The New Left and the Anti-Industrial Revolution

Off Topic Politics and World Issues
1

In full swing…

"[O]bserve that in all the propaganda of the ecologistsâ??amidst all their appeals to nature and pleas for "harmony with nature"â??there is no discussion of man’s needs and the requirements of his survival. Man is treated as if he were an unnatural phenomenon. Man cannot survive in the kind of state of nature that the ecologists envisionâ??i.e., on the level of sea urchins or polar bears. . . . In order to survive, man has to discover and produce everything he needs, which means that he has to alter his background and adapt it to his needs. Nature has not equipped him for adapting himself to his background in the manner of animals. From the most primitive cultures to the most advanced civilizations, man has had to manufacture things; his well-being depends on his success at production. The lowest human tribe cannot survive without that alleged source of pollution: fire. It is not merely symbolic that fire was the property of the gods which Prometheus brought to man. The ecologists are the new vultures swarming to extinguish that fire.
[Ayn Rand (1971), “The Anti-Industrial Revolution”

2

Bill McKibben’s “The End of Nature” explains why this is very myopic.

  1. Even if we accept Rand’s argument, it isn’t carte blanche to be as irresponsible as we like; we possess self control and can choose to pollute more or less.

  2. The scale at which we operate is not comparable to that of “the lowest human tribe.” We are no longer fighting for survival in the same way.

And due to the scale on which we operate, nature is no longer an independent force. The point you seem unwilling to grasp is that this change will have catastrophic consequences at some point.

3

Man you got to share that weed:)

4

[quote]thefederalist wrote:
nature is no longer an independent force.[/quote]

When was it ever?

Nature is the totality of the universe and its phenomena.