by Ben Shapiro
The needs of Mother Nature above the needs of mankind, they say. And, if need be, let man die rather than affect his surroundings.
IS IT HOT IN HERE?
Global warming, which professors say is caused by man, is a hugely popular issue on campus. It’s not a question, it’s a certainty, they declare. And the consequences could be disastrous.
“Global warming is a real issue and a serious threat to future generations,” says Professor Charles Weiss of Georgetown University.4 Michael E. Mann, a professor at the University of Virginia, claims that there is a scientific consensus that significant human-caused global warming exists.5 “You screw around with the climate, you can expect [deserts, growth areas] to move around substantially,” concurs Professor Brunk of UCLA.6
Jane Lubchenco, a professor of zoology at Oregon State University, does not tolerate dissent on this issue: “The evidence is overwhelming that the climate is warming and the vast majority of scientists are in agreement . . . It’s no longer possible to say we don’t have a scientific basis for taking action.” Lubchenco continued: “Climate change is with us, the issue is urgent and it needs immediate attention. The sooner we take action, the more options we will have. Because carbon dioxide lingers in the atmosphere for 100-150 years, there is a long, long time between when we start fixing the problem and when we’ll see results. We have a moral obligation to act now.”7
According to Professor William Moomaw of Tufts University, combating “climate change” is as important as defeating slavery, advocating the women’s vote, marching for civil rights, and fighting against the Vietnam War.8 But he’s not overstating the case. Really.
The only solution, they state, is for the US government to re-sign the Kyoto Protocol, a treaty that would severely limit carbon dioxide emissions. President Clinton signed the treaty in 1997; President Bush rejected the treaty in 2001.
When Clinton signed it, the professors were ecstatic. “I think the Kyoto agreement will come to be viewed as a watershed whether or not it is ratified by Congress,” exclaimed Professor Weiss of Georgetown University.9
They were ready to fight hard for congressional approval. “If you don’t fight for this one, I don’t know what you’re going to fight for,” said Harvard Professor Eric Chavian.10 Professor Jane Lubchenco of Oregon State University, along with five other scientists, wrote a letter to then-President Clinton asking him to consider extreme actions to prevent global warming; the letter was signed by over twenty-five hundred scientists, many of them professors.11
After Bush’s rejection, the professors were fit to be tied. “There’s a pattern in the current Bush administration of pulling out of treaties we’ve already signed,” sneered UCLA Professor Kenneth Schultz.12 Professor Robert Percival of the University of Maryland snarled, “He’s had a pretty abysmal record” (referring specifically to Bush’s rejection of Kyoto).13
“There’s something dismissive about the way he approaches [policy]. Kyoto is a serious issue,” cautioned Professor Roger Wilkins of George Mason University.14 In criticizing President Bush’s rejection of Kyoto, Professor Huck Gutman of the University of Vermont claimed, “In its rush towards isolation, the United States has abdicated the mantle of leadership in the post-modern world.”15
In reality, Clinton was wrong to sign the treaty, and Bush was right to reject it. Signing the Kyoto treaty would do virtually nothing to end global warming, since developing countries like Mexico, China, and India are exempt from making cuts in CO2 emissions. According to the median estimates of temperature increase due to global warming, America’s signature to Kyoto would only avert a climate change of a mere 0.06 degree Celsius over the next half-century. And it would cost the US about one hundred billion to four hundred billion dollars per year to sign the treaty.16
But professors don’t let facts get in the way of a good story. Students only get the wacko environmentalist side of the issue. Sitting in an upper-division political science class at UCLA, I heard Professor Kenneth Schultz remark repeatedly that “disagreements about global warming are largely vanishing among scientists” and that “the science is becoming increasingly clear.”17 After class, I talked to one of my friends in the class.
“I can’t believe the stuff he said today,” I remarked.
“What?” she said.
“Well, he’s acting as though man-made global warming is a certainty. Thousands of prominent scientists disagree. There are books on the subject, showing that global warming is not significantly linked to man’s creation of carbon dioxide.”
“Really?” she answered. “I’ve never heard that before here. You should tell the class that.”
“Isn’t that the professor’s job?” I replied.
“CAN’T WE JUST RIDE BICYCLES?”
During Winter 2001, in my geography course with Professor Muldavin, we were assigned a project. We created a poster explaining an environmental issue to our classmates. I chose drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) as my environmental topic, and designed a poster-board explaining the pros and cons. In the end, I said, it was in the best interest of the United States to drill for oil, because it would help both our economy and our national security.
From the back of the class, I saw a girl’s hand shoot up into the air.
“Yes?” I asked.
“Well, I don’t understand,” she said. “Why can’t we just get rid of cars, and like, all ride bicycles and stuff? Then we wouldn’t need oil, and we wouldn’t need to like, kill caribou and stuff.”
I was stunned. This was a first-grade question coming out of the mouth of a college student at a highly respected university.
“Bicycles aren’t going to cut it,” I answered. “We would never get to where we want to go, our economy would plummet, and our national security would be jeopardized. If the Chinese were to attack us with tanks, could we fight them with bicycles? And we live in a free country, don’t we? Why shouldn’t a US citizen be able to decide he or she wants to drive an automobile?”
“Oh,” she said, “I hadn’t thought of that.”
And it was true—she hadn’t considered that. Because the professors would never in a million years say out loud in class that US citizens have a right to buy automobiles if they so choose. Rather, the government should regulate, regulate, regulate.
Professors want to ban “gas-guzzling” SUVs, despite the fact that millions of Americans will pay big bucks to own them, and that SUV production keeps thousands of people working.
“It is indeed uncomfortable for Americans to realize that it is their gas-guzzling habits that are responsible for so much violence hurled in our direction. . . . Look in the mirror and ask yourself, honestly, if you really need a 15-mile-per-gallon SUV or van,” advises Professor William Moomaw of Tufts University.18
During the summer of 2001, when Californians were paying more per gallon of gas than people of any other state, Professor Richard Gilbert of UC Berkeley blamed “the popularity of gas-guzzling behemoths.”19
After then-Governor Gray Davis of California signed far-reaching emissions legislation, professors couldn’t contain their glee. “The auto industry has been constantly making improvements to engines using onboard computers,” says UC Berkeley Professor Robert Harley. “If they put those technology advances toward fuel efficiency instead of building sport utility vehicles, it would make a difference.”20 “If you look at history, legislation is the way to go,” agrees Professor Mark Jacobsen of Stanford.21 Yes, restrict those corporate fat cats who use technology for profit rather than making fuel-efficient cars no one wants.
They also want to place high taxes on use of gasoline to force down consumption, ignoring the thousands of jobs which would be lost in the process.
Professor Lawrence Goulder of Stanford feels that a carbon tax, designed to raise gas prices, “wouldn’t be a free lunch, but it may be a lunch worth buying.”22 France’s high tax on oil is wonderful, said Professor Brunk in his UCLA Life Science 15 class, because “it
pays for itself.”23 Georgia should raise gasoline taxes, states Professor Michael Meyer of Georgia Tech: “If the case can be made to taxpayers . . . I think people will buy it.”24
“When people consume gas,” explains Professor David Romer of UC Berkeley, “they impose harms on other people that they aren’t paying for otherwise. They crowd the freeways and pollute”25 —therefore, we need a higher federal gas tax. “This federal tax should be higher than some other tax,” nods University of Michigan Professor Joel Slemrod.26 Professor Michael Golay of MIT believes in “heavy restrictions and taxes on fossil fuel use.”27
When in doubt, let big government come to the rescue.
CARIBOU ARE PEOPLE, TOO
The issue that raises the most professorial ire is drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR). Professors feel America shouldn’t do it. It will hurt the caribou and destroy a “pristine wilderness.” Besides, they whine, there’s probably not that much oil there anyway.
Professor Alan Richards of UC Santa Barbara calls drilling in ANWR “egregiously stupid.”28 Professor Karl Francis, an official in local Alaskan government, derides those who want to drill as “urban wilderness buffs” with an “odd lust” for ANWR. “Indeed, we see these people as dangerously naïve with a strange religious fanaticism that is both weird and frightening,” writes Francis.29
Professors ignore all the facts that indicate drilling is a good idea. They deny that vast stores of oil in ANWR could provide an alternative to reliance on foreign oil. Professor Albert Bartlett of Colorado State University at Boulder said before the US House Subcommittee on Energy, “The proposal for rapid drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge . . . appears to be a short-term energy fix that seems to ignore the real-world reality of resource availability.”30 Boston University Professor Andrew Hoffman states that the amount of oil in ANWR “is not in any way . . . significant enough to enhance our oil security.”31
“If we could eliminate the need for imported oil by drilling at ANWR, that would be one thing,” concurs Professor Richard Alley of Penn State. “But drilling at ANWR won’t greatly change the equation.”32
Wrong. Right now, the United States imports about 58 percent of its oil.33 If ANWR were opened to drilling, that number would fall substantially. According to Secretary of Energy Spencer Abraham, the amount of oil in the ANWR would be enough “to replace oil imports from the Persian Gulf region for ten years, or from Iraq for fifty years.”34
They ignore that the section of ANWR that would be drilled is vast tundra, with little life and less beauty, and that it is less than one half of one percent of the total area in ANWR. They say that it is a pristine area, America’s last true wilderness. In 2000, two hundred and forty scientists signed a letter to this effect, stating, “Five decades of biological study and scientific research have confirmed that the coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge forms a vital component of the biological diversity of the refuge.”35
They discard Alaskan public opinion, which overwhelmingly supports drilling, instead pointing to minority groups that oppose drilling. The classic example is the Gwich’in Indian tribe, who oppose drilling on environmental grounds—professors constantly cite the Gwich’in as the final authority on drilling. They completely ignore the Inupiat Indians, another tribe which steadfastly supports drilling and actually lives in ANWR. “While past injustices to American Indians can’t be undone, the threat to [the Gwich’in] culture can be stopped” by refraining from drilling, writes Professor Steven Dinero of Philadelphia University.36 “Sacrificing a place like the Arctic Refuge and a culture that has endured for thousands of years is simply wrong,” urges Professor Khalil Zonoozy of Portland State University.37
They disregard actual caribou population statistics, instead proclaiming that drilling will kill the caribou. “Caribou will move away from oil fields as disturbance increases,” speculates Professor David Klein of the University of Alaska at Fairbanks. “The pipeline and [nearby] haul road [at Prudhoe Bay] have essentially fractured the Central Arctic herd into two groups,” he says,38 ignoring the fact that the Central Arctic herd has grown more than five-fold in the last thirty years.39 And even if drilling did kill some caribou, do dead caribou take precedence over national security?
TOO MANY PEOPLE
The planet is overpopulated, according to university faculty. We’ve filled up all our space. We’re eating all our food. We’re destroying our environment. So it’s time for a change: we need to promote birth control (including forced abortion) in Third World countries, and we need to redistribute our wealth.
Do you sense a bit of alarmism here?
In 1974, Professor Garrett Hardin of UC Santa Barbara wrote the cult environmentalist wacko classic essay “Living on a Lifeboat,” in which he suggested that society look at population in terms of “lifeboat ethics.” Imagine that each nation (and by extension, the entire world) is a lifeboat, he says, and that if too many people get on, the entire boat sinks. The only solution is to let some people drown.40
Professor Paul Ehrlich has been preaching Chicken Little demographics for decades. In his 1968 book The Population Bomb, Ehrlich wrote: “Too many cars, too many factories, too much detergent, too much pesticide, multiplying contrails, inadequate sewage treatment plants, too little water, too much carbon dioxide—all can be traced easily to too many people.” He predicted that in the 1970s, overpopulation would lead to massive famines and hundreds of millions of deaths. Oops. But facts don’t stop Ehrlich from teaching his philosophy years after being proven wrong.41
“We’re within an ant’s eyebrow of being overpopulated right now,” warned Professor Brunk in my Life Science 15 course at UCLA.42 “There are very substantial numbers of reasonable biologists who feel we have already reached our carrying capacity,” he reiterated later in the quarter.43 And then again, two days later: “My guess is that the carrying capacity of the Earth is below six billion, probably somewhere between three and six billion. I’m almost sure it’s not nine billion. I’m willing to bet you any amount of money that the population will reach nine billion in your lifetimes.”44 And again, a week later, he stated: “Population growth is going to come back and bite you in so many ways.”45 I guess if you repeat something enough, it becomes true.
Brunk’s assigned biology textbook follows his line of thinking: “Imagine a world where people must share a room with four to twelve others. A room of one’s own is a rare luxury. In fact, people who have any housing at all consider themselves fortunate, because so many people have none. . . . Beggars crowd every street, and each garbage can is searched through time after time by starving people looking for something to sustain them. . . . a future like this may be in store for all of us unless something is done soon, and on a massive scale, to control population growth.”46 Flash to scene from Blade Runner.
And there’s no solution other than to cut population growth, by any means necessary, they say.
Don’t bother trying to grow more food. “Just growing more food is too simplistic,” declares Brunk. “We increased food production and population increased, so now the percentage of people who don’t have enough food is the same as before. It’s kind of discouraging.”47 Not exactly. In fact, it’s downright encouraging that population can grow rapidly and still the same percentage of people can be fed.
And they say new technology isn’t the answer either. “Some believe, and many hope, for a technological fix during the coming decades, one that will set civilization back on a course towards ever greater prosperity,” pens University of North Carolina Professor Allan Combs. “I call this general view the Star Trek Solution. . . . we have been waiting for the technological utopia for many years, and there is no good reason to think it is finally coming just in time to save us.”48
Professor Ehrlich agrees. “Large-scale technologies take a long time to deploy. It is crazy to think some magic bullet will save us,” states Ehrlich in his own inimitable style. “And we’ve invented a lot of tech
nological rabbits out of hats but they have toxic droppings.”49
The only answer is global socialism combined with forced population control. “It is not too late for humanity to avert a vast ecological disaster and make the transition to a sustainable society,” pontificates Professor Ehrlich, “but the task will not be simple . . . Population growth should be halted and a slow decline begun . . . Wasteful consumption in rich countries must be reduced to allow for needed growth in poor countries.”50 Because as we all know, if you stop yourself from buying those extra bananas at the grocery store, they will magically appear in Nigeria, allowing Nigeria to grow.
RETURN OF THE LUDDITES
The Luddites were an anti-technology group in England in the eighteenth century who revolted against the Industrial Revolution by roaming around the countryside breaking machinery. That group died out a century ago, but it’s experiencing a revival on college campuses, where professors rip technology as anti-environment.
Professor Chet Bowers of the University of Oregon calls computers “a colonizing technology . . . computers profoundly alter how we think and inevitably reduce our ability to understand nature.”51 Apparently, the best way to commune with nature is to carve term papers out of stone.
And go back to hunter-gatherer means of agriculture. “The plow increased soil erosion,” stated Professor Joshua Muldavin in a UCLA geography class. Muldavin labeled the plow as a “harmful policy.”
Professor Neil Postman, a media and technology critic and chair of the New York University Department of Culture and Communications, told an audience at a Regent University Journalism Conference that “All technological change is a Faustian bargain . . . You can go as far back as the invention of the phonetic alphabet, the printing press with the movable type, or the invention of telegraphy and photography. And you will find that for every problem such an invention solved, it raised a problem that we did not have before.”52 For Postman, this means that “computers in learning are a problem and not something to celebrate.”53