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Man Made vs. Natural - by Böðvar Ásbjörnsson

...this entire debate -- resurfacing as it does every six months or so here, and elsewhere subsidizes loads of lawyers and paid activists daily -- is so overheated, and misses the key point.

It isn't a matter of "mankind". There are different "strains" of homo sapiens today...those, for instance, in the developed West, and those in the undeveloped or under-developed world. Each has different it's own impact on it's environment, and different ways and means of adapting. Both today use the same "ecologically unsound" materials, and neither is either a "guiltless and exploited innocent", and there's lots of overheated rhetoric to go 'round on both.

It's overheated because it's been highly emotionalized. To paraphrase Barry Goldwater, some believe "extremism in defense of the environment is no vice". Altered for relevance to the environment, this statement is no more true or sensible than it is when "of freedom" is reinserted and it's about politics.

Added to that, there are many "internationalists" who are using the environment and environmental issues to advance other social agendas. Watch the doings in other countries and get a feel for whether you'd want the fellows who would regulate speech, education and cultural issues turned loose on your job, your home, and your future, applying poorly-thought-out solutions based on politically-driven "science" in a rushed and hysterical effort to stem some "disaster".

Not likely.

We've seen bad science -- the Klamath Valley water debacle, for instance -- and outright fakery -- the "endangered animal" fur finding it's way from tanned pelts into "habitat areas" by way of activist federal forest service employees -- on the one hand, which has given rise to an almost Newtonian "equal and opposite" emotionalist reaction *against* the envirnment.

Today, global warming is being blamed for the flooding currently killing people in Europe...and the US's position on the Kyoto accords is held up as proof that the US's national sovereignty and pocketbook need review. Greenpeace -- at the forefront of the "we must do SOMETHING" school -- has gone on record as saying that wealthy nations have to pony up.

What is *NOT* being addressed with any real vigor is the fact that the world's population is out of control. Entire national populations are doubling -- DOUBLING -- in a single generation.

The populations in question are *NOT* in the industrialized West, and seem to have no "emissions standards" or environmental regulation whatever...and, yet, consume the same aerosols, plastics and fossil fuels that we do in the West, if not on the same level per capita.

Is anyone thinking of tying any expropriation and redistribution of funds from the West to serious attempts to control population in places like the Indian subcontinent, southeast Asia, Latin America and Africa? Not on your life...the "school solution" is to allow them to emigrate. Where? To the West.

Many of the "sustainable energy sources" and alternatives to plastics and fossil fuels and petroleum-based products simply aren't practical when discussing places like Mexico City or Calcutta...and, many places in the Third World would be exempted from environmental controls under Kyoto.

Individually, it's wise and even satisfying to hold to more natural materials and products. Many of the "organic" food and other products are damned impractical when purchased, as their "trendiness" has priced them out of the reach of most of us.

Still, less reliance on plastics, dressing in natural fibers, growing and hunting/fishing for your food, and relying less on electronic media for one's amusement are all very satisfying...and practical on a personal basis.

On a *species* and national or global basis, there must be an alternative to the present proposed solutions, which entail surrendering national sovereignty (which, for folks in the US, means surrendering the Constitutional guarentees we take for granted in favor of more intrusive and restrictive regulations), burdening the developed world with the ills of the undeveloped world, and a daily truckload of blame.

One of the *first* things we need to address isn't recycling our plastic shopping bags...it isn't cutting ozone emissions...it isn't protecting species who've evolved beyond their "wear out date". It's recognizing the effect and threat of the population morass of the old Third World...and finding a way of dealing with it.

This, to my mind, has to be the second step. The *first* step is to take emotionalism out of the debate and try to insert reason into the discussion. All science supporting all alternatives needs to be vetted for accuracy, personal and cultural and national sovereignty have to be non-negotiable, and cooperation needs to be solicited.

Otherwise, we'll end up with no solutions worth the name, and less quality of life...both environmentally and politically.

Humans are part of nature, and the *only* animals I can think of who are capable of altering their environment -- both ecologically and socially -- to ensure their own destruction. If one considers that it is the primary function of any organism to survive and reproduce, continuing the species, that is fundamentally unnatural.

The secret in this is to find a natural solution.

-- B

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