In an article that she wrote a few years ago, my colleague Amanda Maxham evinces that the environmentalist movement is not motivated by a science-based concern for man’s life and environment. No, what motivates this ideological movement is the hatred for technology and ultimately for individual freedom. “Don’t believe it?”

Consider the hundreds of actions environmentalists call on us to take on Earth Day. We are asked to shut off the lights, to switch off our power-consuming computer and phones or to live a day “without using resources.” We are asked to bike or walk to work (no matter the distance), eat no meat, forgo a plastic bag or bottle or make one of the billions of other small sacrifices to the Earth. We are told that cutting back, reducing our energy consumption, and using fewer chemicals are all moral actions. 

But Rand recognized that it is precisely these things that keep men safe, healthy and happy. It’s the electric lights that allow us to study at night, the heating and air conditioning that allow us to comfortably bear bitter winter nights and sweltering summer days. It’s the chemical insecticides that keep us safe from malarial mosquitoes, the plastic that keeps food sanitary, the asphalt roads and fossil-fuel-burning vehicles that allow us to escape when nature serves up an earthquake or a hurricane. It is these things that environmentalists scoff at as wasteful luxuries that people should give up. It is these things (and the freedom that make them possible) that environmentalists seek to ban, limit or cut back. 

Read the whole article here.