Arne Naess, Norwegian philosopher, dies at 96

Naess coined the term 'deep ecology' to indicate that humans are no more important than other species, ecosystems or natural processes.

By Patricia Sullivan
Los Angeles Times


Arne Naess.


Arne Naess, a Norwegian philosopher who coined the term "deep ecology" to indicate that humans are no more important than other species, ecosystems or natural processes, died Jan. 12 in Oslo. He was 96.

The philosophy drew adherents as diverse as the radical Earth First! activists of the late 1980s and Douglas Tomkins, co-founder of the Esprit clothing line.

"Naess presented us with a way of approaching problems that will continue to be used in environmental work," Light said. "That is, look for the real origins of environmental problems and not just their surface impact."

Frightening Eco-Freak Quotes

from the Sussman Files
KSFO 560 Talk Radio
[San Francisco, CA]


Brian Sussman is a conservative commentator on the San Francisco radio station KSFO. He hosts his own show, “Right Thinking from the Left Coast,” weekdays from 6pm to 8pm.

"We already have too much economic growth in the United States. Economic growth in rich countries like ours is the disease, not the cure."
Paul Elrich, Stanford University biologist and Advisor to Albert Gore

"I think if we don't overthrow capitalism, we don't have a chance of saving the world ecologically. I think it is possible to have an ecological society under socialism. I don't think it's possible under capitalism."
Judi Barri of Earth First!

"Capitalism is a cancer in the biosphere."
Dave Foreman, Founder, Earth First!

"The northern spotted owl is the wildlife species of choice to act as a surrogate for old-growth forest protection," explained Andy Stahl, staff forester for the Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund, at a 1988 law clinic for other environmentalists. "Thank goodness the spotted owl evolved in the Pacific Northwest," he joked, "for if it hadn't, we'd have to genetically engineer it."
Andy Stahl at a 1988 law clinic for environmentalists, staff forester, Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund

"Now, in a widening sphere of decisions, the costs of error are so exorbitant that we need to act on theory alone, which is to say on prediction alone. It follows that the reputation of scientific prediction needs to be enhanced. But that can happen, paradoxically, only if scientists disavow the certainty and precision that they normally insist on. Above all, we need to learn to act decisively to forestall predicted perils, even while knowing that they may never materialize. We must take action, in a manner of speaking, to preserve our ignorance. There are perils that we can be certain of avoiding only at the cost of never knowing with certainty that they were real."
Jonathan Shell, author of Our Fragile Earth

"A global climate treaty must be implemented even if there is no scientific evidence to back the greenhouse effect."
Richard Benedict, an employee for the State Department working on assignment for the Conservation Foundation

"[W]e have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we may have. Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest."
Stephen Schneider, Stanford University Professor and author Quoted by Dixey Lee Ray in Trashing the Planet (1990)

"I honor Earth First for having the guts to do the things they do. It's not for me, but I understand why they do what they do. And, ultimately, we all help each other."
Brock Adams, VP, Audubon Society, quoted in the Los Angeles Times.

"If we seek only personal redemption we could become solitary ecological saints among the masses of those we might classify as 'sinners' who continue to pollute."
Bill Devall & George Sessions, Deep Ecology: Living As If Nature Mattered Layton

"More science and more technology are not going to get us out of the present ecological crises until we find a new religion, or rethink our old one."
Lynn White, Jr. "The Historical Roots of Our Ecological Crisis," Science, (Mar. 10 1967), p 1206

"Childbearing [should be] a punishable crime against society, unless the parents hold a government license.... All potential parents [should be] required to use contraceptive chemicals, the government issuing antidotes to citizens chosen for childbearing."
David Brower, Friends of the Earth

"The right to have children should be a marketable commodity, bought and traded by individuals but absolutely limited by the state."
Keith Boulding, originator of the "Spaceship Earth" concept

"If radical environmentalists were to invent a disease to bring human populations back to sanity, it would probably be something like AIDS. It [AIDS] has the potential to end industrialism, which is the main force behind the environmental crises."
Earth First! newsletter

The Environmentalist Evil

by David Holcberg
Capitalism Magazine

David Holcberg, a former civil engineer and businessman, is now a writer living in Southern California. He is also a writer for the Ayn Rand Institute in Irvine, CA.

Environmentalism regards man as a spreading cancer that must be eliminated at any cost. And its leaders mean it. Environmentalism is at root a movement against man. As novelist and philosopher Ayn Rand observed, "… [their] ultimate motive [is]…hatred for achievement, for reason, for man, for life."

Most people would not believe this to be true. A great number of people tend to regard Environmentalism as a movement for cleaner air and water, for a better environment for man. But the environmentalists' actions demonstrate otherwise.

Clear evidence of their disregard for human life is their decades-long campaign to ban the insecticide DDT, even for specific use against malaria-carrying mosquitoes. Whatever the long-term effects of DDT on human health, they should certainly be an option for the people at risk from the ravaging short-term effects of malaria.

Every year, about half a billion people become ill with malaria -- that's ten percent of Earth's population -- and several million die, mostly children.

Since its inception in the 1940's, the use of DDT has prevented the deaths of about six hundred million people, an average of ten million a year.

From 1993 to 1995 DDT was banned in Bolivia, Paraguay and Peru. Malaria increased ninety percent. In the same period, DDT's use was increased in Ecuador, and the incidence dropped sixty percent.

Its introduction in India, in 1960, reduced in the span of a year the number of malaria victims from a million to a hundred thousand, and in Sri Lanka from half a million down to almost zero. Soon after DDT was banned there, the number of victims climbed back to previous levels. Still today, environmentalists keep advocating a worldwide ban on DDT. They must be proud of their record.

Environmentalists are not only against DDT, but also against all insecticides. They aim to eventually ban them all, causing death and disease on a global scale. Their campaign makes perfect sense if we remember that one of the central tenets of Environmentalism is to eliminate overpopulation. As Jacques Cousteau, the famous French oceanographer admitted, "In order to stabilize world populations, we must eliminate three hundred and fifty thousand people per day. It is a horrible thing to say, but it's just as bad not to say it."

More proof of the their hatred for human life is their persisting campaign to stop chlorinization of water, which kills the germs in it. Their partial success in Peru resulted in thousands of deaths in a single cholera epidemic in 1992. So far they have not succeeded to ban it in the US, though they are hard at it.

Note the Environmentalists' ferocious attack on genetically engineered foods, despite the advantage that they dispense with insecticide use. This new technology promises to enhance the quality of lives by tailoring foods to our specific needs. An example is the invention of engineered rice with beta-carotene, a substance that the body can convert into vitamin A. Every year two million people worldwide go blind and a hundred million more suffer from lack of vitamin A.

If environmentalists really cared about human life and suffering they would have welcomed the new rice and revised their position on banning GE foods. Why don't they?

Maybe David Brower, former head of the Sierra Club and founder of Friends of the Earth has part of the answer: "Human suffering is much less important than the suffering of the planet."

The most glaring proof that Environmentalism is anti human is their stand for animal rights and their opposition to animal use in medical research. Given the alternative of sacrificing a few mice or letting a billion humans die, only the lowest kind of man haters could choose the latter.

How many more people will have to go blind, get sick or die before we see Environmentalism for what it truly is?

A movement of pure hatred for man disguised as a false love of nature.

Listen to Dave Foreman, founder of Earth First, whose primary goal is cutting the world's population by ninety percent: "We humans have become a disease, the Humanpox."

David M. Graber, a biologist with the National Park Service also puts it in the open: "Human happiness [is] …not as important as a wild and healthy planet. Somewhere along the line…we quit the contract and became a cancer. We have become a plague upon ourselves and upon the Earth."

He is right that there is indeed a cancer growing on Earth. But it is not man. It is Environmentalism, and the sooner we get rid of it, the better.