The crusade to nationalize land

Wish I'd said that!

[Reprinted from Issues & Views June 14, 2004]

Those who seek to "preserve" the environment as it was before humans degraded it, seek to defy the first laws of nature: change and adaptation. Everything in nature is in a constant state of change. Life is constant adaptation to that change. Species that fail to adapt go extinct. So it has always been, and so it will always be. Efforts to save this species or that, are largely an exercise in futility, and an incredible waste of money and manpower.

The recently announced program to spend $300 million to "save" the bull trout is but one example. Scientists believe that the trout's declining numbers is due to water temperatures that have been rising slowly since the Little Ice Age, and has nothing to do with human activity in the area. . . .

Future generations will easily see that current efforts to save the bull trout, or the loco weed, or any of the 2,000 obscure species on agency lists, is a thinly veiled, and often ridiculous excuse to get ownership or control of land into the hands of government, or a surrogate "land trust" organization.

Those who drive environmental policy have convinced the current generation that humans are destroying the environment at every turn; that the environment must be "preserved;" that government must take control of land use away from private individuals, and that failure to do so will leave future generations in hopeless despair.

Humans are not destroying the environment. Humans change the environment, as does every member of every other species. Nature adapts to the changes imposed by every species. Elephants wreak massive damage to the environment they invade. The species that remain adapt, or disappear. Termites destroy the environment they invade. The species that remain adapt, or disappear.

Humans have far greater sensitivity to, and appreciation for, the environment they occupy than any other species. Nature adapts to the changes imposed by humans. The environment is changed by humans, but it is not destroyed.

-- Henry Lamb; excerpt from "Stopping Time for Future Generations," The Eco-logic Powerhouse magazine, May 2004 [published by the Environmental Conservation Organization].

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