They Never Quit...

     ...and they never give delivery dates in the proximate future:

     Capitalism has generated massive wealth for some, but it’s devastated the planet and has failed to improve human well-being at scale.
     Species are going extinct at a rate 1,000 times faster than that of the natural rate over the previous 65 million years (see Center for Health and the Global Environment at Harvard Medical School).
     Since 2000, 6 million hectares of primary forest have been lost each year. That’s 14,826,322 acres, or just less than the entire state of West Virginia (see the 2010 assessment by the Food and Agricultural Organization of the UN).
     Even in the U.S., 15% of the population lives below the poverty line. For children under the age of 18, that number increases to 20% (see U.S. Census).
     The world’s population is expected to reach 10 billion by 2050 (see United Nations' projections).
     How do we expect to feed that many people while we exhaust the resources that remain?

     It startled me to see this kind of absolutely fallacious anti-capitalist doom-shouting in Forbes. (Capitalist Tool!) Drew Hansen raves as if he were the reincarnation of Thomas Malthus – the young, stupid Thomas Malthus. Do you think he’s heard of Norman Borlaug? Is he aware that it’s the Third World nations that are suffering the net loss of forests and arable land, whereas the First World countries are replenishing them as fast as we exploit them? Is he aware that the “extinctions” are nearly all of unimportant micro-organisms, and that they’ve been going on for millennia?

     I could go on, but there’s little point. You’ll never find a leftist doom-shouter who can cope with the arguments and evidence in Julian Simon’s The Ultimate Resource, or who’s willing to answer simple questions about the priority of human well-being over resource “consumption” or environmental “destruction.” Every one of them is an Eric Pianka or a Pentti Linkola at heart, slavering for mass death. The environment is their deity and capitalism is their devil – and by “capitalism,” I mean you and me, Gentle Reader.

     Mentioning that resource prices have dropped in real terms over the past fifty years, which utterly defeats the claim that they’re becoming “scarcer,” would evoke Hansen’s condemnation. “You can’t measure these things in monetary terms! There are values involved!” Mentioning that the solar system is chock-full of resources of every kind, all just waiting to be reaped, would make Hansen and his ilk haul out the crucifixes and pointed stakes. “You want to launch rockets? That would use up irreplaceable resources and soil our precious environment! Use the money to feed the poor!” As if “feeding the poor” were a shortcut to anything but more and more “poor.” (“We can have exactly as many paupers as the country chooses to pay for.” – Thomas Mackay)

     But what really goosed me in a tender place was Hansen’s selection of 2050 as his disaster-delivery date. That’s 31 years from now. Granted, it’s a little nearer than the warmistas’ promise of global heat death – by the way, if you read further into the article, you’ll see that Hansen’s a warmista along with all the rest — but it raises the question: How did he pick that date? Does he like it for the zero at the end? So round, so firm... Or did someone else – one of the left-wing sources he cites throughout his article, perhaps – pick it for him?

     Hansen and his kind are playing to a particular audience: those who need to embrace a Cause that would allow them to feel relevant and superior to the uncommitted. Perhaps Hansen himself feels that need. Or perhaps he’s merely an ignoramus who’s been led into apocalyptic fantasy by other, glib environmental doom-shouters. It’s important to keep track of such persons, though. Not only must one stand ready to contradict them; they’re a great source of comedy material.