority complex.
And how could it be otherwise? If untouched nature is the ideal, then, in logic, our lives, interests, well-being, and pleasures must be sacrificed to the “greater” interests of our surroundings. And if they aren’t—if our selfish, life-serving acts impinge on the “ideal” in any way, as they must—then we will come to feel guilty about being alive.
But no one is born spitting into his own face. A metaphysical inferiority complex has to be acquired. It clashes with everything in the human spirit: the desires to learn, to grow, to do, to succeed, to be happy.
It’s time that we reject the environmentalists’ degrading view of human nature, and go on the moral offensive.
It’s time that we, as human beings, assert our right to exist as our nature demands.
It’s time that we stop apologizing for our every footprint, for our every fence, for our every meal.
It’s time that we stop regarding our homes as morally inferior to the trees they came from, or our children’s needs as less morally important than Bambi’s.
It’s time that we recapture the Enlightenment legacy, and build upon the philosophical work begun so nobly by America’s Founders—those heroic achievers who “exalted Reason and worshipped at the altar of Liberty.” It’s time that we define and defend a new vision: an inspiring individualist vision of human potential, in which each human being is honored as an end in himself, with reason as his guide to action, and his own life, well-being, and happiness as his ultimate reward.
Robert Bidinotto is an award-winning journalist, editor, lecturer, and novelist who reports on cultural and political issues from the perspective of principled individualism. Over three decades he has established a reputation as a leading critic of environmentalism.
As a former Staff Writer for Reader’s Digest, Bidinotto authored high-profile investigative reports on environmental issues, crime, and other public controversies—including articles on global warming and the 1989 Alar scare. His Alar article was singled out for editorial praise by Barron’s and by Priorities, the journal of the American Council on Science and Health. He authored a monograph, The Green Machine,and for several years ran a website (“ecoNOT”), both critically examining the environmentalist philosophy and movement.
Bidinotto’s many articles, columns, and reviews also appeared in Success, Writer’s Digest, The Boston Herald, The American Spectator, City Journal, The Freeman, and Reason. He served as the award-winning editor of The New Individualist, a political and cultural magazine, and as editor of publications for the Capital Research Center, a nonprofit watchdog group.
In 2011, Bidinotto began writing political thrillers. HUNTER—the debut novel in his Dylan Hunter series—soared to the top of the Amazon and Wall St. Journal bestseller lists. BAD DEEDS, the first sequel, dramatizes the evils and dangers of environmentalism. A number-one best-selling Audible political thriller, BAD DEEDS was named “Book of the Year” by the Conservative-Libertarian Fiction Alliance. Bidinotto’s thrillers are available on Amazon.
Ed. Note: This is Part 3 of a six-part series on the ideology of environmentalism and its incompatibility with the foundational individualist philosophy of the United States. Parts 1 is here. Part 2 is here. Subsequent posts: Part 4, Part 5, Part 6)
Ed. Note: This is Part 3 of a six-part series on the ideology of environmentalism and its incompatibility with the foundational individualist philosophy of the United States. Parts 1 is here. Part 2 is here. Subsequent posts: Part 4, Part 5, Part 6)
“Why is it that any touch of Man upon nature is to be regarded as a violation and desecration? What is the distinctive aspect of human nature that so offends the environmentalists?”
Today, the most consistent expression of environmentalism’s misanthropic view can be found in the so-called “animal rights movement,” which emerged with the publication in 1975 of philosopher Peter Singer’s book, Animal Liberation. “This book,” Singer wrote, “is about the tyranny of human over non-human animals.” That tyranny amounts to “speciesism,” akin to “racism.” A speciesist, Singer said, “allows the interest of his species to override the greater interest of members of other species.”1 Note the word “greater.”
As fellow philosopher Tom Regan, author of The Case for Animal Rights, put it, “the fundamental wrong is the system that allows us to view animals as our resources, here for us.”2 Instead, both Singer and Regan hold that all beings with a capacity to feel pleasure and pain have an “inherent value of their own.”
This means, say three animal-rights philosophers at Oxford, that “There can be no rational excuse left for killing animals, be they killed for food, science or sheer personal indulgence.”3 It means: no animal testing of medicines or surgical techniques; no hunting, circuses, or rodeos; no birdcages or dog pens; no leather, no meat, no milk, no eggs—no use of animals, period.
Strict observance of animal rights forbids even direct protection of people and their values from nature’s many predators. For example, in his book Returning to Eden, Michael W. Fox—then a vice-president of the Humane Society—denounced the use of bug sprays and electric “bug roasters” to zap mosquitoes; after all, he said reassuringly, “only a few of the millions you kill would have bitten you.”4
Likewise, in a 1990 fundraising letter to Humane Society members, opposing the federal Animal Damage Control program, Society president John Hoyt denounced “the killing of millions of animals—to protect American agriculture and other resources from damage caused by wildlife. This goal must be changed to one that seeks to limit losses to acceptable levels without killing or injuring wildlife.” [Emphasis in original.]
Losses to people, you see, are “acceptable”; losses to animals are not.
Radical preservationism is now enshrined in major environmental laws—such as the Endangered Species Act, which places minnows and owls above our needs for hydroelectric power and lumber; and wetlands regulations, which set aside mosquito-breeding swamps as inviolate sanctuaries for salamanders.
The federal government’s 1964 Wilderness Act defines a wilderness “as an area where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain.”5 No roads, cabins, camping facilities, campfires, mechanized vehicles of any kind are permitted to sully these virginal expanses. This federal law, environmentalist historian Shabecoff states proudly, “threw the authority of the United States government behind the radical idea that the land and its riches have value even when left undisturbed.”6
But why?
Why is it that any touch of Man upon nature is to be regarded as a violation and desecration? What is the distinctive aspect of human nature that so offends the environmentalists?
As they make clear in virtually every utterance, it is Man’s power to reason, and everything that flows from it: abstract knowledge, science, technology, material wealth, industrial society, the capitalist system.
Why? Because reason is the tool by which Man transforms his environment for his own benefit. Therefore, to environmentalists, rationality is the mark of Cain. In the “natural order” they espouse, we humans are the second-class citizens of the universe—condemned, by our very nature as rational, creative developers, to sit at the back of the bus.
The Great Apple Scare
To define environmentalism is to damn it, which is why many movement spokesmen go to considerable public lengths to cover the naked implications of their core premises with fig leaves of respectability and moderation. One way they do it is to clothe their endless scare campaigns in the ill-fitting garb of science.
Their tactics always follow a familiar pattern. First come declarations of some new ecological “crisis,” based upon the flimsiest of evidence and perversions of the scientific method. Next are mathematical projections of catastrophic consequences stemming from the new danger, extrapolated from ludicrous worst-case scenarios. Finally, the claim is made that “we must do something immediately,” because the predicted consequences—though not provable—are just too horrible to contemplate.
Let me give you just one notorious example that I investigated personally for Reader’s Digest.7
In 1989, one of the nation’s most influential environmentalist groups, the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), panicked America about Alar, a chemical growth agent then used on apples. On CBS-TV’s 60 Minutes program and later on Donahue, the NRDC—with the help of its eminent toxicological consultant, actress Meryl Streep—reported that apples treated with Alar eventually could cause thousands of lifetime cancer cases among today’s preschoolers. This carefully engineered publicity stunt terrified mothers, cost Alar’s manufacturer, Uniroyal, millions, caused over $100 million in losses to apple growers, some of whom were bankrupted—while making a fortune for the NRDC.
The Alar scare was in keeping with the NRDC’s uncompromising position that the presence of pesticide residues on food in any amount—no matter how trivial—constitutes an “intolerable risk” to human health. For example, NRDC’s Lawrie Mott wrote in 1984 that “it may be impossible to define a safe level of pesticide residues in food.”8 Mott told me that the NRDC would ban all such chemicals “no matter how great their benefits are.”9
During the 1970s, initial tests on rodents using Alar and its chemical by-product, UDMH, suggested a cancer risk. But the dose levels in those tests were so absurdly high that the animals were dying of simple poisoning. Nonetheless, the EPA used these poorly designed and monitored tests to try to ban Alar.
But in 1985, the EPA’s own independent Scientific Advisory Panel dismissed the Agency’s findings, throwing out the rodent experiments as scientifically worthless. Stung by the panel’s rejection of its evidence, the EPA retaliated by ordering Uniroyal to start another round of tests. Yet for two years, every test on Alar came back clean. And even at dose levels 35,000 times higher than the highest amount that children might ingest daily, UDMH caused no tumors in rats.
Finally, in desperation, the EPA decided to stack the deck: for a final mouse test, it ordered the laboratory to increase the UDMH dose levels four to eight times higher than independent consultants had already computed was the maximum amount the animals could tolerate. Sure enough, these grossly excessive doses at last generated the tumors that the agency had been looking for—even though 80 percent of the mice were poisoned to death. The EPA then used these deliberately manipulated results to estimate that 45 people in a million “might” get cancer from Alar. It therefore ordered all use of the product to cease.
But while Uniroyal and apple growers suffered, the NRDC prospered.
After its 60 Minutes appearance, the group dashed off a new paperback book on pesticides, titled For Our Kids’ Sake, priced at $6.95 per copy. Then they set up a 900 phone number, priced at $3.00 per call, through which to order the book. At the outset of the scare, the phone number was dutifully published on the front page of USA Today and aired on national TV commercials featuring Streep. When promoted on the Donahue show, over 90,000 copies were sold. The NRDC’s Janet Hathaway proudly told me that during the scare, NRDC phones were ringing off the hook with new members and contributors.10
This is only one of countless phony environmental scares that could be cited. Similar pseudo-scientific nonsense is also peddled over radon in homes, global warming, ozone depletion, electromagnetic fields, and much more.
____________________________
Peter Singer, Animal Liberation: A New Ethics for Our Treatment of Animals (New York: Avon Books, 1975), pp. ix, 9. ↩︎
Stanley Godlovitch, Roslind Godlovitch, and John Harris, eds. Animals, Men, and Morals: An Inquiry into the Maltreatment of Non-Humans (New York: Grove Press, 1971), p. 7. ↩︎
Michael W. Fox, Returning to Eden: Animal Rights and Human Responsibilities (New York: Viking Press, 1980), p. 232. ↩︎
Philip Shabecoff, A Fierce Green Fire: The American Environmental Movement (New York: Hill and Wang, 1993), p. 153. ↩︎
Robert James Bidinotto, “The Great Apple Scare,” Reader’s Digest, October 1990, pp. 53–58. Reprinted online here. ↩︎
Lawrie Mott, “Bad Apples: Pesticides in Food,” The Amicus Journal, Summer 1984, 37. ↩︎
Lawrie Mott, phone interview with author, June 12, 1990. ↩︎
Janet Hathaway, phone interview with author, June 19, 1990. ↩︎
About the Author
Robert Bidinotto is an award-winning journalist, editor, lecturer, and novelist who reports on cultural and political issues from the perspective of principled individualism. Over three decades he has established a reputation as a leading critic of environmentalism.
As a former Staff Writer for Reader’s Digest, Bidinotto authored high-profile investigative reports on environmental issues, crime, and other public controversies—including articles on global warming and the 1989 Alar scare. His Alar article was singled out for editorial praise by Barron’s and by Priorities, the journal of the American Council on Science and Health. He authored a monograph, The Green Machine,and for several years ran a website (“ecoNOT”), both critically examining the environmentalist philosophy and movement.
Bidinotto’s many articles, columns, and reviews also appeared in Success, Writer’s Digest, The Boston Herald, The American Spectator, City Journal, The Freeman, and Reason. He served as the award-winning editor of The New Individualist, a political and cultural magazine, and as editor of publications for the Capital Research Center, a nonprofit watchdog group.
In 2011, Bidinotto began writing political thrillers. HUNTER—the debut novel in his Dylan Hunter series—soared to the top of the Amazon and Wall St. Journal bestseller lists. BAD DEEDS, the first sequel, dramatizes the evils and dangers of environmentalism. A number-one best-selling Audible political thriller, BAD DEEDS was named “Book of the Year” by the Conservative-Libertarian Fiction Alliance. Bidinotto’s thrillers are available on Amazon.
Today, Master Resource begins a six-part series analyzing the philosophic basis of environmentalism, its enmity to the technologies of instrumental reason (especially energy technology), as well as its incompatibility with the foundational individualist philosophy of the United States. Written some years ago by the award-winning essayist Robert Bidinotto, this manifesto seemed worth preserving here at MR now that Bidinotto has moved on professionally to writing the best-selling Dylan Hunter political-thriller series (including one novel featuring environmentalist villains!). A fuller biographical note appears at the end of each post.
Ed. Note: The ideology of environmentalism has proven itself to be, by far, the most persuasive enemy of the Master Resource, energy. Pollution … Health Hazards … Species Extinction … Ecosystem Destruction … Resource Exhaustion … Global Cooling … Global Warming … Melting Glaciers … Rising Seas … Climate Change. Why do the enemies of energy industries seem always to fall back, in the end, on environmentalist themes for their strongest and most effective stands? Is there something deeply embedded in our Western culture that makes the philosophy of environmentalism the most influential instrument for opposition to the energy industry?
Today, Master Resource begins a six-part series analyzing the philosophic basis of environmentalism, its enmity to the technologies of instrumental reason (especially energy technology), as well as its incompatibility with the foundational individualist philosophy of the United States. Written some years ago by the award-winning essayist Robert Bidinotto, this manifesto seemed worth preserving here at MR now that Bidinotto has moved on professionally to writing the best-selling Dylan Hunter political-thriller series (including one novel featuring environmentalist villains!). A fuller biographical note appears at the end of each post.
The new Environmentalism was the complete antithesis of the American Founders’ Enlightenment outlook of reason, science, individualism, self-responsibility, personal freedom, private property, and capitalism.
Every culture and its institutions are the living embodiments of certain dominant ideas. At its birth, America’s basic premises were part and parcel of the glorious historical period that was rightly called “the Enlightenment.”
In his book The Empire of Reason, historian Henry Steele Commager wonderfully captured the spirit of the American Enlightenment. Men such as Franklin and Jefferson, he wrote, had “a prodigality about them; they recognized no bounds to their curiosity, no barriers to their thought, no limits to their activities.” Commager cited “their confidence in Reason, their curiosity about the secular world and—with most of them—their indifference to any other, their addiction to Science—if useful—their habit of experimentation, and their confidence in improvement…” Heroic achievers, these men “exalted Reason and worshipped at the altar of Liberty.”1
That linkage between reason and liberty wasn’t coincidental: men of reason require freedom to explore, to communicate their ideas, to realize their visions. And what is the goal of these activities? In Jefferson’s immortal words, “the pursuit of happiness”: that is, personal fulfillment and self-interest.
Such were the ideas and values of America’s Founders. Their individualist ethic, embodied in the social system of capitalism, has produced—in what amounts historically to the blink of an eye—the greatest material abundance the world has ever known. Once people were encouraged to employ their minds in the pursuit of personal values—and once they were politically free to do so—a torrent of human ingenuity and energy was unleashed, curing hunger, disease, poverty, and ignorance on an unprecedented scale.
Not just America, but every country and culture that adopted these ideas progressed dramatically to the extent it did so. On the other hand, every society that turned its back on these ideas continued to suffer, as primitive societies had suffered throughout history. Witness in our time the intellectual, economic, and political collapse of all forms of socialism, including fascism and communism.
It would seem that this practical demonstration of the extraordinary benefits of reason, individualism, liberty, and capitalism should have been enough to convince all the world—and certainly the world’s intellectuals and leaders—of their unarguable merits. Yet ironically, these Enlightenment ideas, which have given the world so much, are still considered controversial and suspect. And not just the ideas, but also the rational faculty that generates them.
——————
In fact, Man himself is no longer praised as a conqueror of nature’s obstacles, nor even accepted as just another part of the natural world. To many, he is an interloper, an alien presence on the planet—even nature’s enemy—and his creative works are increasingly regarded as a growing menace to all that exists.
“[W]e are threatening to push the earth out of balance,” warned former Vice President Al Gore in his book, Earth in the Balance. “Modern industrial civilization, as presently organized, is colliding violently with our planet’s ecological system. The ferocity of its assault on the earth is breathtaking, and the horrific consequences are occurring so quickly as to defy our capacity to recognize them, comprehend their global implications, and organize an appropriate and timely response.”2
Philip Shabecoff, formerly the chief environmental reporter for the New York Times, summed up this outlook in his history of the American environmental movement: “…[A]n unspoiled land of great beauty and wonder began to change when Europeans came here five hundred years ago,” he wrote. “Its resources were squandered…large areas were sullied, disfigured, and degraded, and…our negligent use of the Promethean forces of science and technology has brought us to the verge of disaster.”3
The Promethean allusion is strikingly appropriate, for Prometheus was the Titan of Greek mythology who loved Man, and brought to him the fire of the Gods—a tool by which he could transform nature for his own benefit. It is perhaps the archetypal myth of Western civilization.
But many—certainly, many who rally under the green banner of environmentalism—now hold that worldview in contempt.
Environmentalism vs. The Enlightenment
The essence of the environmentalist outlook is suggested in the title of Mr. Gore’s book, and made clear in its pages. It’s the view that everything in nature exists in a perfectly harmonious balance—a balance ever threatened by the activities of Man.
The roots of this outlook lie deep in antiquity. “We encounter the ‘paradise myth’ all over the world in more or less complex forms,” writes classical scholar Mircea Eliade. “Actually, all these myths show primitive man enjoying blessedness, spontaneity, and liberty, which he has most annoyingly lost as the consequence of the ‘fall’…”4
For example, in seminally influential writings, the Greek writer Hesiod (circa 750–650 BC) presented the so-called “myth of the ages,” or of a lost, blissful “Golden Age.” The Roman poet Ovid (43 BC–AD 17), “one of the most influential of the Latin writers of antiquity,”5 fleshed out the myth of the ages and transformed it into a consistent, compelling story of man’s decay that is remarkably resonant with the themes and narratives of contemporary environmentalism.
In these transcultural myths, the cause of Man’s decadence or “fall” from a previous blissful state of paradise is almost always rooted in the sin of hubris, of pride, and of self-assertion—especially intellectual self-assertion—against authority.
Consider the Greek myth of Prometheus. By giving men the knowledge of the gods, Prometheus enrages Zeus, who chains him to a rock to suffer a thousand years of torture. And to punish Man he sends him the first mortal woman, Pandora, bearing a box that he forbids her to open. But moved by curiosity, she opens it anyway, unleashing on Man all the evils of the world.
Similarly, when given wings of wax, Icarus is warned by his father not to try to fly too high, but the lad ignores him. Soaring upward, the aspiring youth flies too close to the sun, where his wings melt and he falls to his doom.
The Greeks believed that hubris had to be suppressed by recognizing something greater than oneself, by cultivating a sense of humility before the gods or some higher good. Man’s proper path lay in self-restraint, in practicing virtues centered on the idea of moderation, such as prudence, wisdom, and temperance. The importance of humility and steering a moderate course is illustrated in the cautionary Greek myth of Phaëton, who insists on driving his father’s chariot to bear the sun across the sky. But heedless of warnings, he fails to stay on the middle course through the heavens and, flying out of control, sets the world on fire and perishes.
This fear of unrestrained human aspirations, especially Man’s boundless thirst for knowledge, is equally evident in the Judeo-Christian tradition. To the ideals of humility and moderation, the Old Testament incorporates its own version of the paradise myth in the form of a pastoral ideal, symbolized by the Garden of Eden.
In Genesis 2:4–3:24 (King James Version), God plants a Garden, separate from the rest of nature, “and there he put the man whom he had formed” (2:8). This Garden is like a desert oasis, irrigated by a river from Eden—an earthly paradise that contains “every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food” (2:9–10). God also creates for Adam (“man”) a female companion, whom the man later names Eve.
Adam and Eve live together in the “pleasant” Garden as naked, ignorant primitives, eating the fruit of the trees that God has planted for them (there is no mention of killing and eating animals). Provided a virtually effortless sustenance, Adam’s only assigned tasks in the Garden are “to dress it and keep it” (2:15) and to name all the animals.
But Adam and Eve defy the authority of God and eat fruit from a forbidden Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. As a result of this Original Sin, God tells them that, as punishment, they will be expelled from the paradisiacal Garden into the harsh state of nature. Thereafter, merely to survive, Adam must “till the ground from whence he was taken”—soil that God has “cursed” and filled with thorns and thistles—and he must labor “in sorrow” to produce bread by “the sweat of [his] face” until he dies. Eve is cursed, too: she henceforth will conceive and give birth “in sorrow” and be subjugated to the will of her husband (3:16-24).
The Judeo-Christian story of Man’s fall from a pastoral “paradise” mirrors the core themes of the transcultural “myth of the ages” and similar ones. Other tales from the Bible reinforce these themes. For example, later in Genesis, when men try to build a tower that can reach heaven, God laments that “now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do.”6 So to punish men once again for their unrestrained imagination and ambition, He scatters them across the earth and confuses their languages.
Consider the basic premises about Man and his world that these ancient morality tales have transmitted across the centuries—premises communicated in songs, sermons, images, icons, fiction, films, and scholarly works—premises that have shaped the thinking and the lives of billions. Here, in summary, is their message:
Everything in nature exists in harmonious balance and perfect order (the myth of the Golden Age and the Eden myth). Man’s duty is to accept his humble niche within this benign, bountiful, and balanced paradise, where he can exist simply and non-intrusively (the virtue of humility). However, Man’s ambition—especially his quest to improve himself by gaining and applying knowledge—represents a grave peril to this pastoral ideal (the sin of pride). Man’s ambitious exercise of his creative intelligence disturbs the tranquility and destroys the harmony of the pristine natural order (the danger of reason and the sin of selfish ambition).
To prevent chaos, therefore, Man’s evil, selfish appetites must be curbed, and his intelligence suppressed. That is the task of morality, whose virtues consist of constraints: humility, obedience, self-suppression, sacrifice of self to a “greater” good. By limiting Man’s disruptive ambitions and creative aspirations, then, morality will preserve the natural balance and order.
Since antiquity, this worldview has been drummed dogmatically into billions of brains—so successfully that it’s now the reigning interpretive template. It’s the basis for most people’s understanding of the world around them. It’s the code of values governing their choices and actions. It’s the metaphysical and moral heritage upon which writers such as Al Gore and Philip Shabecoff draw—and which they intuitively trust their readers to share.
It’s the spiritual soil in which the seeds of the environmentalist philosophy and movement have taken root and flourished.
It’s also the complete antithesis of the philosophical outlook of America’s Founders: a rejection of the Enlightenment outlook that, like Prometheus, championed Man and his requirements for living on earth: reason, science, individualism, self-responsibility, personal freedom, private property, and capitalism.
Rational individualism was the emerging worldview for people newly liberated from superstition, savagery, stagnation, and slavery—people striving to explore, develop, use, and enjoy the earth’s resources. Rational individualism was the philosophy of modernity.
But even in America, this modern, progressive ideal never fully overcame the pre-modern “ideal” of The Eden Premise. That atavistic ideal continued to hold a viselike grip upon millions who feared the prospect of self-responsibility, and hated the socio-economic system that demanded it.
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Henry Steele Commager, The Empire of Reason: How Europe Imagined and America Realized the Enlightenment (Garden City, NJ: Anchor Press/Doubleday, 1977), pp. 3, 15, 241. ↩︎
Philip Shabecoff, A Fierce Green Fire: The American Environmental Movement (New York: Hill and Wang, 1993), p. xiii. ↩︎
Mircea Eliade, “The Yearning for Paradise in Primitive Tradition,”Diogenes, University of Chicago Press, Summer 1953; reprinted in Henry A. Murray, ed., Myth and Mythmaking (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1968), p. 62. ↩︎
Larry Kreitzer, Prometheus and Adam: Enduring Symbols of the Human Situation (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1994), p. 27. ↩︎
Robert Bidinotto is an award-winning journalist, editor, lecturer, and novelist who reports on cultural and political issues from the perspective of principled individualism. Over three decades he has established a reputation as a leading critic of environmentalism.
As a former Staff Writer for Reader’s Digest, Bidinotto authored high-profile investigative reports on environmental issues, crime, and other public controversies—including articles on global warming and the 1989 Alar scare. His Alar article was singled out for editorial praise by Barron’s and by Priorities, the journal of the American Council on Science and Health. He authored a monograph, The Green Machine,and for several years ran a website (“ecoNOT”), both critically examining the environmentalist philosophy and movement.
Bidinotto’s many articles, columns, and reviews also appeared in Success, Writer’s Digest, The Boston Herald, The American Spectator, City Journal, The Freeman, and Reason. He served as the award-winning editor of The New Individualist, a political and cultural magazine, and as editor of publications for the Capital Research Center, a nonprofit watchdog group.
In 2011, Bidinotto began writing political thrillers. HUNTER—the debut novel in his Dylan Hunter series—soared to the top of the Amazon and Wall St. Journal bestseller lists. BAD DEEDS, the first sequel, dramatizes the evils and dangers of environmentalism. A number-one best-selling Audible political thriller, BAD DEEDS was named “Book of the Year” by the Conservative-Libertarian Fiction Alliance. Bidinotto’s thrillers are available on Amazon.
Investors struggle today to safely measure financial and economic risks, reduce exposures and identify opportunities. Governments must invest to limit exposures to infrastructure risks.
Synthetic pesticides are under constant regulatory pressure, but not organic pesticides
“Green” renewables and EVs have very little regulatory scrutiny
Food additives need to meet tight authorisation controls, but not more toxic natural foods
Tobacco cessation products (like e-cigarettes) are being restricted on the basis of poor evidence
Certain seed breeding innovations are banned even when changes are imperceptible
Billions are funnelled into the war on climate, dwarfing aid for education, health and infrastructure
These are some results from poor righteous risk management.
A righteous risk is a threat of harm to societal well-being that arises when decisions are based solely on widely-shared moral perceptions, social virtues and ethical ideals. This value-based policy approach does not consider facts or data in a consistent manner with certain actors, reinforced by social media tribes, imposing their ideals upon others. Righteous zealots (particularly environmental activists, naturopaths and food puritans) are more intensively forcing their moral dogma upon the policy process. Such value-based regulations are righteous risks that have become a growing threat to entrepreneurs and researchers whose innovations may challenge their traditional ethical norms. In attacking agricultural practices, food choices, energy use, nicotine alternatives and transportation choices, when the righteous feel they have virtue on their side, their reasoning and decision-making become hazardous to others. This is the introduction to a series on how to manage righteous risks.
Investors struggle today to safely measure financial and economic risks, reduce exposures and identify opportunities. Governments must invest to limit exposures to infrastructure risks. Corporate leaders have to manage trade, market and production risks, often environmental-health risks and, perhaps most importantly, potential regulatory risks. But is anyone managing the threat from righteous risks?
Righteous Risks
A righteous risk arises when a decision is taken on the grounds that it is perceived as the right thing, the virtuous answer, what a good leader would do… But the righteous action is not necessarily the best thing to do. Making decisions solely on some ethical dogma, an unwavering virtuous self-appreciation or a fear of some stakeholder moral condemnation can tie policymakers into irrational regulations that do little but harm. The values that guide decision-makers, or the widely expressed social values that decision-makers feel they need to reflect, do not take into account the complexities of policymaking or the compromises that must be made. Politics is a pragmatic profession, but today we seem to have lost the art of Realpolitik, replaced by a “governance by moral aspiration” approach.
Certain cases of “moral reactivism” have had decision-makers assume the virtue position. Be it forest fires, floods and heatwaves, a tragic publicly-viewed murder or a disaster flowing from industrial negligence, leaders who react to public moral outrage with righteous responses may survive a political backlash but risk making bad decisions if they put some moral idealism before pragmatic problem solving. And if issues are too complex or problematic, policymakers can seek the solace of the precautionary principle, claiming to be a caring, concerned leader.
When moral convictions are cleverly used to justify policy actions, who would possibly be concerned about any contradictions or hypocrisy arising from the policies. Leaders who cloak themselves in virtue, from Ottawa to Wellington to Brussels, pretend to be immune to criticism, put economic or social consequences into a larger, moral crusader context and play the progressive card. Those who highlight their failures are moral delinquents, attacking Bambi.
But Bambi is getting pretty smug and their failures are starting to hurt.
The Virtue of Environmentalism
I had lunch recently with a Brussels insider and we were evaluating the achievements of the von der Leyen Commission. Her tenure was seen as basically a failure (even if we factored out the Timmermans effect). The main weakness was that her policies and postures were more virtue-driven than rational, more ethically-postured aspirations at a time when Europe, faced with pandemics, wars, energy and food inflation and economic crises, needed a more pragmatic Realpolitik approach.
The signature policy of the von der Leyen Commission has been the Green Deal. It was touted as the most important moral and political responsibility of our time to do whatever it takes to combat climate change. There was a war on climate, and thanks to the pontifical architect of this policy, Frans Timmermans, it was also framed as a war against evil: against capitalism and industry.
The word “transition” started to be repeated in any official EU Green Deal speech. When we make a transition, we turn away from the bad and toward the good. The need for an energy transition, mobility transition or a food system transition became synonymous with fighting climate change. But this “transition towards…” strategy, as a righteous crusade, became curious as the Green Deal strategies were presented as virtuous solutions. Renewables, organic food, EVs, non-synthetic chemicals … were promoted within a moral framework, under the virtue of sustainability. Whoever would suggest advancing innovations in carbon capture and storage of fossil fuel emissions instead of more subsidies for renewables had crossed over to the dark side and would soon be ostracised by the community of influencers. When you speak in terms of good v evil in the moral imperative to stop climate change (to right the evils of past generations of unenlightened polluters), the Green Deal becomes a mission of the noble and the virtuous.
The EU Farm2Fork strategy, for example, is built on the perception that organic farming practices are morally superior (not industrial, not chemical-based, more environmentally sustainable). Organic advocates perceive themselves as virtuous (conscious) consumers and, right or wrong, the food companies market into this perception, reinforcing this belief. So who would dare question a major EU policy shift toward organic farming, even if it radically disrupted European food supplies or aggravated global food security? Evil chemical companies lobby for destructive, conventional agricultural practices, pesticides and GMOs while the good small farmers who nourish the land organically are concerned for our well-being. And we are not even talking about vegan sanctimony.
This perception though is myopic and as long as the EU’s food and agriculture strategy favours this righteous approach, the consequences will be more dire for farmers, the environment and consumers. After almost three years of consultation, the European Commission has refused to budge on its pro-organic moral crusade, despite the warnings from its own scientists in the JRC. This perception of a war against evil is a righteous risk that will be very hard to manage if the architects continue to remain doggedly dogmatic. Then again, the vote last week in the European Parliament rejecting the Sustainable Use of Plant Protection Products Regulation (SUR) is a sign that idealistic moral convictions alone might not get the votes in next year’s European elections.
Righteous individuals (zealots) are unable to listen to opposing ideas or to compromise. I once was so disgusted by the self-righteousness of activist campaigns that I came out and admitted that, as a human, I pollute. If we don’t start from that admission, if we assume that the problem is with how others pollute, then we will never be able to achieve any reasonable goal (not of zero pollution but of polluting less). Like most other cults, environmentalism is rife with moral sanctimony.
It is not just the moral rectitude these activists are demanding that is questionable, but also the type of values they are putting forward. Zealots will do whatever it takes to win a campaign (so lying, scaring or misleading the public is acceptable for them). The activists’ commitment to social justice creates a bias against industry, globalisation and capitalism so any potential innovative achievements or system improvements are rejected outright. The values these moral crusaders put forward are framed by their anti-establishment dogma, such as diversity, equity and sustainability. We don’t hear much about honesty, accountability, fair-play or respect for evidence in their campaigns (perhaps these are not Machiavellian values). And if we ever dare suggest they be more transparent on who is funding them, then … well … I paid a price for that heresy.
A Redefinition of Leadership
This injection of ethical rectitude into policy strategies is redefining Western leadership. Policies are cloaked in values and expressed with hyperbole and categorically. Moral conviction defines today’s bold leaders, standing up for the ideals and beliefs that ought to define our futures and relentlessly fighting against those infidels who dare to oppose “our common values”.
The use of the prefix “zero” is an indicator of a virtue-driven leader prone to moral hyperbole and putting aspiration over achievement. Zero waste, zero emissions, zero plastics, net zero… all of these aspirations are unachievable nonsense that wastes political energy. We should be directing policy toward improving operations and aiming for the best that can be achieved. But the media expects leaders to be about superlatives, absolutes and great moral confrontations on the evils that have been tolerated for too long. Better is not good enough – we must right the wrongs and eradicate the evil to zero.
Leaders used to be able to stand up and make hard decisions, solve problems and inspire populations. This often involved compromises and an embrace of Realpolitik. Leaders would identify themselves via past achievements (battle-hardened generals, business titans, great negotiators…). Today’s virtue leaders aren’t cut from the same cloth, are often clever consensus-builders and need to identify themselves according to public expectations of propriety. They make decisions based on prescribed values rather than insight or intelligence.
Virtue-driven decisions can have serious consequences in the real world. The world is not divided into clear paths between good and evil. Different interest groups have legitimate claims and often hard choices means that the world of rainbows and butterflies may have to wait. But leaders who grasp onto their defining moral character, vision and high self-esteem will likely make bad decisions while claiming, stubbornly, to stand on principle.
Outrage Optics
Policymaking has always been about optics. In the last two decades (since the EU White Paper on Governance), European policy has been about engagement, stakeholder dialogue and participation. In recent years it has become a cynical process of “steam control” (to borrow on Tom Wolfe) where moral outrage is controlled via little compromises. But social media has brought high-volume ethical disgust into the policy optics game with very little tolerance for compromise. Social media is an insult arena where angry activists can morally emasculate public leaders who don’t do exactly what they tell them to. Leaders need to harden up. Just because some former Reuters journalist in Kansas calls a regulator names for standing by the scientific evidence on, say, glyphosate, does not mean he or she should abandon basic facts and science to be better judged by this little storm in a teacup.
The zealot influencer is the most dangerous lobbyist in the field, excelling at generating outrage optics within a small tribe of loud activists. They use a sociopathic preacher zeal to push policymakers into a moral quagmire. Support this legislation and you are supporting industry, wilfully spreading cancer on innocent children and destroying the environment. The argument is not about evidence or scientific advice, but on whether you, as a leader, are a good person. Outrage optics campaigns work on the idea that people will forget a policy choice in weeks but will never forget an irresponsible leader in the pocket of evil industry. When this emotional quagmire is too difficult and the moral outrage too insufferable, the precautionary principle is introduced as a mea culpa.
Precaution is a righteous risk. When a policymaker is being stabbed with hot moral pokers, they can reverse the tables and play the caring, concerned card. By declaring precaution, cowardly leaders can not only avoid the outrage optics, they can come across as benevolent regulators with a conscience, wanting nothing more than public safety. This little game buys them time since innovators will have to go back to prove with certainty that something is 100% safe (a near impossible task). By then these civil servants should have been promoted to some other position.
Some people are sickened by the smug pontifications of moral zealots and the costs of precautionary restrictions on their lives. There seems to have been a recent increase in extremist party electoral wins, the rise of inexperienced populists and the rejection of traditional, mainstream political parties. Foul language, racist declarations, lawbreaking and radical solutions are becoming more attractive to voters fed up with their virtue-driven leaders. There are many factors, of course, to explain this rise but I can understand the appeal of someone who tears up the political virtue manual and says things his or her electorate wants to hear (however outrageous) rather than the moralisms some out-of-touch leader feels the public ought to hear.
Developing a Righteous Risk Management Strategy
This series will look at case studies where righteous risks were (or were not) managed, the consequences and the lessons learnt. I will break righteous risks down and apply the normal risk management process and consider whether there are idiosyncratic exposures that defy typical responses or a policy trend that needs addressing. One article will look at the policy arena to determine the relationship of righteous risks within a larger regulatory risk management context. Of course we need to follow the money and the rise of new types of philanthropic foundations, led by virtue-seekers, has had an important influence on the rise of value-driven policies. The series will also consider how companies should react? After Corporate Social Responsibility and Sustainable Development, will the Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) value hoops be enough to meet the moral approval of the sanctimonious?
Is it wrong to be critical of stronger moral values guiding public officials? Not at all. But when all policies are driven merely by ethical values and unbending zealots; when activists frame every policy debate in simplistic, good v evil poles; when policymakers are inconsistent in their regulatory implementations according to perceived normative interests; and when the public is persuaded to consider capitalism, innovation and entrepreneurship as moral deficiencies; then righteous risks become a threat to rational policies, democracies and the public. I’m afraid that’s where we are today but it is where we go tomorrow that interests me.
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