Or: "How to deceive about an important subject..."

The left cracks me up. I remain open-minded, but when I read stuff like this and note how much deception it uses, I'm still shocked.

The article attempts to convince the reader it's a "myth" to believe that "capitalism" is more environmentally friendly than "socialism." While I'm not sure I can state the ultimate answer to that question, I like to think I can spot certain forms of dishonesty and clever deception when I see them.

The pre-industrial eco-myth

First, the authors assert that primitive man is cleaner, environmentally:

The cleanest societies in the world are actually the non-industrial ones -- most of South America and Africa, for example. Where industry rises, pollution fills the air, water and land.

But the authors omit significant evidence that primitive people groups wreak much more environmental damage per person than moderns.

For example, much of South America's deforestation is due to primitive, inefficient slash-and-burn agricultural practices, not industrialization. It's of little comfort to point out someone has somewhat cleaner air when they're losing the very rainforests which help keep it that way.

Similarly, in Africa, it is again poor pre-industrial people groups who kill endangered species such as elephants:

For many the high price of ivory, about $100 a pound in the 1980s, was too tempting to resist. Local people often had few other ways to make a living, and subsistence farmers or herders could make more by selling the tusks of one elephant than they could make in a dozen years of farming or herding.

Undoubtedly such risks would not be taken, risks which could lead to prision time, if the farmers had a higher income.

The authors also do not inform their readers of the horrible "brown cloud" smothering Asia, which kills hundreds of thousands each year. What causes it? Some part is from inefficient factories and vehicles, yes, but forest fires to clear vegetation, dung-fueled stoves, burning peat, and other types of "bio fuels" used in primitive living conditions contribute just as much.

Nor are readers informed of the immense per-person environmental footprint that even Native Americans left:

Notions that "pre-capitalist" Indians lived in harmony with nature-especially the buffalo-are thoroughly exploded in the new works by these anthropologists and historians. Indians used the tools at their disposal, mostly fire and cunning, to hunt buffalo. "Box burning," a common tactic, involved setting simultaneous fires on all four sides of a herd. The French word "Brulé," or "burnt," referred to the Sicangu ("burnt thigh") Sioux division whose survivors of hunting fires were burned on the legs. Charles McKenzie, traveling the plains in 1804, observed entire herds charred from Indian fires. Another favored hunting tactic, the "buffalo jump," involved luring a herd after an Indian dressed in a buffalo skin. At a full run, the brave led the herd to a cliff, where he leapt to a small ledge while the buffalo careened over the edge to their deaths. Either of these methods led to horrible waste and inefficient use of resources.

And any visitor to Cahokia Mounds in southern Illinois can learn firsthand of the terrible environmental impact pre-industrial people can have upon the land.

It's interesting that the author just made this assertion and moved on, providing no supporting evidence. Perhaps that's because even a modicum of research would tend to undermine this argument.

The Soviets weren't socialists?

Next, the article attempts to convince people that Soviet environmental destruction was not a result of socialism:

Conservatives point to the environmental devastation of the former Soviet Union as proof that socialism isn't it. And it is true, the former Soviet Union is by far more environmentally ravaged than the West....

Conservatives claim that socialism was so destructive to the environment because no one owned private property. "When no one owns private property, there is no incentive to keep it clean and pure because no one has a stake in keeping up its value," writes Rush Limbaugh. According to this logic, however, America's national and public parks should be more polluted than private lands -- which they are not, because a large majority of the population reveres and protects our public parks. Furthermore, the American people have hired national park rangers to serve as custodians for these lands -- which refutes this conservative argument outright.

A more accurate reason why Soviet socialism was so environmentally destructive was because the regulator and the producer were the same entity: the Soviet government. Moscow itself was in control of production, and it regulated itself no better than any factory dumping pollution regulates itself. That is, there was no higher authority telling the Soviet planners that they couldn't pollute in their efforts to boost production. Contrary to what conservatives claim, the Soviet economy wasn't over-regulated; it wasn't regulated at all.

The article (with a straight face apparently!) expects the reader to believe that when government micromanages every aspect of industry, industry is not being "regulated"! Worse, the authors go on to deploy phrases like: "In contrast to the unregulated Soviet economy..." as though the Soviet economy were some example of laissez-faire capitalism!

No: Socialism demands that the government control the means of production. Yet the authors admit that the "regulator and regulated were the same entity: the Soviet government." No kidding! That's the textbook definition of socialism -- of government running industry!

But when this happens, the authors call it an "unregulated" situation -- and pretend it's somehow not "socialism" -- as though perhaps more governmental control were still needed! This is a deeply dishonest use of language, since most understand "regulation" to mean governmental regulation; and Soviet industry was 100% percent under the control of government. It's not even possible to speak of a higher level regulation.

Twisted wording aside, the underlying point they're making is a true one, and a deeply conservative one, but many readers, unexposed to conservative arguments, will not recognize it as such when presented this way:

The authors use "regulation" to mean that there is no natural system of checks and balances. Yet that is precisely the reason conservatives disfavor government -- it is an unchecked monopoly and can and does often run amok -- whereas a group of companies have nowhere near as much control, and (in most cases) can be kept in line through a minimum set of laws, competition, and consumer responses to their actions.

Another complaint is hilarious: The authors moan "there was no higher authority" to restrain the state! Certainly that couldn't have been a higher human authority because they would have been subject to the same conflict of interest, and the authors would have similarly discounted them as part of "the government" also. So the authors seems to be complaining Soviet leaders lacked any religious convictions about a "higher authority" to restrain them. But wasn't that also a direct outgrowth of the left's secular humanism?

Finally, on this point, we might ask: Perhaps the Soviet government just had the wrong emphasis? Perhaps they could have just paid more attention to the environment?

As you'll see below, people only start caring about efficient, clean production when basic needs are being met. Since the inefficient government-run industries in the USSR could often barely produce anything at all, the idea of doing it more efficiently, with fewer waste an emissions, is absurd.

You can't take, say, a factory that barely creates any tractors at all and demand them to hold up production until they discover cleaner ways of doing it. That research takes surplus cash and time and manpower, and the solution often demands a higher level of technological sophistication. None of this is possible when peoples' basic needs are not yet being met, and there is no surrounding economy from which to draw those high-tech solutions. You are force to make a choice between producing tractors badly and starving people to death in their absence.

Government-managed ecological devastation

The argument about national parks also gives an incomplete picture.

According to this logic, however, America's national and public parks should be more polluted than private lands -- which they are not, because a large majority of the population reveres and protects our public parks. Furthermore, the American people have hired national park rangers to serve as custodians for these lands -- which refutes this conservative argument outright.

Yes, there are instances where the government seems to adequately protect public resources. But the fact that the government has "hired" someone to take care of it in some instances doesn't prove it's always so!

For example, there are many cases where public lands are overgrazed or timber is sold off for just dollars an acre. As a result, some now recommend auctioning off exclusive "forrage rights" to these lands, in order to ensure the lands are used efficiently -- rather than overgrazed -- or even that environmentalist groups can buy up these rights to protect certain areas. (Precisely the solution Rush recommends above.)

Likewise, there are huge swaths of natural land in private hands. In Missouri, 85% of all forested lands are privately owned. And Ted Turner is the largest private landowner in the USA, and there are many other environmental groups who buy up and protect land. In doing so, they (perhaps inadverantly) admit they believe private ownership guarantees better long-term ecological than public ownership.

Turner also demonstrates that there need be no conflict between capitalism and good stewardship of land.

Air pollution

Next, the article places much emphasis on air pollution as a measure of environmental quality. It shows that more-regulated countries tend to have fewer emissions than less-regulated ones.

By far, Europe and Japan are more heavily regulated than the U.S. And Europe and Japan are also cleaner than the U.S.

But once again, an important facts are being withheld from the reader, most notably, the use of nuclear power. France gets nearly 80% of its energy from nuclear power, Belgium 60%, Germany about 34%, Sweden 42%, and Japan also about 30%. This undoubtedly contributes to improving European and Japanese air quality.

In contrast, the US relies primarily upon coal, which currently produces much air pollution, and gets only about 20% of power from nuclear energy. Thus, western Europe probably generates about twice as much of it's energy from nuclear as the US, with a proportional improvement in air quality.

Yet the authors would have us believe that "regulation" had a much bigger impact than this huge difference in fuels!

Also notice that it is their fellow leftists who are nuclear power's greatest opponent.

What leads to improvements?

The authors try to distract from evidence that increasing technological sophistication naturally leads to more efficient (and thus cleaner) uses of resources, using slippery language like this:

... even a domestic review of American history proves that government, not the free market, has been at the forefront of environmental protection. Every pro-environmental policy that the free market has ever adopted was forced upon it by government. The Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, the Superfund, as well as the bans on asbestos, leaded gasoline, DDT, strip mining, aerial nuclear testing, and untreated waste dumping were all acts of congress, not business. Big business has never voluntarily sought to lower its profit margins to protect the environment.

This formulation is absurd: Instead of trying to determine if major environmental improvements happened because of law or improved technology, the authors simply assume law cleans up the environment, and nothing else does, and then points out that government makes laws, not businesses, as though it were even possible for a business to pass a law.

Note they don't say that actual "improvements" came from government, just "policy". Note they allege business never sought to "lower it's profit margins" to protect the environment, but in doing so, sidestep the question whether it's actually more profitable to protect the environment and whether business will naturally do so without government. A straw man argument.

In reality, I suspect the situation is closer to what the Cato Institute suggests, when it says:

There are dozens of studies showing that, as per capita income initially rises from subsistence levels, air and water pollution increases correspondingly. But once per capita income hits between $3,500 and $15,000 (dependent upon the pollutant), the ambient concentration of pollutants begins to decline just as rapidly as it had previously increased. This relationship is found for virtually every significant pollutant in every single region of the planet. It is an iron law.

The article goes on to suggest that some regulation does, in fact, have a positive impact, but also points to many cases where greater environmental improvements were achieved before government regulations were imposed than afterwards -- something the authors of "Myth" article undoubtedly know, as they have carefully crafted their language to avoid contradicting this point.

Conclusion

Regardless of the actual answers to these questions are, the character and tactics of the "Myth" article's authors should be clear: These are people who don't mind omitting reams of important data and counterexamples, redefining "socialism" when put into practice as an "unregulated economy", pretending some of their opponent's positions are their own, and deliberately misrepresenting arguments in order to create the appearance of having refuted them. The phrasing of certain arguments shows they are already familliar with the data they hide from their audience, so the deception is a knowing one.

These authors are simply dishonest.