Wednesday 11 May 2005

Appeasing environmentalism: You lose

The Rain Forest Action Network from the US exemplifies many radical environmental organisations: irrational, in-your-face, anti-capitalist, and tax-exempt. Much like our local branch of Greenpeace.

In an eight-page investigation, David Hocberg asks why these destroyers of private property rights are given tax breaks when the rest of us aren't, why corporations routinely appease them rather than exposing them for what they are ... and he also exposes them for exactly what they are: destructive arseholes with finely tuned PR skills.

"Some corporations have Chief Executive Officers who double as the corporation's chief appeasement officers," says economist Walter Williams. In his view and the view of Hogberg, the victories achieved by organisations such as the RFAN are entirely due to appeasement, not to any merit in their frequently fact- and reason-free arguments.

Hogberg's article can be found here in PDF format. (Note that you will need to have an Acrobat Reader on your computer.)

Hat-tip here to Robert Bidinotto, who argues that Environmentalism as a movement is dying under the weight of its irrationalism, and its constant crying 'wolf'. Read the Death of Environmentalism here, and its companion piece Death by Environmentalism here. Both are linked from his website, Econot.com

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