Get down on your knees and recycle

Today is both Earth Day and Lenin's Birthday. The communists were massive polluters, and hardly cared how many people they poisoned, but the two political world views are virtually identical: they don't care who has to suffer to support the myth.

Strange, don’t you think, for a day which should simply be declared a religious holiday?

* Religions typically claim that human nature is selfish and sinful. So does environmentalism. John Muir, co-founder of the Sierra Club, denounced men as "selfish, conceited creatures." George Perkins Marsh, another founding father of environmentalism, described men as "brute destroyers" who "destroy the balance which nature has established." To some environmentalists, people are--at best--a trivial part of a vast "ecosystem," no more important than lizards, trees, or rocks.

* Religions traditionally criticize human reason, and extol faith. So does environmentalism. In his book, Earth in the Balance, former Vice President Al Gore excoriates our "rational, detached, scientific intellect" as "too often arrogant, unfeeling, uncaring." His book’s closing paragraph is a pious call to faith.

* Religions require people to sacrifice their happiness to something larger. So does environmentalism. Do you have personal plans for your future? Scrap them now: "We must make the rescue of the environment the central organizing principle of civilization," Al Gore writes. He would demand "wrenching" changes "that will affect almost every aspect of our lives together on this planet."

Meanwhile, celebrity morons in love praise of what they imagine is the underdeveloped world's lifestyle, entirely unaware of the effect of turning back the clock on human advancement: malaria, basic deseases from human pathogens, farm animals and wildlife that become pandemics, freezing to death and repiratory deseases that come from depending on "biofuels" like burning dung or cordwood for heating and cooking, and most of all the time it takes (and the consequent lack of productivity which kills off the weak) associated with collecting these materials to live a subsistence level existence - one where a simple dental problem can end your like at the age of, say, 37.

Now get down on your knees and recycle.