Earth Day Nonsense

The first Earth Day was celebrated in 1970. It was the result of the alarm bells of the environmental doom and gloom movement going off nonstop. As Ronald Bailey observes,

Earth Day 1970 provoked a torrent of apocalyptic predictions. “We have about five more years at the outside to do something,” ecologist Kenneth Watt declared to a Swarthmore College audience on April 19, 1970. Harvard biologist George Wald estimated that “civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind.” “We are in an environmental crisis which threatens the survival of this nation, and of the world as a suitable place of human habitation,” wrote Washington University biologist Barry Commoner in the Earth Day issue of the scholarly journal Environment. The day after Earth Day, even the staid New York Times editorial page warned, “Man must stop pollution and conserve his resources, not merely to enhance existence but to save the race from intolerable deterioration and possible extinction.” Very Apocalypse Now.

Reality check. We are still here. And, we are making progress. As Bailey points out, air and water quality for example have improved since the 1970s.

In the name of protecting the environment, environmentalist organizations such as Greenpeace routinely shun technological progress. They oppose the use of nuclear power, the safest and cleanest form of energy we have at our disposal currently (just compare the number of oil spills to nuclear power plant accidents). Or, take the issue of genetically modified foods. This technology is a tremendous hope for countries dealing with mass hunger and starvation. The World Health Organization says:

GM foods currently available on the international market have passed risk assessments and are not likely to present risks for human health. In addition, no effects on human health have been shown as a result of the consumption of such foods by the general population in the countries where they have been approved.

Yet, Greenpeace seems to want to let millions of people continue to starve to death than possibly harm the environment, and that harm is by no means proven.

Incidentally, a recent report shows that scientists experience political pressure to misrepresent findings:

Nearly 400 scientists said they had witnessed EPA officials misrepresenting scientific findings, 284 said they had seen the “selective or incomplete use of data to justify a specific regulatory outcome” and 224 scientists said they had been directed to “inappropriately exclude or alter technical information” in an EPA document. Nearly 200 of the respondents said they had been in situations where they or their colleagues actively objected to or resigned from projects “because of pressure to change scientific findings.”

Political pressure from environmental interest groups probably has something to do with it. To ensure integrity in science we must separate state and science, just as we have a separation of church and state.

What really bothers me though is the hypocrisy of the environmental movement. What started out perhaps as a genuine concern, and thinking about using our resources well is a genuine concern, has turned into an all-out war against capitalism, the very system which has enabled and continues to enable technological innovation and progress to deal with environmental problems. Not only that, what do environmentalists use to spread their message? Capitalist achievements such as airplanes and cars to transport themselves to protest venues, internet and email to communicate, and of course the greater income and free time that a capitalist economy provides.

Will the real Perp please stand up!

During his recent visit to the States, Pope Benedict XVI addressed the priest sex scandal of the U.S. Catholic Church and pointed out that the moral breakdown of society is at least partly to blame. Pedophilia, he argued, is a symptom of overall decrepit sexual mores.

Indeed, it is not as though the moral code of the Catholic Church, especially pertaining to priests and sex, is just impossible to practice because it fundamentally goes against human nature.

Drug Prohibition is Immoral

Jacob Sullum reports on the Atlasphere that:

The Bureau of Justice Statistics reports that drug offenders account for about 25 percent of local jail inmates, 21 percent of state prisoners and 55 percent of federal prisoners. Since 1980 the number of drug offenders in state prisons has increased by 1,200 percent, more than four times the increase in violent offenders. … According to the U.S. Sentencing Commission, however, only one in ten federal crack offenses involves violence or the threat of violence. … Research conducted by criminologist John DiIulio, economist Anne Morrison Piehl, and sociologist Bert Useem in the late 1990s found that many, if not most, people sentenced for drug crimes in New York, Arizona, and New Mexico were “drug-only offenders,” meaning the only crimes they’d ever committed involved the voluntary exchange of politically incorrect intoxicants for money.

Those opposing legalization argue that the social cost of drug addiction is too high to let it go unpunished; drug offenders not only harm themselves but present a burden on their families and friends, and, if necessary, they commit crimes to get their fix.

However, the social cost involved in jailing people for drug offenses that do not involve violence is enormous. And, making drugs illegal creates drug crime because when free trade is prohibited, the only other option is force.

More importantly, prisons do not cure drug addiction. Often they are violent environments in which individuals can sustain physical and psychological harm. How does that aid in recovery? Chances are that addicts, even though they may have not had access to drugs during their prison time and hence are “clean” when they get out, become even more screwed up due to their experience in the slammer; they may even become violent. That is because only treatment works, and only if it is accepted by the addict; it will not work if it is forced on him or her as part of a sentence (you may say or act because you are forced but you cannot be forced to believe).

Making drugs illegal doesn’t stop those who are addicted; it just makes it harder for them to get drugs. A free and legal market of drugs will not cure drug addiction either. However, while a cost-benefit analysis tips the balance in favor of legalization, more importantly, drug legalization leaves individuals free to choose, even if those choices harm them. People should have the right to take drugs even if it hurts them. People are prohibited from and punished for killing me or stealing my property; that is in my own interest. However, I am not gaining anything from laws prohibiting others from consuming substances that harm only them. On the contrary, I sacrifice by having to pay for the enforcement of those laws.

Sure, those who care about the drug addict may suffer, but they can choose whether to keep witnessing his or her self-destruction or whether to move on. And, those who depend on them because they cannot take of themselves, such as children, can be taken care of otherwise by family and friends, or caring individuals outside that circle. But that must also be a free choice because nothing is worse than a caregiver who does not care but simply feels obligated (just like belief, love cannot be forced).

Prohibition does not just fail a cost-benefit analysis; forcing people to sacrifice for other people’s choice to destroy themselves by using drugs is immoral.