Transterrestrial Musings

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Vaclav Klaus says that environmentalism is the new communism.

And Rowland, Molina, and Crutzen are the new Marx, Lenin, and Trotsky?

Posted by at March 20, 2007 11:19 AM

People have referred to environmentalists as 'watermelons' for a number of years now, so this really doesn't come as much of a surprise to me. Which is unfortunate, because there are a number of level-headed people out there that still care about the envionment.

Posted by at March 20, 2007 12:38 PM

People have referred to environmentalists as 'watermelons' for a number of years now, so this really doesn't come as much of a surprise to me.

All that is really going on is that Vaclav Klaus is from the Rush Limbaugh school of political science. Yes, the man lived under real communism. So he ought to know that his statement is no more than an obnoxious sound bite. Being a victim does not by itself make you trustworthy.

Posted by at March 20, 2007 12:48 PM

err...just a nitpick, but Klaus (nor anyone else) never lived under "real communism." He lived under a regime that was controlled by a Communist party, but it never approached "communism," despite the nomenklature.

Posted by Andy at March 20, 2007 12:56 PM

"environmentalism is the new communism."

I.e., the new bugaboo of the usual suspects. Yes, I'm sure the Sierra Club will soon be roving from house to house exterminating the bourgeoisie, and the hopes of freedom and democracy rest with the patriotic forces of Exxon-Mobil and Dick Cheney. On a totally unrelated note, how's the state of Czech psychiatry these days?

Posted by Brian Swiderski at March 20, 2007 01:09 PM

Communism collapsed because it was economically deranged. As von Mises pointed out decades ago, there was no way for central planners to approximate all the price signals present in a free market economy. Heroic improvisation and the black market made it work as well (that is, still quite badly) as it did.

Environmentalism, properly practiced, as a perturbation imposed on top of a free market, can make that market more economically efficient, by correcting for negative externalities. And improperly practiced it's still only a moderate drag on the economy, not at all comparable to the complete delusion that was communism.

Posted by Paul Dietz at March 20, 2007 02:00 PM

"Being a victim does not by itself make you trustworthy."

How about being a respected President and economist? At least we know his name.

"Yes, I'm sure the Sierra Club will soon be roving from house to house exterminating the bourgeoisie, and the hopes of freedom and democracy rest with the patriotic forces of Exxon-Mobil and Dick Cheney."

How many millions in damage has the Earth Liberation Front caused? 40-50 million? The Sierra Club may not go door to door but I bet the ELF would, if given the chance. Their type of action is gaining a voice. BTW The board of the Sierra Club is more radical than it's ever been.

Posted by Bill Maron at March 20, 2007 02:06 PM

Paul, I think you underestimate how improperly it could be practiced, if practiced according to the desires of some of its most extreme proponents, many of whose views are entirely too mainstream. You think that Jeremy Rifkin couldn't destroy an economy if he were put in charge of it?

Posted by Rand Simberg at March 20, 2007 02:06 PM

Because they walk upright and can speak we are lead to believe cogitation actually takes place between their ears. Rather than rebut an argument with more facts (which do not exist) recourse to subtle character assassination techniques are employed i.e. "hows the state of Czech psychiatry?" May i ask is this a product of American psychiatry?

Posted by Jack at March 20, 2007 02:08 PM

Environmentalism, properly practiced, as a perturbation imposed on top of a free market, can make that market more economically efficient, by correcting for negative externalities. And improperly practiced it's still only a moderate drag on the economy, not at all comparable to the complete delusion that was communism.

If those negative externalities are external costs imposed upon the commons of air, stream, etc.?

I think you refer to environmental regulations imposed nationally and for the purpose of forcing entities to bear the costs of their activities. Current environmentalism is about redistributing assets from the productive to the inefficient. From the able, to the needy is communistic enough.

And, as shown by the Kyoto Treaty, current environmentalism is clearly not about the environment.

Posted by D Anghelone at March 20, 2007 02:18 PM

May i ask is this a product of American psychiatry?

I'd say it's more likely a product of a lack of consultation of American psychiatry, in the case of a particular individual...

Posted by Rand Simberg at March 20, 2007 02:30 PM

Perhaps there are problems the free market can't solve. The Bald Eagle has made a wonderful recovery over here and I doubt one could have argued that market forces alone would have saved the bird. That might explain why European conservatives - Cameron, Merkel, Chirac (!) etc. certainly don't agree with this Czech guy.

Of course if all we are saying is that extreme environmentalism is like communism, well, who can argue with that? Depends on the definition of extreme. Extreme anything can be bad in one way or another.

Posted by Toast_n_Tea at March 20, 2007 03:00 PM

How about being a respected President and economist?

If I had to choose one word to describe Vaclav Klaus, it would not be "respected", it would be "hypocrite". For all of his hardline libertarian talk, he is blatantly pro-Putin. He also has something in common with Yeltsin: his record as president is tainted with crony capitalism.

At least we know his name.

For some value of "we". Given public knowledge of other basic questions of fact (like identifying Iraq on a world outline map), I'm sure that only a small fraction of American voters know the difference between Vaclav Klaus, the president now, and Vaclav Havel, his very different predecessor. Vaclav Havel is much more respected and much less combative than Vaclav Klaus. Klaus is from the Rush Limbaugh school of public ortary and the John Bolton school of diplomacy. Havel is the opposite, and in fact just plain doesn't trust Klaus as a leader.

Posted by at March 20, 2007 04:06 PM

Perhaps there are problems the free market can't solve.

That might depend on what you consider to be market forces. Environmentalism can be approached from a property rights stance with government having a fiduciary role for what must be considered a commons.

Posted by D Anghelone at March 20, 2007 05:11 PM

Environmentalism can be approached from a property rights stance with government having a fiduciary role for what must be considered a commons.

Sure, but that's what the Kyoto Treaty already was, and the US government still tossed it out the window.

Posted by at March 20, 2007 05:32 PM

Sure, but that's what the Kyoto Treaty already was, and the US government still tossed it out the window.

Really? I thought the Kyoto Treaty a scheme to redistribute the world's assets from the freer and more productive nations to the murderously inefficient dictatorships. I thought the Kyoto Treaty to exclude those nations soon to be the most polluting.

I think that shunning the Kyoto Treaty will prove to be the best thing Bush has done.

Posted by D Anghelone at March 20, 2007 06:00 PM

Yes, we shouldn't care about the environment. Just destroy everything if any profit is to be made. There should be no laws or regulations controlling emissions to the drinking water, rivers or air.

Because environmentalism is evil. Evil evil evil evil!

Maybe it's understandable - these nations spent a long time under the control of others - now they want to excercise their freedom. But the western powers have started to regulate themselves. They aren't as "free" anymore as in the fifties and sixties when they paid no regard for the environment. This is the youth days the east bloc countries missed and now want to live. They don't want to move from strict childhood straight to a responsible grown up behaviour.

Aren't all rules and regulations communist? Except perhaps private property ones?

Posted by mz at March 20, 2007 06:01 PM

Current environmentalism is about redistributing assets from the productive to the inefficient. From the able, to the needy is communistic enough.

Well, when you have one person imposing a cost on another involuntarily, a libertarian would say that was wrong, even if the first person is productive and the second isn't. I don't have the right to piss in your front yard, and a factory doesn't have the right to piss in the air I breathe.

It seems to me the collectivist, communist-like ideology would be the one that requires me to suck it up and accept the pollution 'for the greater good'. Got to keep the glorious industrial enterprises rolling, comrade!

Posted by Paul Dietz at March 20, 2007 06:03 PM

Good point Paul!

Exactly my feelings about the crap I have to breathe on the roads sometimes: pissing in my face.

We should be going to war against countries that pollute our common air. And we could wage that war by linking environmental performance to trade.

It's like I've always felt - that if someone wanted to smoke in my house they should not exhale.

Posted by Toast_n_Tea at March 20, 2007 06:17 PM

>>At least we know his name.

For some value of "we".

Anonymous commenter, the "at least we know his name" comment was directed at you, for not having sufficient courage to attach your name to what you were saying. Forgive me if it seems pedantic to have to point this out to you, but you clearly are not internalizing the point.

Hell, if you're too yellow to attach your name to your words, then at least follow the example of certain other commenters and make up a pseudonym.

there are a number of level-headed people out there that still care about the envionment

Indeed there are such conservationists out there. Such people are doing things like developing new technologies that would replace the inefficient and polluting technologies of the past, and which will do so economically. They are working towards lowering the cost of access to space so that we can start building solar power satellites. They are making supercapacitors to replace batteries on electric cars to improve electric vehicle range.

What they are not doing however is advocating a scam like Kyoto, which would force Canada (!) to pay the Russians (!!) for carbon credits, among other nonsense.

Posted by Ed Minchau at March 20, 2007 09:31 PM

Caring for the environment is not the issue.

The issue is whether or not an elite group of people who claim to have all the answers should be allowed to implement their particular answer set, and in this set, individual freedom is sacrificed.

This is at heart and soul what Albert Gore's philosophy is all about. That is the equivalent to communism.

Posted by Dennis Ray Wingo at March 20, 2007 09:55 PM

Paul Dietz wrote: "It seems to me the collectivist, communist-like ideology would be the one that requires me to suck it up and accept the pollution 'for the greater good'."

Actually, it was -- pollution was defended as merely the cost of unleashing productive forces, without which there could be no proletariat for that notional "dictatorship of the proletariet". West Germany had to enact some of the most stringent river pollution laws in Europe just to make up for the noxious crap East Germany was pouring into the water upstream. Some Marxists have derided environmentalism is a distracting passel of "bourgeous lifestyle" issues.

Of course, you can find the same kind of doctrinaire idiocy at the other end of the spectrum -- e.g., Ayn Rand's sentiment that we ought to be practically genuflecting before smokestacks. The true "rational being" response to pollution is to recognize that externalizing costs is a form of force and/or fraud, and that, pragmatically, once a source of pollution is established as a threat, regulation through market forces (such as cap-and-trade) is often the most efficient way to ameliorate.

Posted by Michael Turner at March 21, 2007 03:18 AM

Paul Dietz further wrote: "Environmentalism .... improperly practiced it's still only a moderate drag on the economy, not at all comparable to the complete delusion that was communism."

Indeed, after the Stern Report was released, it was immediately criticized by many esteemed U.S. economists as greatly overstating the costs of addressing global warming, even though Stern estimated that it would only cost about 2% of global GDP. Then those same economists pointed out that, even if it would cost a 10th as much as Stern prescribed, no such amount is being spent yet.

Oh, the economic apocalypse we'll face, blowing a whole 0.2% of GDP on global warming! Get on it, now! Pile food, water, guns and ammo into your car and head for the hills! It's the End Times.

Posted by Michael Turner at March 21, 2007 03:25 AM

Paul,

The "industrial enterprises" include you and me. It's been a few years since I've felt glorious so thank you.

You are a business, an enterprise, if you work for a profit. The alternative to profit is death so I assume you do make a profit. And you pollute in the course of making and spending your profit. Your home, conveyance and activities all pollute the air and so impose costs on others. Collectively, we individuals, we individual enterprises, are far more polluting and imposing of costs than are the industrial enterprises you condemn.

And, unless you are living a hunter-gatherer lifestyle in some forest, you are complicit in the polluting done by the industrial enterprises. Complicit, that is, if you acquire the most goodies at the lowest cost. The computer you are using, for instance. Better than a Trash-80 with a 300 baud modem, eh?

The alternative to profit is death. That has been true for hunter-gatherer, agrarian, industrial or post-industrial humans. I hope we never grow so abstracted as to forget that.

Posted by D Anghelone at March 21, 2007 03:31 AM

The issue is whether or not an elite group of people who claim to have all the answers should be allowed to implement their particular answer set, and in this set, individual freedom is sacrificed.

But that is exactly what has happened. An elite group of people who claim to have all the answers --- energy executives --- have been allowed to implement their answer set. Bush and Cheney are both former energy executives. Cheney's energy task force was dominated by energy executives. That's why he kept the meetings of the task force secret.

This is one reason that America has made so little progress on abating fossil fuel consumption in six years. The policy has been controlled by people whose careers go the opposite way.

Posted by at March 21, 2007 06:36 AM

> I doubt one could have argued that market forces alone would have saved [bald eagles].

Since there's no legal market, it's absurd to blame the market for failing to save them.

I note that species that are sport hunted are not in short supply. (Market hunting is a different beast.) In fact, they tend to be "managed" to the point that they become pests.

In other words, when folks can make a buck, they do.

Posted by Andy Freeman at March 21, 2007 08:19 AM

mz says: Yes, we shouldn't care about the environment.

Why is it that when we argue the environment, the first thing the leftist says is we don't care at all?

Just destroy everything if any profit is to be made. There should be no laws or regulations controlling emissions to the drinking water, rivers or air.

Again, more drivel...There are laws, and good ones, but once again, you want more laws instead of enforcing the ones we already have. This is the reason that gun control is so screwed up too.

Because environmentalism is evil. Evil evil evil evil!

Nope, the evil is those people who refuse to see what we already do for the sake of the environment. If you want us to stop using the environment, take a leadership role and go live in a cave.

Maybe it's understandable - these nations spent a long time under the control of others - now they want to excercise their freedom.

And all power to them, but to force our country to further cut emissions, and not enfore emission regulation on them is (here come the two words the leftist use all the time) not fair. A smarter way is to allow us to help and train the other nations how to reduce emissions as effectively as we do.

But the western powers have started to regulate themselves.

We've been regulating ourselves for some time and our regulations already restrict us greatly. However, our efforts in the scientific community are also discovering new ways to further reduce emissions, leading to further regulation. Once again, we lead the world....funny how that works.

They aren't as "free" anymore as in the fifties and sixties when they paid no regard for the environment. This is the youth days the east bloc countries missed and now want to live. They don't want to move from strict childhood straight to a responsible grown up behaviour.

True, but can't might be the answer too. They don't have the advancements we do, but I'm sure we could collaborate with them and help. Unless of course, they don't want help, because they care less for the environment than they say they do....(gasp) lies from other nations? I thought only the US lied regularly.

Posted by Mac at March 21, 2007 08:41 AM

Bill: "How many millions in damage has the Earth Liberation Front caused?"

How many billions in damage has the oil industry caused?

Bill: "The Sierra Club may not go door to door but I bet the ELF would, if given the chance."

What do you mean, "if given a chance"? Apparently they have a chance to torch Hummers and do other pointless, self-defeating things, but they don't have a chance to kill people like you insist they desperately want? Street gangs, drug cartels, and Republicans never seem to be lacking in opportunities for murder, so what exactly are you talking about?

Bill: "BTW The board of the Sierra Club is more radical than it's ever been."

Which would put them somewhere between the PTA and the Girl Scouts, but maybe that's all a ruse to coverup their plans for a genocidal terrorist insurgency.

Jack: "Rather than rebut an argument"

What argument? Klaus's comments are farcical hyperbole at best, offered in lieu of a coherent argument his views couldn't possibly produce. People with religious, ideological, or monetary antagonisms with science have to go to such lengths because reason would be self-defeating. I especially enjoy hearing religious fundamentalists describe evolutionary science as "Marxist dogma," and this is really no different from that freak show.

Posted by Brian Swiderski at March 21, 2007 11:43 AM

How many billions in damage has the oil industry caused?

How many billions in wealth has it created to mitigate the damage. Net, I'd rather have the oil industry than the Earth Liberation Front.

Posted by Rand Simberg at March 21, 2007 01:42 PM

Rand: "How many billions in wealth has it created to mitigate the damage."

I refer to the business practices of the industry, not its product.

Rand: "Net, I'd rather have the oil industry than the Earth Liberation Front."

Most people would rather have *oil* than the ELF, but the industry that controls it is more powerful than most governments on Earth, and as ruthless as any organized crime syndicate in the world. To say you would rather have that than a handful of idiots who torch rich people's toys is utterly bizarre and irrational.

Posted by Brian Swiderski at March 21, 2007 03:26 PM

I refer to the business practices of the industry, not its product.

You mean how they find the product, get the product out of the ground, transport that product to market, advertise the product, and sell the product for profit? Those business practices?

Posted by Leland at March 22, 2007 06:04 AM

To say you would rather have [the oil industry] than a handful of idiots who torch rich people's toys is utterly bizarre and irrational.

No, that is very rational. Nobody likes idiots, especially idiots who are destructive.

What is utterly bizarre and irrational is this comment:
[the oil industry] is as ruthless as any organized crime syndicate in the world.

Maybe BS lives in Venezuela. Chavez certainly made sure "the oil industry" understood their pecking order beneath the government. After all, you can't love communism or socialism and have this:
the industry that controls it is more powerful than most governments on Earth

Posted by Leland at March 22, 2007 06:21 AM

Leland: "You mean how they find the product, get the product out of the ground, transport that product to market, advertise the product, and sell the product for profit?"

I mean how they corrupt and overthrow democracies, operate effectively beyond legal control, orchestrate wars and regional guerrilla conflicts as fulcrums, help friendly autocrats crush disruptive opposition, fund intense propaganda campaigns to undermine science and deceive the American people, and basically do whatever is necessary to remain in control.

But I guess to certain people that kind of parasitic, world-girdling water empire is less damaging than a handful of idiots who dare to vandalize rich people's sacrosanct property. After all, even though the oil industry receives billions in US taxpayer subsidies despite having record (and rising) profits, it's not like anyone who matters loses out in that transaction.

Lelan: "Nobody likes idiots, especially idiots who are destructive."

Idiots can't control anything.

Leland: "Maybe BS lives in Venezuela."

Or maybe you live in Texas.

Leland: "Chavez certainly made sure "the oil industry" understood their pecking order beneath the government."

Hence the coup attempt.

Leland: "After all, you can't love communism or socialism and have this: the industry that controls it is more powerful than most governments on Earth"

Nor can you stand for that if you love freedom. Business is a means to an end, not an end in itself.

Posted by Brian Swiderski at March 22, 2007 10:49 AM

I find it encouraging that the Democrats reinstated NREL's funding after Bush axed it. I just it would receive a lot more funding since clean and renewable energy is the one thing that civilization needs the most.

Posted by X at March 22, 2007 06:27 PM

> environmentalism is the new communism

I don't think even that's the right way to phrase it. Communism and Socialism are still here with us, and have simply moved on to different arguments.

It's important to realize that when the Soviet Union fell, the Communists and Socialists of the world didn't disolve into puddles, neither did they undergo a religious conversion to the sensibility of free markets. They just shifted from claiming to be all about defending the working class from exploitation to claiming to be all about defending the Earth.

Posted by Mike Combs at March 23, 2007 05:33 AM

Idiots can't control anything.

Not true. The proof is your control of a keyboard. I'll let others read your comments to determine the other part of that proof, but I would like to note this:
a handful of idiots who dare to vandalize rich people's sacrosanct property.

Are you sure you love freedom? Should someone really believe your moral superiority in not believing the ends should not justify the means?

Posted by Leland at March 23, 2007 08:12 AM

"Not true. The proof is your control of a keyboard."

My control of a keyboard is proof you're wrong, as are the last six years of world history. Your glorious Revolutionary Nationalist Committee failed to shut people up with its shrill propaganda and half-assed terrorist tactics; your Divine Leader failed to bring a third-world country under control despite the most powerful military on Earth and a bottomless budget; and even your dinosaur-goo cartels failed to stupefy anyone who wasn't already a complete moron with their Lysenkoist faux-research and manufactured doubt.

"Are you sure you love freedom?"

Yes, how about you? Or is freedom just another word for no oil dividends left to lose?

"Should someone really believe your moral superiority in not believing the ends should not justify the means?"

This is a truly Orwellian statement, implying there is something amoral in pointing out the amorality and hypocrisy of your position. "Ends justifying means" is how you describe a handful of idiots, most likely in late teens to early twenties, who commit vandalism that never has and never will serve their agenda, but in contrast to an industry that overthrows governments and precipitates wars for *market share*.

Posted by Brian Swiderski at March 23, 2007 01:04 PM

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