Jump to content



Photo

Magazine Dumps Unsold 'Green' Edition in Land Fill


  • Please log in to reply
10 replies to this topic

#11 stocks

stocks

    Member

  • Traders-Talk User
  • 4,550 posts

Posted 20 January 2012 - 08:29 AM

Environmentalism -- Rejecting the Keystone pipeline

The person who built his mountain cabin last year is an environmentalist. The person who wants to build one this year is a developer.

In turning down Keystone, however, the President has uncovered an ugly little secret that has always lurked beneath the surface of environmentalism. Its basic appeal is to the affluent. Despite all the professions of being "liberal" and "against big business," environmentalism's main appeal is that it promises to slow the progress of industrial progress. People who are already comfortable with the present state of affairs -- who are established in the environment, so to speak -- are happy to go along with this.

Why is it that people who are the greatest beneficiaries of industrial society are often the most passionate in condemning it? People in the leisure class have become so accustomed to affluence as the natural state of things that they no longer feel compelled to embrace any further industrial progress

It is only the truly affluent, however, who can be concerned about the environment to the exclusion of everything else. Most people see the benefits of pipelines and power plants and admit they have to be built somewhere. Only in the highest echelons do we hear people say, "We don't need to build any pipelines. We've already got enough energy. We can all sit around awaiting the day we live off wind and sunshine."


link
-- -
Defenders of the status quo are always stronger than reformers seeking change, 
UNTIL the status quo self-destructs from its own corruption, and the reformers are free to build on its ashes.