Earth was made for Humans

By: Anthony Cartelli, Political Philosophy Staff Writer

Before I begin, I would like to state that I am in no way opposed to reasonable protection of the environment. I value our wildlife, wilderness, and natural wonders and I believe that it is man's duty to protect these resources, not only for their aesthetic beauty but also for their obvious importance. I view humans as an integral member of the natural world; we belong here just as much as any other animal and I do not believe a beaver dam to be any more "natural" than the Hoover Dam. The only difference is that we are capable of reason, which enables us to adapt our surrounding environment to ourselves, and with that comes added responsibility for our actions.

This is where I differ from today's environmentalists. Environmentalists view humans not as members, but rather as intruders and plunderers of the environment. One of the founders of Greenpeace, Captain Paul Watson, says it best: "Curing a body of cancer requires radical and invasive therapy, and therefore, curing the biosphere of the human virus will also require a radical and invasive approach."

There is even an organization, which calls for man's extinction. The Voluntary Human Extinction Movement advocates an end to human procreation in order to save the earth's biosphere. What is even more shocking than this is that Newsweek referred to this self-hatred as an "intriguing thought experiment." It is truly frightening that a mainstream magazine would sympathize with such a doctrine.

The president of PETA has stated that "six million Jews died in concentration camps, but six billion broiler chickens will die this year in slaughterhouses.” This parallel drawn between the lives of men and the lives of poultry exemplifies the basis of environmentalism, which at its core is a self-loathing, anti-human creed. Humans are viewed simply as an invading cancer and any form of technology or human progress is scoffed upon with complete disdain.

This agenda has frequently been pushed into the political arena, where unproven slogans and maxims are used in place of scientific evidence. Empirical facts are ignored, while falsehoods are made into widely held, politically loaded truths. For example, Paul Ehrlich predicted that the world would experience an uncontrollable population explosion, 60 million Americans would starve to death, and half of all species would be extinct by 2000. What has been held as prophetic has not come true, and in fact, the population growth rate is experiencing a gradual decline. Besides bombastic rhetoric, the self-deprecation of environmentalists causes deadly repercussions when it is implemented in public policy.

This has been most poignantly displayed in the case of Dichloro-Diphenyl-Trichloroethane, also known as DDT. The DDT ban has caused millions of deaths in third world countries, due to a resurgence of malaria. DDT is not a carcinogen and did not cause birds to die, and the people who banned it knew this.

As stated earlier, man, unlike other organisms, has the better and more sophisticated ability to adapt his environment for himself. The environment is here for man's use - and stewardship. Those who call for a "return to nature" ought to spend a night in the jungles of Borneo, where he would perish if he was not equipped with the tools man has created to tame nature.  For those who call humans a cancer, well, let them volunteer themselves to "cure the biosphere" first. I'm sure it wouldn't miss them.