{"id":8464,"date":"2013-04-22T22:35:12","date_gmt":"2013-04-22T22:35:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/?p=8464"},"modified":"2013-04-22T22:35:36","modified_gmt":"2013-04-22T22:35:36","slug":"8464","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/8464\/","title":{"rendered":"Earth Day!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/Whatever.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/Whatever-300x180.jpg\" alt=\"Whatever\" width=\"300\" height=\"180\" class=\"alignleft size-medium wp-image-8482\" srcset=\"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/Whatever-300x180.jpg 300w, https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/Whatever.jpg 460w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a>Cross-posted on the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nationalreview.com\/corner\/346262\/earth-day\">Corner<\/a>:<\/p>\n<p>Over at AEI Mark Perry <a href=\"http:\/\/www.aei-ideas.org\/2013\/04\/in-observance-of-the-green-religious-holiday-earth-day-the-science-of-economics-versus-the-religion-of-environmentalism\/\">celebrates<\/a> Earth Day with quotes from Steven Landsburg\u2019s book <em>The Armchair Economist<\/em>, including this:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>[E]nvironmentalists \u2014 at least the ones I have met \u2014 have no real interest in maintaining the tree population. If they did, they would seriously inquire into the long-term effects of recycling. I suspect that they don\u2019t want to do that because their real concern is with the ritual of recycling itself, not with its consequences. The underlying need to sacrifice, and to compel others to sacrifice, is a fundamentally religious impulse.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>That took me to the <a href=\"http:\/\/ruby.fgcu.edu\/courses\/twimberley\/EnviroPol\/EnviroPhilo\/WhyNotEnviro.pdf\">chapter<\/a> specifically cited by Perry, which is well worth reading in full. Here\u2019s an extract:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>As environmentalism becomes increasingly like an intrusive state religion, we dissenters become increasingly prickly about suggestions that we suffer from some kind of aberration. The naive environmentalism of my daughter\u2019s preschool is a force-fed potpourri of myth, superstition, and ritual that has much in common with the least reputable varieties of religious Fundamentalism. The antidote to bad religion is good science. The antidote to astrology is the scientific method, the antidote to naive creationism is evolutionary biology, and the antidote to naive environmentalism is economics.<\/p>\n<p>Economics is the science of competing preferences. Environmentalism goes beyond science when it elevates matters of preference to matters of morality\u2026. But in the\u2026years since the first Earth Day, a new and ugly element has emerged in the form of one side\u2019s conviction that its preferences are Right and the other side\u2019s are Wrong. The science of economics shuns such moral posturing; the religion of environmentalism embraces it.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Amen.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Cross-posted on the Corner: Over at AEI Mark Perry celebrates Earth Day with quotes from Steven Landsburg\u2019s book The Armchair Economist, including this: [E]nvironmentalists \u2014 at least the ones I have met \u2014 have no real interest in maintaining the &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/8464\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":64,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[13],"tags":[210],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8464"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/64"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8464"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8464\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8485,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8464\/revisions\/8485"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8464"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8464"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8464"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}