What Elizabeth Nickson does best is identify the battle lines. She identifies the conservationist groups whose destructive agenda is impoverishing rural communities, empowering central governments and bureaucrats, and sowing the seeds of civic strife. More importantly, she also identifies a few groups and individuals who are mounting the counter-offensive to what has been almost 50 years of uncontested advances by the environmentalists.
In some ways it is an equally depressing and frustrating read, but this is why it is so important to read it. I suspect a book like this will resonate forcefully with those who identify with the libertarian movement. At the heart of the eco-fascist impulse is a desire to suppress individual liberty and economic freedom by diminishing or eliminating private property rights. I interact regularly with passionate libertarians, and at times I wish I could channel the same angst that they have toward the fed and central banking against the environmental movement, which is equally destructive and antithetical to individual liberty. I believe that this book adequately sounds the alarm. Many who read it will want to do more to fight back against the destructive conservationist agenda, but the book’s revelations on how to fight back are lacking. This might be due to the fact that ways to fight radical environmentalists haven’t been fully developed. On this note, this book starts the conversation that will hopefully lead to an aggressive counter attack against radical environmentalism.
While I expect to address some of the specific issues presented in this book in future posts, I wanted to at least introduce it to our readers with a strong recommendation to read it. A post-scarcity environment of abundance is a possibility only insofar as the radical environmentalists lose.
The rural people are dispersed, they’re not well-organized. They are undereducated by the standards of the city people. They don’t know how to manipulate media or even manage media very well, and they are far-flung. They are overmatched. -Elizabeth Nickson
Hi Miles,
thanks for the great review – I must say I was desperate to find people fighting back, and was vastly relieved to find American Stewards and Fred Kelly Grant – and would not have written the book, had I not found them, and their entirely workable solution, coordination. Still and mostly we are just being run over like road kill in every jurisdiction I’ve been able to research. The federal and state bureaucracies are so vast, and so well funded and they feel so entitled, in part because the universities provide an endless stream of agenda driven research which our side cannot even begin to fund – facing them is like being a modern day Pict contemplating Roman legions advancing. God help us. Really. The only hope we have is if ordinary people stand up and say no, get out of our county. There is no other solution and it works, because these people are bullies, and they back down when challenged.
elizabeth
Elizabeth,
I am flattered that you found this site and left a comment. Once again, i would like to reiterate that I loved your book. I did appreciate the coordination solution that you identified. I invite you to become a regular reader of the Post Scarcity Alliance, as we plan to explore other ways to fight back, and I imagine you will be very interested.
As I see it there are tectonic shifts in our culture that are slowly moving us to a position where we will be able to effectively fight back. And once this paradigm shift has occurred, the financial and intellectual resources will be there to mount an effective counteroffensive against today’s radical environmentalism and replace it with something that actually protects the environment and our liberty. If you were to look at some of the other posts on this site, you will find that although it is a new site, there are a few things we are keeping a close eye on:
1. Genetic engineering – Look at the exponential growth that occurs with any technology that is built primarily on top of a computer processing power. I think we are less than ten years out from having bio-hackers who can engineer new species out of private, personal labs. The factions of the environmental movement who have built their influence from expanding the reach of endangered species protection laws will be in a clear existential crisis at this point. At once the will have to specify why biodiversity needs to be preserved in an environment where we can create at will while also having to specify why habitat protection is better than genetically modifying organisms to be more adaptable to different habitats.
2. The money of the Silicon Valley billionaires – If modern environmentalism is funded by the fortunes of 20th century tycoons, then future environmentalist efforts will be funded by the nouveau riche of Silicon Valley. This group has a distinct libertarian streak combined with an entrepreneurial desire to save the world. Many of these rich, powerful, intellectually-endowed, scientifically-credentialed individuals will embark on their quests to save the world only to find an army of bureaucrats standing in their way. Read my post on Russ George to get a deeper analysis of how this group will be a force to be reckoned with, and they are just getting started: http://www.postscarcityalliance.com/geoengineer-russ-george-vigilante-or-pioneer/
You can also watch the TED video in the post about Peter Diamandis. Pay attention to how he is using his X-prize foundation to siphon some of the best scientific minds out of the government-university complex and enlist them into solving some of the world’s biggest problems. In the battle for the brains of the next generation, self-funded and empowered optimists like Diamandis will win over the agenda-based, grant-driven academic slavery that you find in public universities: http://www.postscarcityalliance.com/peter-diamandis-the-abundance-pioneer/
3. The small libertarian-leaning faction of the tea party – The 112th Congress is the first Congress in decades that hasn’t approved a single acre of new wilderness. As a political force, the tea party leaning legislators have gotten the most attention for big battles of federal spending and taxes. However, they have been more effective at actually stopping things from getting done. Also, keep in mind that there was a huge sweep of state legislatures by tea party candidates in 2010. The 2012 election was at best a draw. However, I would argue that there are political forces that are growing and consolidating power in the United States that are designed to counter radical environmentalism. The organized minority of Ron Paul supporting libertarians have their moments, but if they were ever mobilized to counter radical environmentalism, this would at least provide some boots on the ground. Many in this crowd are academically credentialed and get labeled as liberal because of their views on social policy.
4. The environmental movement is now a thoroughly entrenched machine. As such, it is ripe for some monkey wrenching (if you know what I mean).
Maybe my optimism is overstated, and I don’t want to suggest that this will be an easy or short fight. There are some game-changing developments on the horizon, if we can make it that far. I don’t think the radical environmentalists will be beaten if we fight them on their own terms. Fortunately, the terms by which they will be beaten haven’t been fully established yet.
Anyway, welcome to the Post Scarcity Alliance. Keep in touch.
Fascinating stuff, Miles