The left thinks people, wealth, and technology are enemies of earth, so they want less of them

Economic Freedom Will Save the Earth

The New York City sightseeing company Gray Line is promoting an “Earth Week” package of day trips that includes visits to “green spots” like the botanical gardens and flower shopping at Chelsea Market. The fact that these tours will be taken on buses running on fossil fuels does not sit well with the first Earth Day national coordinator Denis Hayes who tells The New York Times what he thinks of such green consumerism: “This ridiculous perverted marketing has cheapened the concept of what is really green. It is tragic.”

The left in this country has always considered it “tragic” when people make money in this country, and the plight of the earth is just one of many justifications they have used over the years to demonize free markets. Back in the 70s, President Barack Obama’s Director for Science and Technology Policy John Holdren even came up with a formula to measure capitalism’s evil impact on the environment: I=PAT, which means that environmental impact is equal to population multiplied by affluence multiplied by technology. Thus according to the left, protecting the planet requires fewer people, less wealth and simpler technology. But this is just flat wrong. In fact, studies clearly show that important indicators of environmental quality actually improve as incomes and levels of consumption go up.