Of Watermelons and Conservationists

Notice how the prescriptions of the radical environmentalists trend in the same direction: more government controls over private life. Certainly the global warming agenda is all about how government needs to control numerous aspects of our lives, from the way we travel (cars bad, public transportation good), what we eat (meat bad, vegetables good), the comfort in our homes (warm bad, cold good—except in the summer, when it is the other way around), to family size (three children bad, no children good).

If these people just limited themselves to preaching their ideas we could debate them and let people make a choice—which invites the risk that these proposals would be exposed as being irrelevant or even counterproductive to the achievement of the environmental purposes in which they are wrapped—but instead these environmentalists loudly call for elaborate government programs to force compliance with their schemes. It seems that it is the solution, the governmental mandates and controls, that matters far more than the real environmental issues. The enviro-advocates routinely reject better solutions that do not involve government intrusion. For good reason such state controllers in environmental clothing have earned the nickname, “Watermelons”: green on the outside, but red on the inside. These are not seedless Watermelons, as I would add that the Watermelons’ solutions rest on the seedy old notion that government knows best—the monarchist worldview that the American Revolution resisted and that the American experiment has in practice so often refuted.

I suppose that these environmentalists are eager to rely upon the force of government, because they seek to inhibit some very basic human endeavors, such as earning a living, bearing children, and breathing. The radical enviro agenda destroys jobs, sees people (and their offspring) as the source of all environmental problems, and has named the chief gas people exhale as they breathe—carbon dioxide—public pollutant number one. Only the coercive powers of government could hope to curb action that is such a natural part of life and living.

This Watermelon formula is no accident. The more common the activity that must be controlled, the more sweeping the governmental controls that are called for. And, the more undefined—or even indefinable—the problem, the easier it is to justify nearly any governmental action served up as a solution. Global warming serves the pro-government agenda of the Watermelons very well.

This is by no means an argument to ignore the environment. Care for the environment is as old as the Garden of Eden. It was one of the first commandments given to our first parents. “And I, the Lord God, took the man, and put him in the Garden of Eden, to dress it, and to keep it.” (Moses 3:15) Such counsel has been echoed through modern prophets. In 1833 the Lord revealed that the earth’s resources are “to be used with prudence and thanksgiving.” (Doctrine and Covenants 89:11)

This was not, however, man-is-the-problem environmentalism. Man is the focal point of the world, the reason for its creation. The Lord’s counsel is make the most of the earth and do not pollute your nest. This concept lies at the heart of what has been called conservation. Conservationists recognize that the world is a stewardship entrusted to man to be used for man’s best advantage. Again, as the Lord has revealed to modern prophets,

all things which come of the earth, in the season thereof, are made for the benefit and the use of man, both to please the eye and to gladden the heart; yea, for food and for raiment, for taste and for smell, to strengthen the body and to enliven the soul. And it pleaseth God that he hath given all these things unto man; for unto this end were they made to be used, with judgment, not to excess, neither by extortion. (Doctrine and Covenants 59:18-20)

The difference is that to the Watermelons, people are a problem, and the fewer the better. The conservationist sees the environment as a treasure house to be managed for the benefit of man, and when subjected to the creativity and wisdom of the mind of man can become an inexhaustible source of increasing wealth and benefit.

The Malthusians and their modern disciples have been predicting the environmental doom of mankind for centuries, and those unlucky enough to have followed their prescriptions have found doom and destruction. Whenever we have trusted instead to the creed of the conservationists who would manage the world’s resources in line with human incentives and martial them for human benefit, the result has been increasing wealth and welfare, just as God intended for His children.