Big Business Spurs Anti-Earth Day Protests

Judging from George W. Bush's early environmental record, the anti-Earth Day rally held in the nation's capital sounds like an event that could have been sponsored by his administration. However, they're too darn savvy to attach themselves to anything so transparently anti-environmental. That didn't stop the good people at the Ayn Rand Institute and the Center for the Moral Defense of Capitalism from holding its Anti-Earth Day gathering.

The Conservative News Service reported, under the headline "Anti-Earth-Day Rally Celebrates Science, Industry and Capitalism," that the main theme of the demonstration was support for opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil production. The event was billed as a gathering in support of industry and technology.

Organizers from the Ayn Rand Institute (ARI) and The Center for the Moral Defense of Capitalism (CMDC) wanted to counter environmentalists' claims that opening up the Arctic Refuge would cause significant damage to the Alaskan wilderness. CMDC chairman Nick Provenzo said "the only 'massive and irreparable harm' is to the truth." Oil is "the very lifeblood of modern civilization," he added, and environmentalists are trying to "bleed dry the arteries of American commerce."

The Marina Del Rey, Ca.-based Ayn Rand Institute: The Center for the Advancement of Objectivism was founded in 1985 and named after the well-known author of "The Fountainhead," and "Atlas Shrugged." It is dedicated to promoting Rand and her philosophy of Objectivism, or unfettered laissez-faire capitalism. (I'm not a big fan of bio-pics, but if the Ayn Rand story as told on cable television in 1999 -- the lead was played by the wonderful Helen Mirren -- was anything remotely close to the lady's real life, well ... Houston, we've got a problem.)

The Institute, a 501c(3) nonprofit organization that had more than $2 million in total revenue in 1998, 98 percent of which came from contributions and grants awarded by foundations, businesses and individuals. Its major project, according to The Right Guide, was the production of a radio talk show which cost some $285,856. The Institute regularly sponsors a high school essay contest during which "nearly 10,000 students are introduced each year" to Rand's novels.

Although these groups are kind of the burlesquian bottom feeders of the anti-environmental movement, a broader anti-environmentalist "movement" currently exists which should make us all rest uneasy.

"New-Era Environmentalists"

"New evidence casts doubt on global warming," claims the April 2001 edition of the monthly Environment & Climate News, a publication of the conservative Heartland Institute sent free to thousands of legislators, columnists and news editors across the country. "Fresh doubts have been cast on evidence for global warming following the discovery that a key method of measuring temperature change gas exaggerated the warming rate by almost 40 percent."

Another article, "As science retreats, scare tactics boom" (written by The Greening Earth Society), argues that "scary scenarios invariably are cooked up by people intent upon selling something. Sometimes it's a book of fiction. Sometimes it's a magazine. Sometimes it's a carbon tax. Actual observations do not support such scenarios."

This is the self-billed "newspaper for new-era Environmentalists," which boldly trumpets "Blueprint 2001: Drafting Environmental Policy for the Future," a new report from the Business Roundtable that lays "out a program for 'constructive changes in our environmental protection system.'" The report was put together by BR's Environment, Technology and the Economy Task Force, made up of representatives from government, think tanks and the private sector. Earnie Deavenport, chairman of the Task Force and CEO of Eastman Chemical Company, says that "we need to change the way business approaches the environment and the way the government achieves environmental improvement."