Environmentalists Exposed

I've long felt that many in the environmental movement are motivated not so much by a desire for a clean environment, as a desire to control the lives of others. There's nothing novel in the theory; I'm sure there must be a good book by some free-market proponent somewhere. (suggestions?)

Anyway, it seems to me that many environmentalists are guilty that humans are the dominant species on the planet, and are determined to do everything in their power to ensure that we have as small a 'footprint' on the globe as possible. How else to interpret the opposition of some environmentalists to the move by a region of 600,000 people to establish the first large community whose sole sources of power are renewable and non-polluting?

There are 1,100 windmills in this region of just over 10,000sq km (6,000sq miles). More than 55 per cent of the region’s electricity comes from wind power alone.

Navarre is also developing other technologies. It has built several photovoltaic solar farms, which turn sunlight into electricity, has a biomass plant that generates power from straw, and has “solar thermal” plants that use the sun to heat water and to drive a generator.

The region has mini hydro-electric plants that make use of rivers, and “co-generation” plants to recover energy from industrial sites that would otherwise be wasted. And it has a biofuels plant that transforms vegetable oils into diesel, with motorway service stations being built to sell it.

Some environmentalists worry that the presence of so many windmills is spoiling the landscape and killing birds. “What they are doing is absolutely unsustainable and completely illegal,” says Antonio Munilla, of Gurelur, an environmental group. “We have taken this matter before the Congress and European Union.” Other environmental groups, such as Greenpeace, strongly support the experiment.

The first thing that you think of is the hypocrisy of Ted Kennedy at the proposed windmills off Cape Cod.

There is nothing that humanity can do to stop affecting the rest of the global ecosystem in some way. We consume energy; we require nourishment; we take up space. So do all other species. When environmentalists make demands that are ether mutually exclusive or flat out impossible, they reveal that their goal is not to minimize human interference with the natural world, it's something greater than that. Too many would prefer that man take his place alongside the other primates, and exist as if we weren't cursed with big brains and opposable thumbs. Those of that value those things shouldn't fall for it.