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This Website is Dedicated to Alvin Alexander Cheyne January 10, 1921 - June 17, 2005 |
Green aspirants may be too late
For those considering the green revolution and wondering about its future, it may be too late. One prominent authority believes green has gone, gone wild.
He chronicles the half-century worldwide influence of Carson's rage against the use of the mosquito-killing DDT as costing tens of millions of lives. Uncontrolled mosquito populations, especially in developing countries, have spread killer malarial plagues year after year since DDT was banned in 1972.
In what Stirling calls a display of classic hypocrisy, Carson's erroneous fear-mongering that DDT was causing human sickness and deaths led her radical followers to find ways to eliminate or curtail humans' activities they viewed as endangering an ever-expanding number of lesser species. The ESA that they crafted became the primary vehicle for accomplishing their mission.
He believes that today's greenies are on a rampage to confiscate millions of acres of private property as habitat for an assortment of rats, snakes, crickets, birds, salamanders and other wildlife and plants. Each declaration of threatened or endangered status for these creatures implies that their peril results from the activity and mere existence of humans.
Stirling and his colleagues at PLF have taken up the cause of human existence and property rights as guaranteed by the U. S. Constitution in a number of cases in recent years. Most recently they have declared full-scale legal opposition to the attempt by green terrorists to declare the polar bear as a threatened species.
Like many of the other 1,350 species that have been tucked under the ESA's protective canopy, polar bear numbers are increasing as the animal thrives. Stirling foresees that tying the polar bear's listing to global warming can lead to highly restrictive regulation of any human activity viewed as contributing to that alleged phenomenon.
Stirling's book recalls the poorly researched science and knee-jerk reaction of authorities to declare a significant portion of the Northwest's old-growth forests as protected habitat for the northern spotted owl. Timber operations throughout the area closed down, causing immeasurable economic and personal distress to logging families and communities, making the forests more vulnerable to wildfires.
After several years of disrupting positively managed forest enterprises, more reasoned research revealed that a predator owl, not the lack of old-growth trees, was causing the spotted owl's demise.
Stirling's conclusion is that nature-loving green zealots hiding behind the ESA are exclusionists at heart. That means they are anti-human. They believe the earth is overpopulated, and restrictions on human enterprise such as the pursuit of happiness should be curtailed, whatever it takes. They have found a way to discourage and limit human enterprise with the ESA's onerous and expensive regulations.
He offers 15 ways to modify the ESA to allow it to actually protect plants and animals that may be in danger without eliminating human activity and commerce. For farmers and others with property at stake these suggestions alone make the book worth the price — $20 in bookstores or by contacting the Pacific Legal Foundation web site, www.green gonewild.com. The site contains a direct link to Amazon.com.
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