For the past 32 years, people have celebrated Earth Day in various ways. The University campus has its own celebration planned that involves a festival, speakers and educational events. But two organizations, the Center for the Moral Defense of Capitalism and the Ayn Rand Institute, have much different plans than others.
Following their tradition of the past few years, these two organizations have gathered their allies and plan a third consecutive trip to Washington, D.C., to protest Earth Day and environmentalism.
“The real meaning of Earth Day and the environmental movement as a whole is the rollback of industrial civilization,” said Nicholas Provenzo, chairman and co-founder of the Center for the Moral Defense of Capitalism. “Environmentalism is a wholesale war against humanity. By placing nature over people, environmentalism actively works to return man back to the stone age.”
Dr. Onkar Ghate, resident fellow at the Ayn Rand Institute, agrees with Provenzo. “If you actually look at what environmentalists say and do, they have a different goal, and people don’t realize that,” Ghate said. “Environmentalists sacrifice the interests of man for so-called wilderness and nature, and that needs to be exposed.”
Vivian Vassall, the chapter chair for the University’s OSPIRG chapter, does not fully understand the two organizations’ position on the topic.
“Seeing that Earth Day is not political and it’s a celebration that everyone can take part in, it’s interesting that people would protest it,” Vassall said. “Earth Day is probably the least controversial aspect of the environmental movement, if an aspect at all.”
While Vassall described OSPIRG’s philosophy of Earth Day as “spreading consciousness of the problems on our planet,” Provenzo and CMDC’s philosophy is much different. They believe that Earth Day is and should be “a day dedicated to celebrating the benefits of industry and technology, the critical importance of property rights, and the larger notion that man has the ability to properly solve the problems and challenges of his existence without sacrificing his life or lifestyle,” Provenzo said. But University Professor John H. Baldwin, director of the Institute for a Sustainable Environment, rejects that idea.
“Ridiculous,” Baldwin said. “Oh, the right-wingers. What on earth are they talking about? It sounds to me like they are bastardizing science for a profit.”
While the environment may be cleaner and healthier because of the Environmental Protection Agency and clean air and water legislation, Ghate and the Ayn Rand Institute do not think that the innovations and regulations are good for humanity, Ghate said.
“I don’t think that something like the EPA or endangered species acts should exist at all,” Ghate said. “I do not think that animals and trees and so on have life. Humans have life. We should be able to develop any land we own to further mankind. We are definitely pro-man.”
Baldwin, however, suggested that furthering humanity and the environment are not necessarily mutually exclusive.
“There is a middle ground,” he said. “I’m all in favor of sustainable economic development. You can be green, into the economy and pro-man.”
Provenzo disagrees. “There is no balance between a view that says that man’s life is a primary value and a view that says that wilderness comes first,” he said. “That many people think that there can be a union between the two shows that unfortunately, many people don’t fully understand what is being debated here.”
For anyone who wishes to publicly debate Provenzo and his ideas, he has renewed a challenge to “debate any member of any environmentalist organization at any college campus in America.” He can be contacted at (703) 625-3296 or at http://www.moraldefense.com/ProTech. More information on ARI’s stance on environmentalism is available at http://environmentalism.aynrand.org.