The Environmental Concerns and the naysayers

I just stumbled upon (not through StumbleUpon) this post on Cafe Hayek where the author comments, referring to a movie he has just watched,

One of these activists insisted that poor people really don’t want better housing, better nutrition, and better education.  Instead, says the well-housed, well-fed, highly educated “environmentalist,” poor people really prefer their quaint, traditional ways of life.

The author is referring to the documentary Mine Your Business in which they have, sort of, “exposed” the environmentalists. I haven’t seen the documentary, and I’m not even interested in seeing it, but I wonder why it surprises people if they are told that not everybody seeks the so-called development; quaint, traditional ways of life ARE healthy and feasible, given we have the required will and enough sense.

I would never promote disease-ridden backwardness in the name of environmentalism but blind progress hurts. It not only hurts the people, it also hurts the planets, and all the animals living on it. This is such a simple thing, but people stubbornly refuse to assimilate it.

Lots of shit happens in the name of activism and we have seen what nuisance the human rights activists orchestrate all over the world. The same must be true for the environmentalists too. But as a civilized society we do need to protect the human rights, and as a society that wants its generations to live and prosper on this (only) planet we HAVE to protect the environment. The ostrich mentality is going to kill us all.

More than material, progress is a spiritual thing. It may sound mythical at this juncture, our ancient, Vedic society was quite healthy. People lived simple lives but still they were erudite, rich and healthy, and above all, content and happy. This is not a defeatist approach. We can progress even while living quaint, simple lives. The problem with the world is not that we consume, the problem is that we over-consume. The simple life teaches us to take from nature only what we want. The simple life also teaches us to preserve and nurture our resources for our children, our grandchildren, and the posterity.

Documentaries like Mine Your Business are simply propaganda movies trying to show the dedicated environmentalists in bad light. Just have a look at this trailer and you’ll realize what a silly documentary it must be. The trailer itself looks so bland and deceptive. It’s not even creative.

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