Environment Angst: having it both ways

---by Micheal

It seems like popular environmental Politically Correct thinking is contradictory. It can't decide if change should be abhorred or worshipped. So, it does both.

An example of first, is the rending of garments over climate change. For now, let's set aside debate over whether the globe is warming or not and say it is. So what? This change is bewailed as mega-terrible. But why? From the temperature record, it appears the globe has always been warming up or cooling off. Climate change appears to be normal.

From 800 to 1300 AD, the world was warmer. What we consider a balmy mediterranean climate nowadays extended as far north as foggy ol' England. Sea ice diminished, so Vikings were able explore Greenland (which was green back then.)

After the Medieval Warm Period, the world cooled off several degrees to experience what they call the Little Ice Age. From 1500 to about 1850, ice advanced and summers shortened. Rivers froze which hadn't before. Britain wasn't good for growing grapes anymore. After the mid 1800s, the world changed again. It started to warm up.

A world in which the climate patterns never change would be the freak. But isn't that what climate change alarmists are proposing we spend billions to accomplish? Nature-without-change is the goal.

Yet, on the other hand, natural change is held as sacred.

I know a landowner who has a wetland between his house and the road. Over the past 15 years, the cattails and rushes have been overrun by maple, poplar and alder saplings, becoming a thick scrub woods. This has become a problem. Since his house is now hidden from the road, he's had repeated trouble with trespassers and vandals.

To make his property safer, he wanted to go into his swamp and cut back the brush. It's not like he wanted to bulldoze, fill and pave the swamp. He wanted to restore it to the cattails, rushes and patchy open water which used to attract ducks. (and which allowed the police to see his house.)

His town's enviro-monitors, however, said no. It's "natural," they said, for grassy wetlands to evolve into wet scrub woods. Since it's a natural change, he is not permitted to tamper with it. Nature-in-change is sacred.

Enviromentalism wants to have it both ways. Change is bad. Change is good. A sure sign of confusion or a scheme to get into our pockets.