Social Environmentalism

A meaningful, successful, and earnest American environmental movement will not see its way into strict legislation or international pacts under the current capitalist policies. The United States, being one of only two nations to have not ratified the Kyoto Protocol, was largely convinced by corporatist idealism. Murray Rothbard, a key figure of libertarian idealism and a significant supporter of what he called “free market anarchism”, or what I like to call, “free market fundamentalism”, and his followers argued that individual pollutants that are emitted are still, by law, private or Lockean property (interesting, considering John Locke also believed that a person putting their labor into an object made it their property at least in part, and that the idea of private property was a contradiction of the Bible). Adhering to something like the Kyoto Protocol which calls for CO2 emission caps and emission-trading would be a violation of individual rights and is something to be handled in a class action tort.

This is a product of capitalist fundamentalism dictating government policy more than Washington or public interest could ever hope to. It is, by definition, fascism.

I think Benito Mussolini said it better than I can: "Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power."

Or maybe FDR: “The first truth is that the liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is fascism—ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power.”

Free market environmentalism is insulting. What's best for business is not what's best for the American people. What's best for business is virtually always at odds with what's best for the conservationist and environmentalist.