Environmentalists Vandalize Van Gogh
On Friday, anti-oil environmentalists poured tomato soup on Van Gogh’s 'Sunflowers' stating that we need to stop using oil to fund our economy while, in the same sentence, saying that we need to lower the cost of living. Empty-headed statements like this are the reason that so few people take the side of the environmentalist in politics. The goal of these activists isn’t wrong, but generally speaking, environmentalists have a massive marketing problem and they are never going to get their point across unless they stop terrorizing cities and culture. My name is Kris and this is the Think Report.
Environmentalism is a good thing and we need to care more about our environment, however, In this episode, we’ll explain how environmentalists need to stop saying that we are ‘killing the planet’, they need to stop using terrorism to convince the population to be more proactive, and finally, we’ll dive into their biggest problem, their connection to socialism.
“Killing the planet’ is simply untrue.
The message of killing the planet is untrue. Is untrue. The planet started as a molten ball of metal, rock, and gas and over millions of years, it evolved into what it is today. The planet will be totally fine. WE may not survive, but the planet will most certainly survive.
There are two arguments that make sense for the environment:
We are going to lose the beauty of the environment
We are going to make human life unsustainable
These are both excellent arguments for caring about the environment. For example, should we cut down the next 300-year-old western red cedar? It will have no impact on the sustainability of human life, but they are pretty amazing to look at. Should we drive cars less, they do make air quality pretty terrible for humans. But the idea that we need to stop doing it because we are killing the planet is so untrue.
Using terrorism in the name of environmentalism
I’ll start with a quote by Nietzsche which I was recently made aware of “When you force a person to change their mind about you, they count the effort this entails, against you”. I think this quote is very important in this context, especially when these environmentalists are defacing an artifact that most western society thinks very highly of in one regard or another. Even though most people would be aligned with saving the environment, no one is going to take your side if you are destroying things they care about. It would be like saying to a commuter, you should take the train to save the environment, then following up by slashing their tires. The criminal act of slashing someone’s tires would overshadow your message, which is the same in this case too. The crime of vandalizing a beloved painting worth $100s of millions has completely overshadowed their message. People aren’t thinking about the environment, they are thinking about how these two bozos need to be imprisoned and made to pay for the restoration costs of the painting.
People care about the environment. According to a PEW research study, 72% of people are concerned that global climate change will harm them personally at some point in their lifetime. And 80% of them are willing to make changes to how they live and work. The problem is that no one knows what changes to make. Everything you do is a cost/benefit analysis. Meaning that when you buy something, you are analyzing the money you are disposing of versus the value you are receiving. Or if you are performing a task you are analyzing the time it cost you versus the benefit you get in return. The problem is that we don’t know what the cost-benefit is for the environment. If you stop driving to work, what is the benefit? If you go vegan, what is the benefit to the environment? If you start recycling more, what is the benefit? We don’t know, but environmentalists are asking people to make changes without communicating the impact of the change. If I make the change, it is the equivalent of saving a dolphin in the pacific? Who knows?
Environmentalism's connection to socialism
Top priorities for environmentalists include the reduction of fossil fuel usage, recycling plastic and other materials, and the preservation of forests and wildlife habitats. However, for better or worse, there’s no money in achieving these goals. This means that governments and charities are the ones investing in these priorities, not businesses. We know that conservative governments move slowly and favor capitalism, Liberal governments have classically found a home at the center, and socialist governments are the ones to expand social services and government reach. Knowing this, obviously, environmentalists who want the government to achieve their goals must align with socialist governments, since they are the most likely to buy in. However, most people aren’t socialists. In fact, in the US and Canada calling someone a socialist, is almost a four-letter word.
Almost everyone cares about the environment and most people are concerned about it. But the socialist stigma that comes with calling yourself an environmentalist is a problem that environmentalists need to respond to.
Think about that
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