Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
In fact, the
worst
thing we can do environmentally is
not
transform our environment, because then we
would live with the threat-laden and resource-poor environment of undeveloped nature.
Another reason we buy into Green is because we as a culture have never been fully comfortable with
human industry. We're taught that the pursuit of profit is wrong, that capitalism is wrong, and that we
should feel guilty for our wealth and way of life.
Accepting nonimpact as our environmental ideal primes us to swallow any argument that an industry's
environmental impact is too high and to assume that the consequences of any environmental impact
must
be bad
—even while we wake up every day in the greatest environment in history.
That's the power of prejudice—prejudice that comes from holding a false philosophy we don't know
we accept and that most of us would fully reject if we saw its real meaning.
Nowthatweknowitsmeaning,wecanlookfor—andembrace—anew,prohumanenvironmentalphilo-
sophy.
A NEW IDEAL: INDUSTRIAL PROGRESS
So long as we accept nonimpact as an environmental ideal, we will not fight passionately against those
who oppose the energy of life, because we won't consider its essence—the transformation of nature in ser-
vice of human life—as a moral ideal.
But transformation
is
a moral ideal. I call that ideal
industrial progress
—the progressive improvement
of our environment using human industry, including energy and technology, in service of human life. It's
why I named my think tank the Center for Industrial Progress. I wanted to start a positive alternative to
the mainstream Green environmentalist movement, to replace the deadly ideal of nonimpact with the true
ideal of industrial progress. We don't want to “save the planet”
from
human beings; we want to
improve
the planet
for
human beings.
We need to say this loudly and proudly. We need to say that human life is our one and only standard
of value. And we need to say that the transformation of our environment, the essence of our survival, is a
supreme virtue. We need to recognize that to the extent we deny either, we are willing to harm real, flesh-
and-blood human beings for some antihuman dogma.
Making a moral case always means naming your standard—for us, human life. It means tying
everything, including every positive and negative of fossil fuel use, to human life. If you do that in your
thinking, I believe you will come to conclusions similar to mine. If you do that in communicating with
others, you will be amazingly effective, because you will be clear and sincere.
If we can do this, we can create the dream—an energy revolution that spawns revolutions in every other
field. And we can perform a great act of justice for the millions of men and women in the fossil fuel in-
dustry who have been working every day to keep our machines alive, who have been given little appreci-
ation by our culture but much condemnation, and who in my experience do not themselves understand the
full importance of their work. I hope this topic helps them see it.
The fossil fuel industry is a
moral
industry at its core. Members do immoral things, to be sure, but trans-
forming ancient dead plants into the energy of life in a way that maximizes benefits and minimizes risks is
an activity that the industry should be proud of, and we should be proud to use its product.
