AN IDIOT’S DIATRIBE CAN STILL BE
USEFUL
Dear
HCN,
Ed Marston was on the money with his review
of Gregg Easterbrook’s A Moment on the Earth (HCN, 5/29/95).
Curiously, Easterbrook appears to have done for liberalism what
former Interior Secretary James Watt did for conservatives –
sabotaging the cause of environmentalism in the name of
never-ending growth and development.
Over and
over again Easterbrook cites glaciers, earthquakes, volcanoes,
asteroids, and even continental drift as doing far more
“environmental damage” to the earth than mere man can ever do with
his “inconsequential” pinpricks from bulldozers, clear-cutting,
10-child families and arrogant
techno-culture.
Something is fishy here. Not only
is Easterbrook comparing apples with oranges, but he is comparing
what we cannot control with what we can control – our appetites,
our numbers, our behavior and attitudes toward the
earth.
On a call-in radio talk show, I was able
to ask Easterbrook the basis for his optimism. He replied that he
had looked at 40,000 EPA reports. Yet in his book he cites
Environmental Protection Agency science as
suspect.
He writes that “unfortunately EPA
science is often of modest quality” (page 464). On the same page he
quotes an EPA official who said that “everything the EPA does is
driven by political rather than scientific considerations.”
In regard to how we environmentalists should
respond to this useful idiot’s diatribe, I say stand by our guns,
stand by the truth; we who work for a long-lasting, sustainable,
viable earth are not the wackos Easterbrook and Rush Limbaugh think
we are. We do have alternatives: Stop the overgrazing. Stop having
kids you cannot and the earth cannot support, long-term. The cost
of doing business has got to include the cost of pollution control.
We have not been beating the doomsday drum. The voters in 1994 did
not repudiate sound environmental policy. What they may have
repudiated was the arrogance of the elites, the porkers, the
Rostenkowskis, excessive spending and excessive debt, excessive
immigration, open borders, and business as usual within the
bureaucracies.
Dave
Tillotson
Lakemills,
Wisconsin
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline An idiot’s diatribe can still be useful.
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