- Conservation
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- Innovation and technology, unless
stifled by mind-numbing bureaucracy and excessive regulation, can solve our environmental problems.
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- The modern environmental movement has
been largely usurped by two camps: (1) those who push environmental issues as
a means of expanding the role of government, and (2) the naive "Earth Day"
crowd. The first group, for whom environmentalism is little more than a
thinly veiled attack against free enterprise and a means for cultivating
increased socialism, are characterized by the demagogue Al Gore. The second group
includes many well intentioned people, but all too often logic and
common sense wilts in the presence of bad pop science and sentimentalism with
this group.
Real conservation is not served by either of these groups.
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- How amusing it is to see the religious commitment these so-called
"environmentalists" have with respect to "global warming." These
environmental fundamentalists believe, absolutely, that the Earth is warming
due to human activity, and they recoil in righteous indignation when this
gospel is questioned. Yes, the Earth is on a warming trend. This
warming trend extends back to the end of the last Ice Age, ten thousand
years ago. The Earth is always either warming or cooling. The
question is, how much of the warming over the last 100 years has been due to
human activity? The modern environmental fundamentalist gladly accepts
all reports that indict human activity, and rejects any report which
questions their dogma. The modern environmental fundamentalist wants
and needs all environmental news to be bad and damning. One can almost
hear the modern environmental fundamentalist cheering as the alarmist
reports are released. Is this not perverse? Even if human
activity is playing some role with respect to global warming, it is likely
insignificant relative to natural solar cycles. There have been single
volcanic eruptions that have poured more greenhouse gasses into the
atmosphere that all human activity combined through time. The era of
burning large amounts of fossil fuels will end over the next 100 to 200
years by its own attrition... the radical, economically destructive,
reforms put forward by environmental fundamentalists would not clear the air
any sooner.
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- To repeat... Innovation and
technology, unless stifled by mind-numbing bureaucracy and excessive regulation, can solve our environmental problems.
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- As for land use planning, the
question of how to balance property rights and free enterprise with smart
urban planning and highly livable cities is a difficult one, to say the
least. Without some kind of plan, hideous sprawl and "generica" seem
inevitable. But the thought of putting a bunch of "planners" in charge is
equally repugnant. Why is mass transit so difficult? What about monorails?
I'm for bringing more land into the public domain, but property rights are
not to be trampled on...
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- The Geography Of Nowhere - The Rise And
Decline Of America's Landscape (James Howard Kunstler)
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Hard Green - Peter Huber
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- Home From Nowhere (James Howard
Kunstler)
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- Bjorn Lomborg - The Skeptical
Environmentalist
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- Patrick J. Michaels
- Cato Institute
- Horseman Of
The Anti-Apocalypse