Time to Stand Up to Elitist Eco-Moralists

Each week tens of thousands of motorists cross Orange County over the new San Joaquin Hills tollway--taking them around the unnerving congestion of the San Diego Freeway while traversing the pristine beauty of coastal hills. They are going to work, taking children to school, heading for a restful weekend--enjoying the quality of life they’ve earned and, indeed, savoring a treasured American right: “the pursuit of happiness.”

But the next time you enjoy that road’s respite from freeway chaos, remember this: A pack of self-anointed social arbiters--calling themselves “environmentalists”--labored to deny you that right with vigorous attempts to stop the tollway’s construction. An army of obstructionist lawyers and mouthy activists sought the triumph of rodents, bugs, reptiles and fowl over human beings.

By manipulating an intricate web of laws to create judicial delays, they sought to foist their narrow views over the public good. They paraded before the cameras and the pencil press. They rallied and ranted. Bathed in the self-righteousness of eco-moralism, they mocked common sense.

These folks go by high-minded names--Natural Resources Defense Council, Environmental Defense Fund, Sierra Club, Friends of the Earth--but, by their extremism, they far more deserve the label of “enviro-nihilists.” While they feed off the good will and conscience of well-meaning citizens who love nature, they violate the law of nature that there are moral distinctions between the human race and obscure critters.

Preserving the environment should mean living within boundaries of clean air and water and reasonable preservation of the beauty of our heritage. But the enviro-nihilists go beyond merely seeking sensibly to preserve; they engage in the uncompromising elitist worship of restricting our surroundings to the privileged few. They do so by exalting foolish and extreme standards of preservation.

Item: Federal authorities forced San Bernardino County to spend nearly $4 million to move the “footprint” of a new hospital 250 feet. Why? To create a “corridor” for the Delhi Sands flower-loving fly. While local officials decry the impact of this bizarre “fly corridor,” a UCLA professor waxes over this creature like Romeo over Juliet. Quoted in the Washington Post, the professor branded as “scurrilous” the Delhi’s detractors. “It’s a fly you can love,” he crooned. “It’s beautiful. Nothing is too wonderful to be true in the world of insects.” To ignore it, he concluded, is to “subvert the hand of God.” Really, now.

Item: Water is confiscated from California farmers to preserve the winter run Chinook salmon. But why? The winter run salmon, in fact, is physically identical to plentiful fish in the other salmon runs. The Fish and Wildlife Service has a solution: DNA testing. No joke. A DNA test is required to distinguish otherwise utterly indistinguishable fish. How? They clip a sample of fin, place it in a gel with nearly 100 other fish, train a laser on the gel which excites the material into emitting light. When passed through a set of filters, these light emissions reveal the genetic patterns of each sample, which is then fed into a computer for analysis. Voila--vive le difference! Such is the progression of our culture.

Item: As if the above examples aren’t sufficiently ludicrous, consider how our legal system deals with the animal and plant kingdom. In America, under the Endangered Species Act, a “threatened species” actually has standing to sue in its own right. We have advanced from ambulance chasers to elevating “species” to the stature of plaintiffs--just like real people. Thus, in 1995, the federal courts entertained the case of Marbled Murrelet v. Pacific Lumber Co. That same year, in Florida, our judiciary took up Loggerhead Turtle v. Volusia County Council.

Look next for an aggrieved Kermit the Frog filing suit on the grounds, “It isn’t easy being green.” Is this a great country or what?

These pretentious social nannies have imposed upon a rational world an irrational array of arbitrary and officious dictates--shrouding in silliness the distinctive foundations of our being.

Memo to our leader class: Stand up to these tub-thumping modern nihilists and free us to deal with the serious needs of a civilized society. It’s time to bring down the curtain on this theater of the absurd.