WEBCommentary Contributor

Author: Paul Driessen
Date:  July 16, 2010

Topic category:  Environment/Conservation

Destroying biodiversity


The greatest threat to species is not modern technology -- it is environmentalists!

The Soviet Union’s demise helped usher in manmade catastrophic global warming as the new “central organizing principle of civilization.” Now, global warming is giving way to a growing recognition that: climate change is primarily natural, cyclical and moderate; China, India and other countries will not sacrifice CO2-generating economic growth to prevent speculative climate crises; and carbon taxes strangle competitiveness, destroy jobs and send families into fuel poverty.

Thus, while not recanting predictions of disastrous climate change, environmental activists and the United Nations are already launching a new campaign. The real threat to the planet, they now assert, is the impact of modern energy technologies and civilization on biodiversity. The case for saving species, they insist, is even “more powerful” than the need to address climate change.

They seek to preserve biodiversity by controlling people’s energy use, economic activities and population – through new regulations and taxes under the auspices of the United Nations and global treaties. These efforts, they claim, will generate benefits “worth $4-5 trillion per year” (based on questionable studies and computer models that underscore the intrinsic value of species and biodiversity).

To accept these claims, one would have to ignore the sordid history of Climategate and the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change – and believe a larger, more powerful United Nations will somehow ensure honesty, transparency, and accountability for misfeasance, misrepresentation, intimidation, and adverse impacts on people and economic growth. One would also have to ignore a growing body of evidence that:

The greatest threats to the world’s species are misguided environmental and anti-technology policies.

Among the policies adversely impacting biodiversity are the following:

It is bad enough that “biodiversity stabilization” is a reprise of past government-environmentalist eco-scares. Like its predecessors, the new program offers horrifying predictions of a dying planet – backed by little more than dubious theories, assumptions, assertions and statistics, fed into fancy computer models that generate ominous scenarios and graphics. It also proposes the same tired “solutions” – more taxes, regulations, and government control over lives, energy development and economic growth.

The far greater problem is that the UN, EPA, “mainstream media” and political establishment are ignoring the real threats to habitats, species and biodiversity: the anti-energy, anti-technology, anti-people agenda of radical green ideology.

We now have an opportunity to make Earth a better place for people and the natural world. We need to reject this agenda, demand sound science and solid evidence that a treat exists, and recognize that modern technology actually offers the best hope for protecting the diversity of species.

Paul Driessen
Eco-Imperialism


Notes: 

Paul Driessen is senior policy advisor for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (http://www.CFACT.org) and author of Eco-Imperialism: Green power – Black death.


Biography - Paul Driessen

Paul Driessen is senior policy advisor for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org). He received his J.D. from the University of Denver College of Law.


Copyright © 2010 by Paul Driessen
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