Looking through my postings of the past month, many of them constitute a quest to figure how the fallout from Hurricane Katrina got worsened by ineptitude. Whether it be certain elected officials or governments, we need to understand whose these underperformers are so that we can eject the officeholders from their sinecures as soon as possible, and embark upon the necessary reform of government even more quickly.
Actually, it’s been a bit distasteful of a task for me since usually I am a positive person who likes to see people cooperate rather than combat with each other, and I wish everybody could succeed in the endeavors they desire. Nevertheless, the task I perform (in the process cutting through the usual and predictable uninformed, if not malevolent, analyses that seek to distract us from the truth) is vital, for we cannot move forward unless this mission gets completed satisfactorily.
But into the breach I must go one more time, with the most difficult contributory factor to escalating the disaster of all, most taxing because it is not a person we can remove from power, nor an institution we can alter. It is an ideology which presently brings misery to many worldwide and seeks to increase the power of its believers at the expense of everybody’s freedom.
That is the peculiar notion that man’s activities overall have a more harmful than beneficial effect on the planet and sustainability of human life – environmentalism. Its agenda is to apply as much government control over the private sector and people’s lives as possible following the misguided thought that their activities will change the Earth for the worst. For many, it’s a cover to acquire power and privilege at our expense.
Obviously, human history invalidates this view – for example, free markets brought us much cleaner fuels to burn so that now we have better air in America than 200 years ago and almost as many trees (since wood-burning was more widespread and much more polluting). But facts don’t phase these true believers, so almost from the moment Katrina hit, some in the movement blamed a lack of fidelity to their agenda as the cause of the hurricane, while others merely saw it as evidence for rather than spawned from the discredited idea of global warming.
Of course, genuine science time and time again dispels anything but the most cursory evidence to support global warming, so we cannot take seriously the idea that Katrina has any connection to that invalid concept. But the ideology of environmentalism has had a more insidious, direct effect on the misery caused by Katrina.
Efforts in the 1970s around New Orleans by environmentalist groups prevented the construction of flood protection systems that nearly 30 years later likely would have prevented the loss of hundreds of lives and billions of dollars of damages. Another spate of activism about two decades later also may have contributed to this genocide of people and property.
As a result, at the behest of one of its bosses, Congress, the federal government has launched an investigation into these activities to determine the potential negative impact they had. Again, to understand why the Katrina disaster happened, such an inquiry not only is legitimate, it is essential.
Except, of course, in the minds of some environmentalists, zealots who cannot bear to see their core beliefs shown for what they are, a few of whom resort to physical violence that serves as a Doppelganger for what their ideology does to the concept of individual freedom. And so you get this whacked-out diatribe which is nothing more than a long howl designed precisely to avoid thinking about or revealing to the world the ugly truth about the misery environmentalism has wrought, exposed by Katrina. The vitriol tries to serve as clothing for the nakedness of their ideology.
The facts are there of environmentalism culpability in this instance, but few true-believing adherents of it will have the courage to face them. Any legitimate inquiry, such as the one Congress is making, will be called a “witch hunt” by these ignorant folk who desperately wish to avoid the spotlight from being turned on their ideology and thus themselves. As unpleasant of a task as it is, we must do it, if not to avoid making these same mistakes in order to save lives in the future, then perhaps to give these people a chance to be more honest with themselves.
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