ECOLOGYGovernment Control Of The Environment

Gary Allen, a graduate of Stanford Uni­versity and one of the nation 's topauthorities on civil turmoil and the NewLef t, is author of Communist RevolutionIn The Streets - a highly praised anddefinitive volum e on revolutionary tacticsand strategies; published by WesternIslands. Mr. Allen, a former instructor ofboth history and English, is active inanti-Communist and other humanitariancauses. No w a film writer, author, andjournalist , he is a Contributing Editorto A ME R ICA N OPINI O N. Gary A llen isalso nationally celebrated as a lecturer.

• WH E N the. Esta blishment shifts into anew propaganda campaign it do es so withthe subtlety of an inebriate elephanttrying to dance the Watusi in a chinacloset. First it was poverty, and everyimaginable bureaucrat was out searchingfor government -certified poverts; then itwas th e " peace" movemen t , with itsangry legions of Castroite paci fists; nowthe " in" thin g is " conservation" or , as itis known amon g the usual " Liberal" pressagents and phonies , " ecology ." Checkalmos t any recent issue of such Estab­lishment slicks as Life or Look or Time orNewsweek and you will find at least onedoomsday article about the grisly sta te ofthe American environment.

Fo r those too hypnotized by th eanest hetube to read , the fede rally li­censed te levision networks are now de­voting hours to promotion of the ideathat man is poisoning his streams , pol­luti ng his at mos phere, brutalizing hisenviron ment, absorbing natural resourcesat a crippling rat e , becoming engulfed inhis own refuse , and at th e same time

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multiplying his numbers like over-sexedrat s to further the destruction of hisenvironment. On September 14, 1969 ,the National Council of Churches pre­sented a series called " High Rise Living"on the N.B.C. netw ork 's Frontiers OfFaith. Th e first guest was identified Com ­muni st Pete Seeger , introduced in feignedinno cence as a "conservation ist and well­kn own folk singer." The fro nt iers of th eKreml in's favorite bard know no bounds.On March 20 , 1969 , th e Xerox Cor­poration spo nso red anoth er nationwidetelevision special on ecology , also fea­turing Comrade Seeger.

Meanwhil e , wide-eyed youths in ournati on ' s high schools and colleges arebeing enthra lled with horripilant ta lesfrom such fearmonge rs of eco logy asStanford's Dr. Paul Ehrlich, author ofThe Population Bomb , probably the big­gest bestseller on college campuses in adecade. " It is already too late to avoidfamines th at will kill millions , possibly by1975 ," Dr. Ehrlich declar es. He alsopred icts the to tal pollution and death ofthe world 's oceans by 1979.

Oh , it' s scary stuff.Rud y Abramso n of the Los A ngeles

Times and Washington Post proclaimstha t the ecology movement will be "o urSpu tnik for the 1970s." In referr ing to" Amer ica th e Ugly ," th e Esta blishment' sTime magazine croa ks wit h its usualhomogenized sirnilies: " The environmentmay well be the gut issue tha t can unify apolarized nati on in the 1970s." Even thepedagogou s John Kenneth Galbrait h hasdeclared : "Pollutio n may well be thenati on 's most bro adly based and demo­cra tic effort. " And, of course . chie f

Establishmentarian Richard Nixon agrees.The President announced in his State ofthe Union message :

The great question of the '70s is:Shall we surrender to our surround­ings or shall we make our peacewith nature and begin to makereparations for the damage we havedone to our air, to our land and toour water?

In his 1971 Budget message the Presi­dent delighted " Liberal" pundits by co­opting their ecology issue. Conservativeswould , of course, applaud th e Presidentfor cutting the ground from under"Liberal" issues if the Marxist solutionspro posed by the "Liberals" were notadopted in the process. Aft er all , theproblems of our environment are genuine .But ecology is an issue on which the" Liberals" and radicals have, fo r the mostpart , seized the initiative.*

Thro ugh the use of highly emo tionalrhetoric , and by playing upon fears ofimpend ing social and environmentalchaos, the Left is hoping to convertsincere and legitimate concern over thequality of our environ ment into accep­tance of governmen t con trol of th atenvironment. The object is to make the"Green Revolution" part of the RedRevolution by using the Establishmentmedia to stimulate the usual over-reactionamong the American masses thro ughexaggeration, magnification, and distor­tion of a genuine probl em. The obj ect isfederal control of the environment inwhich we all must live.

While the problems of pollut ion havebeen with us for centuries, it is only in

· Webster defines eco logy, wh ich co mes fromth e Gree k word meaning house, as ( I ) thebr anch of biology t h at de als with th e rel ationsbe tween living organisms and th eir environ­ment ; (2) in sociology , t he rel ationshipbetween the di stribution o f human groups withreferen ce to material re sources, and the co n­seq ue nt so cial and cultural patterns.

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recent months that the Establishment hasbegun to feed the issue through itspropaganda machines. A few Americanswith highly sensitive proboscides havealready smelled a rodent. As Guy Wrightof the San Francisco Examiner observed:

. . . there's something about theecology kick that disturbs me. Mostof this enthusiasm was artificiallyinduced. And it is being deliber­ately manipulated. Like the teenie­boppers who squeal for a favoritesinger, the people being manipu­lated don 't know it and will swearit isn't true. But it 's there.

Keith Lampe, an activist in Commu­nist Je rry Rubi n's radica l Yippie Move­ment , released an article in August of1969 which was widely repr inted in theradical underground press. He noted :

A lmost certainly within six oreight months there will occuramong most young activists a shiftof consciousness emphatically awayfrom campus-and-Vietnam issuesand energetically into issues per­taining to the ecology emergency.

In early 1969 hardly anyone knewwhat ecology meant. Yet , by the end ofthe year, Lynn Sherr of Associated Presswas writing : " American yo uth has founda new supercause .. . . The yo ung aremobil izing with some of the same inten­sity th at has gone into ant iwar move­ments, against the pollution of air, landand sea." The radical Berkeley Tribetipped off the objective in its issue forJan uary 2 ,1970:

The peace movement , whichrevived briefly this past fall, hassunk again into a lethargy that ismore than seasonal. No one realizesthis more than the Moratoriumleaders, who have watched theirconstituency slip away as the

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months go by . In order to broadentheir base in 1970, they extendedtheir program to include environ­mental control . . . as well as im­mediate withdrawal.

Yo u will notice tha t while the studentradicals have shifted gears in unison withthe Establishment against which the yth ink they are revolt ing, th e radical stu­dent leadership remains constant. Ecologyis to be th e great umb rella of th e Seventies,with every radical issue fro m the governingof private prop erty to population con troltied to environment. Newsweek of Decem­ber 20, 1969 , informs us:

While front pages still reportthat the major student protests arecentered on the war and the draft,concerned college students are en­listing increasingly in the fight for acleaner, purer, less ravished environ­ment .. . .

Joined by former antiwar activ­ists, y oung Democrats, crew-cutfraternity members and so-calledhippies, the environment movementon campus is a response to alarmsas varied as pesticides, oil slicks,. . . and car-exhaust pollution . . . .

Still, the tone of the antiwarmovement has influenced the fightagainst pollution. "Many students,"says Wayne Miyao, a social-sciencemajor, "view environment problemsand Vietnam as manifestations ofthe same political and economicsituation."

Elsewhere as well, the movementcuts across political lines. Half themembers of the month -old EcologyAction organization at Columbiaare fo rmer memb ers of SDS. Butthe other half, said a radical, "areun-political freaks . . . . "

Lynn Sherr of Associated Press com­ments on the similarit ies between th eViet nik and ecology movements :

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In many ways , ecology activityis largely an outgrowth of TheMovement [the New Left ] - anti­war, antighetto , antiEstablishment[sicl .

In their own terms, both groupssee the status quo which they de­fine as war or pollution as threaten­ing to end life on this planet. Bothsee "the sy stem " which they con­sider government or giant corpora­tions as the adversary. Both rejectold values, old politics, piecemealsolutions. Both talk of revolution.And both blame the profit system.

Ecology radicals have donn ed gasmasks to invade auto sho ws, picket edcampus recruiters for oil companies andman ufacturers of pest icides, and de­veloped a rhet or ic for ecology of whichLenin would have been proud . Harvard 'sunderground Old Mole recommends:

In order to localize and focusthe environmental crisis, ecologicalradicals can engage in exemplaryactions: plug up a belching smoke­stack with cement. Radical studentscan make radical ecological de­mands on universities - the labora­tories of death technology, theivory towers of technocratic ideol­ogy . ...

Sporadic eco-guerrilla actionsand local piecemeal demonstrationscan be effective and revolution­ary . ... Ecology by definition can­not be reformist. Ensuring an in­habitable earth requires an interna­tional revolution in order to estab­lish a worldwide planet of humanlife which conforms to the organicrequirements of the planet.

Th e new ecology game provides theradic als with a whole new audience ofpoten tial recru its . After all , th e " peace"movement had its limit ation s. No Ame ri­can with any knowledge of Communism,

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or any sense of patrioti sm, would parti­cipate in a demonstra tion led by school­boy Lenins carrying the Vietcong flag. Butconcern about the quality of our environ­ment bridges social , po litical, and reli­gious lines . It presents an o pportunityfor the greatest con since w.e. Fieldspassed himself off as a temperance leaderand the happy father of ten.

When a "scientist" carrying the pres­tige of a Ph.D . starts throwing "facts"and "figures" at students, how can theyassess their validity? On most issues ittakes anothe r scien tist to refute the fear ­ful projections made by the radical pro­fessors shouting of eco logy. But , ofcourse, it is only the radicals who areinvited to address student assemb lies.

Fo llowing in th e wak e of the Left istintellectuals are th e Leftis t polit icians, asusual pitching th eir con to yo uth . Ty picalof the eco logy bunk being aimed atstu dents is an article by Senator GaylordNelson in the Marxist Progressive maga­zine of November 1969:

The real loser in man's greedydrive is the youth of this countryand the world. Because of thestupidity of their elders, the chil­dren of today face an ugly world inthe near future, with dangerouslyand deadly polluted air and water;overcrowded development; feste r­ing mounds of debris; and an insuf­ficient amount ofopen space to getaway from it all.

Since youth is again the greatloser, perhaps the only hope forsaving the environment and puttingquality back into life may welldepend on our being able to tap theenergy, idealism, and drive of theoncoming generation that , other­wise, will inherit the poisonous airand deadly waters of the earth.

Senator Nelson is a foun der of 'TheFirst National Environmental Teach-In."Den is Hayes, the nat ional coo rdinator of

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th is effo rt, says that on April 22, 1970,ecology teach-ins will be held at ninehundred colleges and four thousand highschools across the country. The program,employing the same techniques as thoseused to promote the cause of the Viet ­cong among American students , wasevolved from a meeting of student ecol ­ogy radicals financed and sponsored bythe Department of Health , Education andWelfare. * Accor ding to Guy Wright in theSan Francisco Examiner :

Last October 100 student lead­ers, mostly activist types , were in­vited to Washington for a four-dayconference on environmental pollu­tion. A ll their expenses were paidfrom a $50,000 fund Bob Finchput up as Secretary of Health,Education and Welfare.

On the second day Senator Gay­lord Nelson (D.-Wis.) made an un­scheduled appearance. He just hap­pened to hear about the confer­ence, he said, and decided to dropin. For a casual visitor he camecuriously prepared with a concrete

"T ypical of the types Secretary Finch broughtto Washington is the tyke quoted by Wright asproclaiming: "America is malignan t . ... Wemu st take t he power away from the elite andredistrib ute it!"

David Rubin descr ib ed Secretary Ro bertFi nch 's ecology meeting in Cross Currents ofDecembe r 20, 1969 : "The st rictly po liticaldi me ns io ns of th e pollut io n and environme ntalde terioration pro blem we re ha m mered ho me toove r on e hundred gra d uate st uden ts, includingth e author , who gathere d at Airlie Hou seo utsi de Wash ing ton, D.C. , a few w eeks ago foran environmental confer en ce at the expense ofHEW. The way in which these st uden ts - mo stof them straight [n on-hippie, non -rad ical] andfrom moderat e to co nservat ive un iver siti es ­reacted to the speakers and co nducted them­selves during t he fo ur da ys of meetings and ta lksessions should be ca use fo r alarm amo ngind ust ria l and government po lluters . In a wo rd ,the st udents were ra dicalized, de termined tofo rce the po lluters and t heir poli t ical hen chmeninto co ntrition - perhaps in a manner that willpara llel protests against the Viet nam War."

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proposal. He promised the studentleaders $25,000 and office space ifthey would try to close down theirschools one day next spring for anationwide teach-in on environ­mental pollution.

Nobody is willing to admit whoselected the date of April twenty-secondfor the "Earth Day" teach-ins. That is,after all, the one -hundredth anniversaryof Lenin's birth. A coincidence youthink? The student activists just picked aconvenient weekend? Hardly. Apriltwenty-second falls on a Wednesday. Formonths the radical and Communist Presshas been detailing plans to celebrateLenin's centennial birthday with world­wide demonstrations . April twenty­second is as familiar a date to thesepeople as Washington's Birthday is to realAmericans. The selection of this date as"Earth Day" provides an excellent indica­tion of who is running the campus ecol­ogy movement.

I telephoned the Teach-In's nationalcoordinator, Denis Hayes, to ask him howApril twenty-second happened to beselected for the ecology festivities. Mr.Hayes, late of Harvard 's Graduate Schoolof Government, had obviously memo­rized his answer: "It also happens to beWilliam Shakespeare's birthday , QueenElizabeth's birthday, Maryanna Kauf­man's birthday and her Aunt Ann's birth­day, but I am sure that none of thoseentered into Gay lord Nelson's tho ughtswhen he and the steering committee orwhoever it was chose that date ."

Mr. Hayes should avoid lying aboutmatters so easily checked. The date set­tled upon as the natal day of WilliamShakespeare is April 23 , IS64 ; QueenElizabeth was born on April 21 , 1926.Which leads one to suspect that evenHayes' friends Maryanna Kaufman andher aunt (if they exist) might well havebeen born on some Friday the thirteenthfor all he knows. What else do yousuppose Mr. Hayes lies about?

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The sponsors of Earth Day have al­ready prepared a 367 -page manifesto,published by Ballentine, called The En­vironmental Handbook. The sponsoringsteering committee , according to Hayes ,includes Gaylord Nelson , Far LeftRepublican Pete McCloskey of California,Sidney Howe of the Conservation Foun­dation, Paul Ehrlich of Stanford, HaroldJordoff of the University of Wisconsin,and three students . The EnvironmentalHandbook is totally Marxist in orienta­tion and contains excerpts from thewritings of all the key environment radi­cals. According to columnist Paul Scott ,Earth Day already has the backing ofWalter Reuther's United Auto Workersand "several of the big tax -free liberalfoundations. "

This ecology business has a particularattraction for hippies, who live in filthbut claim to love the beauties of nature.According to Professor Paul Ehrlich, agood deal of the success of the ecologyrevolution is to be attributed to the"much despised 'hippie' movement ... amovement wrapped up in Zen Buddhism,physical love and a disdain for materialwealth. It is small wonder that oursociety is horrified at hippies' behavior ­it goes against our most cherished reli­gious and ethical ideas."

The pseudo-philosophy which attractshippies to champion the "Green Revolu­tion" is projected in their anthem This IsThe Age Of Aquarius, from the hip -teaseshow, Hair. The hippie subculture is verybig on astrology, and the astrologers tellus that we have left the 2,OOO-year "Ageof Pisces" and have entered the "Age ofAquarius ." The hippies interpret this asan end to the tiresome "work ethic" ofthe age of Christianity and the beginningof the age of collectivism. As Vera Reeddeclares in Towards Aquarius:

Up to now the most valuablefactor to evolve in world states isthe immense fusion of peoplescreated by the United States of

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America and the United States[sic] of Soviet Russia Thecontribution of the U.S.S.R ismore immediately progressive andvaluable. In face of strenuous op­position from the rest of the world[sic] Russia has had the vision tocreate a new order more in line withthe symbolism ofAquarius than anyso far attempted . . . . From Russiathe Aquarian note of hope ringscrystal clear and from her maycome a yet finer expression ofhuman progress.

Rod Chase of Liberation News Service(the underground equivalent of Asso­ciated Press) tells us:

The Aquarius is humanity indistribution. Aquarians want every­body to do his own thing. Aquar­ians can be so commune mindedthat they sometimes believe thatthe home and the family should beabandoned and the children shouldbe rearedby the state.

Chase also says that "Orwell's 1984,an Aquarian prophecy, is likely to befulfilled. Privacy and individuality willvanish. [How this squares with "do yourown thing" Chase doesn't explain].. . Aquarians often see the whole world

as a commune. Boundaries to them arearbitrary and archaic. Wendell Willkie'sOne World is characteristically Aquarian.And then they say we are likely to haveanother revolution in late 1970 - I wouldsay by summer 1970 or in 1971 when.. . Uranus will be on America's Saturn

and Libra. The Uranus-Saturn conjunc­tion is an aspect of tremendous up­heaval."

Ah yes, astrology, ecology, and Com­munism. The antipathy to Christianity,capitalism, and patriotism is written inthe stars. This is some con game!

What particularly bugs these self­worshipping Humanists is Genesis 1:28 ,

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which states: "And God said unto them,Be fruitful and multiply, and replenishthe earth, and subdue it; and havedominion over the fish of the sea, andover the fowl of the air, and over every­thing that moveth upon the earth." In"The Historical Roots Of Our EcologicCrisis," Professor Lynn White of U.C.L.A.maintains:

What we do about ecology de­pends on our ideas of the man-na­ture relationship. More science andmore technology are not going toget us out of the present ecologiccrisis until we find a new religion,or rethink our old one. The beat­niks who are the basic revolution­aries of our time, show a soundinstinct in their affinity for ZenBuddhism . . . .

Hence we shall continue to havea worsening ecologic crisis until wereject the Christian axiom that na­ture has no reason for existencesave to serve man. (The Environ­mental Handbook,pp. 24-25.)

Stanford's Professor Ehrlich , a favoriteof the slick Establishment magazines ,contends that in order to survive in thecoming years :

. . . somehow we've got tochange from a growth-oriented ex­ploitive system to one focused onstability and conservation. Our en­tire system of orienting to naturemust undergo a revolution. Andthat revolution is going to be ex­tremely difficult to pull off, sincethe attitudes of Western Culturetowards nature are deeply rooted inJudea-Christian tradition . . . .

Before the Christian era trees,springs, hills, streams and otherobjects of nature had guardianspirits. These spirits had to beapproached and placated beforeone could safely invade their ter-

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ritory, As [Lynn] White says, "Bydestroying pagan animism, Chris­tianity made it possible to exploitnature in a mood of indifference tothe feelings ofnatural objects. "'*

Another theme which pervades theecology movement is the idea that" capitalism is the cause of all our pollu­tion problems." Ignoring the fact thatmuch of our pollution is the fault ofineffective government sewage and trashdisposal, the Lenin Day EnvironmentalHandbook declares boldly: "Pollution issomebody's profit." Lynn Sherr ofAssociated Press observes:

Indeed , to the young ecologists,capitalism is Ecology Enemy No.1. They criticize the growth motive- America's annual attempt topush the Gross National Producthigher and higher.

Writing in Harvard's radical Old Mole,ecology activist Tom Gallagher claims :

One of the functions of the leftin the United States is to show howenvironmental destruction is basedupon a system of human exploita­tion and how only the abolition ofcapitalism will provide the proba­bility for the preservation of theearth as an inhabitable place . . . .

Ecological destruction 0/1 aglobal scale is a direct product ofAmerican imperialism . . . .

Not until imperialism is defeatedin the third world and is replacedby socialism at home can we beginto deal with the problem of theenvironment in a rational way. Atthis point in history the ecologists'best friends are the Viet Congo

The idea that radical socialism is thecure for environmental problems isabsolutely absurd. The United States ofRussia [sic], the Aquarian ideal, has

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pollution problems as extensive as any inAmerica. Victor Zorza reports in the LosAngeles Times of February 15, 1970, thateven Pravda has confessed: "we are turn­ing the atmosphere of our major indus­trial regions and large cities into a dumpfor poisonous industrial wastes." Despitethe fact that the U.S.S.R. has only fivepercent as many motor vehicles as theUnited States, that Aquarian Paradise hasa severe air pollution problem both be­cause its technology is so far behind oursand because of Communist indifferenceto the quality of the environment. VictorZorza notes of the Soviet Union:

.. . new factories are still beingbuilt without any purificationplant, for water or smoke. Indeedwhere smoke filters are provided,they often [says Pravda] "workbadly, or not at all." More than halfof the Soviet towns discharge theirsewage, untreated, directly intonearby waters.

Clearly the efforts of the "" 'new en­vironmentalists" to create ecology propa­ganda for the purpose of shoving moresocialism down the throat of America areludicrous. But, while the radical ecol­ogists sow Marxist propaganda below, thepoliticians above are preparing to reap thesocialist crop. There is no secret about all

'Part of this anti-Christian attitude of theleading ecologists is reflected by U.C. Berkeleyinstructor Clifford Humphrey in an attack onChristmas trees. Honest! Humphrey, who hasworked closely in anti-American activities withCommunists like Bettina Aptheker and PeterCamejo, emphasizes in Politics Of Ecology: "Iwant to mention one specific consumer habitthat has outlived whatever usefulness it mayhave had - Christmas trees." In December,Berkeley radicals actually held ceremonialburial services for Christmas trees. It is Interest­ing to recall that one of the first moves afterthe Communists ' November Revolution inRus sia was the banning of Christmas trees (J 00Things You Should Know About CommunismAnd Religion, Report of the House Committeeon Un-American Activities, Page 8.)

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of this . It's right out in the open. StuartLoory of the Los Angeles Times notes:

Mr. Nixon talked in his State ofthe Union message last monthabout developing a "nationalgrowth policy" to make certainthat new progress is not over­whelmed by new problems. Thisimplies the kind of centralized plan­ning that has long been anathemato the American Way and which hasproved economically destructive inthe Soviet Union.

But perhaps - with all the beercans and soda bottles and wastepaper and smog piling up in theenvironment - the time for suchplanning has come.

The doomsday environmentalists areeven using ecology as a ploy to propa­gandize Americans about the need forworld government. "Nations are such anartificial construct from an ecologicalpoint of view," says The EnvironmentalHandbook, "that any further energiespoured into them are almost certain to domore long-term harm than good. Na­tions ... must be phased out as quicklyas possible and replaced with tribal orregional autonomous economies . .. . " Inits issue of February 5, 1970, the SanFrancisco underground newspaper GoodTimes assures us: "Ecology is the issue bywhich we unite all Americans, and prob­ably Russians too." Not surprisingly , theUnited Nations has developed a suddeninterest in environmental problems.

Not only has the ecology movementbeen perverted into a collectivist OneWorld movement, but many of its mostprestigious spokesmen are total regres­sivists. Rudy Abramson writes in the LosAngeles Times of February 15, 1970:

Some of the environmentalactivism undoubtedly results from arevulsion to technology, the mili­tary, even science. It is a way of

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crying out against the dominationof computers, automobiles, tele­phones and credit cards. It is asearch for the past.

What the radical ecologists are callingfor is an abandonment of our high stan­dards of living and a return to theprimitive drudgery from which ourancestors worked so hard to escape . In achapter in The Environmental Handbookentitled "Suggestions Toward An Eco­logical Platform," Keith Murray de­clares :

The runaway U.S. growtheconomy must be stabilized to haltthe destruction of the world re­source base before we choke in thewaste products of our affluence.There should be a thorough re­assessment and reversal of un­limited economic growth as a na­tional goal. The first and mostcrucial step is a guaranteed income,to break the compulsory linkbetween jobs and income that hasbeen a principal stimulus to growth­manship.

Ways must be found to curb theU.S. appetite for goods . . . . (Pp .318 -319.)

The poverty-stricken, over whom thesesame Leftists have spilled buckets ofcrocodile tears, may not be entirely over­joyed if these people are able to put anend to the only real hope of escapingpoverty . Naturally the hippies and revolu­tionaries would love to be supported by aguaranteed annual income while theywork to overthrow civilization.

Professor Paul Ehrlich says in hisbest -selling Population Bomb :

Working people should insist ona reduction in working hours . . . .People would then have more timeto repair their own appliances, growsome of their own food, and mend

AMERICAN OPINION

their own cloth es, rather thanhaving to pay others . . . .

But in the long run, it is ques­tionable whether large factories canbe scaled down and decentralizedwithout dismantling the corporateinvestment and profit system. (Re­printed in The EnvironmentalHandbook, Pp. 24 5-246.)

One wonders how many hours Dr.Ehrlich has spen t lat ely mending a dollarT-sh irt, or whethe r the average workerwoul d not prefer to wo rk an other twentyminutes on th e job to buy a new onerather than spe nd an h our with threadand nee dle rep airin g his tattered under­wear. And how would you like to rep airyour colo r TV set?

Much of thi s regressivism is simply apretext fo r an at ta ck o n free ente rprise.Gary Snyder is a self-professed Commu­nist wh o was recently fea ture d in alaud at ory art icle ill Look magazine . Theaut ho r of thi s little screed , wh o failed tomention Comrade Snyder 's advocacy ofCommunism, ex plains the game:

If everyo ne in this country re­f used to buy a new car in 1969, theA merican economy would collapse.That would be enough to do it allin. That 's sort of like an unimagin­able utopian kind ofrevolution, butit 's absolutely true. By consumersrefusing to consume, you destroythe whole roots of the capitalisteconomy overnight.

The auto mobile is a par ticular targ etof the enviro nment radic als, many ofwho m dr ive to th eir demonstr ati ons innew sports car s paid fo r by th eir capitalistpar ents . Students at San Jose State Col­lege collected $2,500 earlie r thi s ye ar tobu y a new Ford Maverick fo r burial. Tworadic al clergym en read fune ral eulogies,concluding with " ashes to ashes and rustto rust. " Kenneth Cantor maintains inThe Environmental Handbook:

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The automobile and the A meri­can public are locked in a life anddeath struggle. The car is robbingthe American people of their land,air, minds, and their very lives . . . .Programs aimed at reduction ofautomobile usage to one-tenth ofthe present levels must receive highpriority .

Paul Ehrlich recommends on Page 249of th e Len in Day Handbook th at , " tosolve the smog problem , we shoul d im­mediat ely pass a law th at no one own acar bigger th an a Volk swagon . . . . Newcars are bad ecology . . . . "

Air pollu tion caus ed by th e internalcombustion engine is a genuine problem ofgreat magnitude , but the enviro nme nt radi ­cals do not want technological solution s totha t probl em . 'The automo bile industry 'srecent announceme nt of pollution controlprograms for th e privat e automo bilemere ly prolon gs th e agon y of the privatetransportation sys tem," argues ProfessorEhrlich . You see, these boy s want to takeaway yo ur car so government can own ourtransportation system .

Ano ther facet of th e ecology move­men t closely inter-woven with th e anti­capi tali st me nt ality is it s anti-urbanism.In his widely reprinted art icle "The Fo urCha nges," Peace and Freedom Partyradical Cliffo rd Humphrey predict s:

Some communities can establishthemselves in backwater rural areasand flourish . . . . Ultimately citieswill exist only as joyous tribalgatherings and fairs, to dissolveafter a f ew weeks.

While prep aring to dismantle urb anarea s, th e radical ecol ogis ts intend toman ipul at e th e cit ies politically . Ehrlichsays, "We mus t now begin to integra teeco logical reason ing into all communityand political or ganizing fo r socialchange ." He fur ther advocates for mingtenants' union s and "Commun ity Devel-

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opm ent Corporations" - which amountto nothing less than soviets - to con frontlocal busin esses and city hall. Then theauthor of The Population Bomb declares :

The most effective mechanismfor obtaining community control ofthe environment is to organizearound specific issues in neighbor­hoods, getting media coverage ofnewsworthy events and buildingenergy to the point of an implicitthreat of the possibility of directaction and confrontation in orderto negotiate for community con­trol. The community developmentcorporation [soviets] through itsself-governing capability will beable to ritualize and maintain what­ever control is taken from down­town. (The Environmental Hand­book , Page 251.)

Dr. Ehrlich has some quaint ideas forthese soviets he wants to impose on thecities . He wants them to "freeze down­town highrise development. There is noneed for any new highrise struc­tures . . . . We don 't need more shelter ,rather we must learn to use our existingbuildings more efficien tly, to justly re­distribute our shelter resources. No morenew suburbs should be built until we areprep ared to build semi-rural self-sufficientcommunities from re-claimed, rather thanvirgin building materials .. . . "

Also, says the learned Professor fromStanford, we must :

Close off streets for orchards,vegetable gardens, parks, marketplaces. Close the city center toprivate automobiles .. . . Groups[soviets] should organize to takedown fenc es separating yards tomake truck gardens and neighbor­hood sheds for storing shared[property of the collective farm]t ools . . . . Ex perimental livinggroups should construct their shel-

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ters from used building materials(church windows [sic] , old carports - hoods and trunks makebeautiful domes) . . . . (The En­vironmental Handbook , Page 243.)

The radical ecologists are arguing forreplacement of modern urban civilizationwith rural communes. Anarchos Magazinemaintains in an articl e called "EcologyAnd Revolutionary Thought" that "thefactory floor must yield to horticultureand gardening." The EnvironmentalHandbook insists we must accept "theinheren t aptness of communal life ." And,it con tinues: "It is hard to even begin togauge how much a complication of pos ­sessions , the notions of 'my and mine ,'stand between us and a true, clear,liberated way of seeing the world." .

Clifford Humphrey comments in "TheFour Changes" on the natural allies of theecological commune movement :

It seems evident that there arethroughout the world certain socialand religious forces which haveworked through history toward anecologically and culturally enlight­ened state of affairs. Let these beencouraged: Gnostics, hip Marxists,Teilhard _de ' Chardin Catholics,Druids, Taoists, Biologists, Witches,Yogins, Bhikkus, Quakers, Sufis,Tibetans, Zens, Shamans, Bushmen ,A merican Indians, Polynesians,Anarchists, A lchemists . . . the listis long. A ll primitive cultures, allcommunal and ashram movements.

The "back to nature" tribal communesare no joke to th ese people . The move­ment has historical parallels with theteachings of Rousseau and Weishaupt ,and with the pre-revolutionary Nihilists inRussia. The head guru of this movementis Gary Snyder, whose book The EarthHousehold has been referred to by theCommunist S.D.S.'s Tod Gitlin as a"green arsenal." Snyder is an admitted

AMERICA N OPINION

Communist who maintains that " politicalrepression" by the "fascist police ," com­bined with ecological disaster , will makeliving in rural communes necessary forrevolutionaries. According to Snyder:

The country is revolutionary ter­ritory .. . . What Castro and Chelater had to say about the Cubanexperience was that you can't trustthe city comrades or rely on thecity comrades for any thing and y oujust give up depending on them forany thing because they 'll neverunderstand the situation of theguerrilla camp in the moun­tains . . .. A lso Castro and Che feltthat the guerrilla camp provides realtraining in being a communist.

In pointing out the military imp lica­tions of the eco logy commune movemen t ,Comrade Snyder notes:

What if the Pentagon had to dealwith thousands of small tribes scat­tered across the A merican land­scape? Tribes interiorally gentle butex teriorally capable of good offenseand defense. Knowing Indians'techniques and capable of Indianmobility . The suburban whites thusfind themselves surrounded - infact opposed simultaneously fromfront and rear. The strategic situa­tion changes so much that possiblyfe w shots will have to be fired.*

Dur ing the past year a large number ofthese radical communes have been estab-

' Chicago Se ed , A ugus t 1969 . On A ugus t 30 ,1969 , a " Peo ple's Co nfere nce - A Gathering ofthe Tribes" w as held in Berkeley featuring atape -rec orded add ress by Eldridge Cleaver, whobr ags that he is part o f " the world Communistmovem ent. " Tribes attending included: th eMarxist Peace and Free dom Par t y 's EcologyAction, Red Mo untain Tribe. Rad ica l St udentUn ion, Black Panther Party , Third WorldLiberat io n Front , and th e A me rican Co m mitteefo r Solidarity with the Vietnamese Peo ple.

MA Y, 1970

lished in th e Western State s. Many arecomprised of hippies (and nothing pol­lutes an area like flooding it with hippies)who want to get into the country wherethey can grow marijuana . Others areguerrilla bands preparing for revoluti on.A group in Northern California callingitself L.A.R .G.O. (Liberation Army Revo­luti onary Group Organizations of theNat ional Liberation Fro nt) no tified theMendocin o County Board of Supervisorson March 11, 1970, th at as of March 15 ,1970 , a state of war would exist and TheRevolution will have begun. On March13, 1970 , Charles W. Bates of the Fed­eral Bureau of Investigation in San Fran­cisco sent the following message to lawenforcemen t authorities throughout all ofNorthern Californi a:

R equest for information re blackcommune [sic] . Information hasbeen developed from an informantof unkn own reliability that there isa black commune located a fewhundred miles north of San Fran­cisco consisting of thirty to fiftymale Negroes with no children al­lowed. This commune is allegedlylocated in a mountain area near aswift moving river in a denselywooded area inaccessible by heli­copter and can be reached only byroad and any vehicle traveling theroad would be under observationby memb ers of the commune forsome distance prior to the arrival atthe site [sic] . Members except for achosen few are transported in andout of the site blindfolded in eithertrucks or vans. Informant indicatedthere was a small town where foodwas purchased for the commune.The members of the commune ac­cording to the informant possessand maintain a quantity of firearmsand dynamite and they carry outparamilitary exercises a ll a dailybasis. Anoth er commune consistingof both Negroes and whites is sup-

11

posed to exist a short distance fromthe above commune and severalmembers are believed to be federaland local fugitives . . . .

The eco logy movement is not onlydeeply involved in revolut ion, it is up toits neck in effo rts to control population.The leader of the over -pop ulatio n hyste­ria is Paul Ehrlich, author of The Popula­tion Bomb , pres ident of a group calling it­self Zero Pop ulation Growth, and recent ­ly appointed as an associate at the radica l­ly Marxist Center for the Study of Demo ­cratic Institutions. Acco rding to Ehrlich,civilizatio n will during the next deca decollapse in famine as millions of peoplestarve to death. Ehrlich is no t espec iallyconcerned about the po pulation growthof Asia, Africa, or South America. Whatbo the rs him is the growth of families inthe United States. "Each Americanchild," he says, "is 50 times more of aburden on the environ ment tha n eachIndian child." He claims th is is beca usethe wicked United States, with only 5.7percent of the world's population, con ­sumes forty percent of the wo rld's pro ­duction of natural resources. The answer,he argues, is to stabilize our populationand level our sta ndard of living dow n tothat of the rest of the world .

Jo ining Ehr lich in this push is the entireecology crowd, including such Establish­men tarians as Robert S. McNamara, Presi­dent of the World Bank, who has pro­claimed: "T he threat of unmanageablepop ulation pressure is very much like thethreat of nuclear war." Preside nt Nixonhas even announced : "One of the mostserious challenges to human destiny inthe last third of th is century will begrowth of the population." Dr. LeeDuBridge, the President 's science advisor ,recently told U.N.E.S .C.O.: " Everyhuman inst itution, school , university,church, fami ly , government - and inter­national agencies such as U.N.E.S.C.o. ­should set [population control] as itsprime task. Our spacecraft called the

12

earth is reaching its capacity . Can wenot invent a way to redu ce our pop u­lat ion growth rate to zero ?"

The "people regulato rs" have devisedsome ideas for population contro l thatwould make Big Brother bla nch . Thesame "Liberals" who a yea r ago weredefend ing the "rights" of Welfare re­cipients to breed themselves weary at thetaxpayer's expense are now demandingfedera l controls over the right of themidd le-class to reproduce . Hipp ies arecrying "Freedom for drugs bu t not forbabies." Scientists like Ehrlich are ridicul­ing the idea that American families have aright to decide how many children theyshou ld have.

Oliver F innigan, Professor Eh rlich'scohort in Zero Population Growth, re­cently to ld an aud ience: "Legislation canaffect bir th rates ." The Berkeley Gazettereports that he actually "used as anexample, Eastern [Communist] Europe ,whe re nations have been able to slowpopulation growth through strong govern ­ment contro ls." What is good enough forthe slaves in the Aquarian Paradise is goodeno ugh for the Amer ican midd le-class.

Professor H. Bentley Glass of JohnsHopkins University has a plan fo r all ofthis, desc ribed in the Los Angeles Timesof June 4, 1964, as follows :

A man and woman who plannedto marry would visit a "geneticclinic" where chemical tests wouldbe given to show if they were likelyto have defective children . . . . Ifthey passed they would be issued amarriage license. The right to thefirst child would be automatic, andthe family would even get a taxexemption.

A second child would be li­censed too, although there wouldnot be a second exemption. Insteadof gaining an exemption for a thirdchild, even if licensed, a couplewould have $600 added to theirtaxable income .

AMERICAN OPINION

Dr. Glass said penalties for pro­ducing an unlicensed baby wouldbe severe. He suggested sterilizationas a punishment to fit the crime.

The Associated Press carried the fol­lowin g on September 4 , 1969 :

A Washington psych ologist andsex therapist advocated Wednesdaythat the world's nations remove"the right to reprodu ce" from theirpeople as the only solution to theglobal population explosion.

Dr. Robert H. Harper, addressingthe 77th annual convention of theA merican Psychological Associationsaid practical maneuvers to assurecompliance might be available with­in a few y ears by such means asplacing temp orary sterilizing chemi­cals in food and water supplies.Under such a compulsory sy stem,he said, "The privilege to reproducecould then be granted and the rulesgoverning such privilege could beworked out in whatever whollydemocratic ways people wouldwant. "

"But," he added, "the originalremoval of the right to reproducewould have to be done whether ornot it was with the individual 'sapprovaland consent. ,,*

Numerous o ther environmentalistshave proposed variations on, and combi­nati on s of, the above themes . The onething they all have in common is govern­ment control of human rep roduction .Ehrlich advocates free distribu tion bygovern ment of the pill, voluntary legalabo rt ion, a tax on children in excess oftwo per family , heavy taxes on crib s,diape rs, toys , etc. , and bonuses or taxexemptions for delayed marriages, child­less marriages, and ste rilization . He callsfor a "responsibility prize" fo r men andwo men who allow themselves to be ste ri­lized .

MA Y. 1970

Many of the ecology groups haveactually called for a major reduction in'population . The Lenin Day Environ­mental Handbook declares: ' T he goalwould be half of the present worldpopulat ion , or less ." Just wh at form suchgenocid e should take is not suggested.Perh aps President Nixon has some ideason thi s score . Holmes Alex ander writes ina column tit led "Nix on All Gung-Ho ForBirth Control , Asks Legislation " :

President Nix on is the first chiefexecutive to send a message toCongress on the undisguised subjectof Population, meaning that thebirth rate is a national burden andnot an asset . . . .

A s the Nixon programs for thedecade continue to unfold, it 's veryevident that he is trying to shapethe whole ball of wax. He is thefirst President in history with adeliberate plan to decrease, to de­celerate, to deflat e, to depopulate,and to decontaminate - all atonce . . . .

In his programs . . . the Presidentseems to be trying to induce anapproach toward zero-increase inbirths . . . .t

Yet , of all the aspects of the environ­mentalist programs there is no bigger fraudthan th e idea that America is thr eatenedwith destruction through over-po pula­tion . Dr. Donald Bogue , a respected

'Conse rva t ives are concerned at the fac t t hatthe two most prominent o rgan izat io ns workingin the field o f population co nt ro l are the Fo rdand Rockefeller Fo undat io ns. See Co ngres­sional R ecord , December 29, 1969 , Page110 17. John D. Ro ckefeller 111 has a lrea dyrecommended that the U.N. establish a " popu­lation commissioner." (U.I' .I ., Ma y 25 , 1969.)t O ne inllication that t he populat ion propa­ganda is a Leftist ploy is that none of th eseco ncerned ec ol ogis ts has suggeste d ending them on etar y inc en tives give n to wo me n o n Welfareto pr oduce illegitimate children. In deed , Pres i­dent Nixon 's expande d We lfare progra ms wouldfurt he r sti m ulate subsidized bastard y.

13

demographer at the University of Chica ­go, notes that population in the UnitedStates is leveling off and predicts it willsettle at about 220 million. As ProfessorAnsley Coale of Princeton observes:

More than half of the countiesin the United States have lostpopulation in each of the last twointercensal decades. The density ofpopulation is 4.5 times greater inFrance, 10 times greater in theUnited Kingdom and 30 timesgreater in the Net herlands than inthe United States; yet pollution,traffic jams, and delinquency areno worse in those countries thanhere. Even if our population roseto a billion , its average densitywould not be very high byEuropean standards. (Co ngressiona lRecord , October 20, 1969, PageS12806.)

The fact is that we are not over ­populated. Professo r Karl Brandt ofStanford has spoken of our serious un­derpopulation "by any sta ndards we canreasonably apply . This country will notbe overpopulated with 350,000,000 ormany more people and will have a muchhigher standard of living." * Dr. James H.Ford commented in the Los Angeles Timesof April 2,1969:

Some "over-population" pun­dits talk, in their usual hy stericalmanner, abou t "standing roomonly" somewhere in the f uture.This term might represent somesort of absolute - even though arather unrealistic and improbableone. Even if the present worldpop ulation were 4 billion persons,simple arithmetic will show thatwe could give each person a two­foot square plo t for "standing "and we could put the whole of theearth's popu lation within a plot 30miles square.

14

The relation between population andpoverty is equally absurd . As DianaSheets, an outstanding young researcher ,has noted : "Overpopulation is commonlyaccepted as the cause for the great pover­ty of the people of India . However, Indiahas five hundred people per square milewhile Japan has seven hundred, Hollandeight hundred, and Monaco forty -sixthousand . This means Monaco has ninety­two times as many people per square mileas India . Yet , one never hears of thesecountries being overpopulated or starv­ing."

Virt ually every ecology " expert" isnow predicting massive famines for Amer­ica wit hin only a few yea rs. This predic­tion is to tally debun ked by the facts .Professo r Karl Brand t (who yo u may besure does not get one one-hundredth theopportunit ies to speak on college cam­puses as does his Stanford colleague , theradica l Dr. Ehrlich), comments :

. . . 1 reject as illegitimate andinvalid the argument that the ac­celerating pace of populationgrowth is over-taking the rate ofgrowth offo od production and thattherefore disastrous famine of ab­horrent proportions is almost in­evitable unless population growth isthrottled.

As I shall prove, the fami neprojections are neither a sound nora legitimate argument for popula­tion control because the world'sexisting agricultural capacity givesabundant leeway to produce ade­quate food supplies for the growingpopulation. Therefore, using faminealarm to justify support of govern­ment action toward birth controlcan only weaken the init iative topromote recognition of the impor­tance of responsible parenthood.

" Fro m the Nationa l Observer, J uly 15, 1963, asq uoted by t he Reverend Rushdoony in hisauthoritative The Myth Of Over-Population,Craig Press, 1969.

AMERICAN OPINION

Dr. Brandt goes on to say that inrecent years some of the most denselypopulated areas of the wo rld have in­creased foo d production bey ond all ex­pectations and against the worst odds. Henotes that since the end o f World War IIthe world 's technical, and economicallyfeasib le, potential fo r food productionhas expanded at more than a geometricalrate . Even the United Nation 's Food andAgricult u re Organizatio n (F.A.O.) hasbeen forced to confirm the posit ion ofDr. Brandt. In an announcement ap pear ­ing in the Los Angeles Times of Fe bruary12 , 1970 , th at U.N. organizat ion re­vealed : "Th e foo d probl em facing thewo rld in the near fut ure is more likely tobe sur pluses th an sta rvatio n."

Tech nological advancements have putthe lie to neo-Malthusian claims. 'Theund erd evelop ed areas of the world , wh erethe danger had been fore seen , increasedtheir agricultural production by 5% in1967 and 2% in 1968 , with esti mates forthe year just ended showing a con tinua ­tion of the tre nd, " admi ts the U.N.'sF .A.O . Food production even in "under­developed" areas was growing faster thanpopulation . As Stanford 's ProfessorBrand t concludes:

If famine should occur, neitherscarcity of natural nor man-maderesources nor the rate ofpopu lationgrowth offer valid excuses. Evennatural calamities like drought,floods, or pests do not necessarilycause famine in any properly orga­nized society .

If famine should occur in somecountries - as it well may - it willbe primarily "government made "by policies similar to those thatinitially resulted in the starvation of5 million people and have pre­vented f or nearly 40 years anyproper expansion of food produc­tion in Soviet Russia and have costuncounted mil/ions of lives in RedChina.*

MA Y. 1970

Act ually, American po liticians havedone everything possible during the pastthirty years to limit our over-supply offood. If we ever do have a famine inAmerica it will be bec ause o f socialismand government controls . As the Rev­erend Rushdoony writes in The Myth OfOver-Population :

.. . socialism always creates ulti­mately an imbalance between thenumber of people living and theirfood supply which results in hungeror famine. There is in this sensetherefore always a problem ofover­population under socialism. Hungeris chronic and endemic to socialism.

Who has to be reminded th at Russia ,which be fore the Revolution exported avast sur plus of grain, must now importwheat?

Of co urse, th e profession al sowers ofenviro nmental despair disdain the freemarket and capitalist tec hnology as pro­vide rs of solut ions to our probl ems be­cause they are promoting socialism as theonly answer. Actually, our technology isthe best hope for end ing pollution andcontinuing to expand the food supply.Great st rides are already being madetoward solving these problems.

Innovations in the field of agriculturehave been enormo us . Such advances allowmilk , fowl , and egg production in indoorcon ditions on a scale unimaginable only afew years ago . Developmen t of imp rove dfertilizers has allowed much more foo dproduction on far less land. Vast ly im­proved seed grains have multiplied yieldstremend ous ly .

Our free technology can easily meetthe demands of populati on growt h! Asthe Los A ngeles Times recen tly reported:"Withi n a sho rt time, yo u'll be able tobuy for five do llars all the protein yo u'll

' Th e Freema n, Janua ry 196 7. Fo r informationon how our government may be creat ing amassive fa mine, see Dan P. Van Gorder, IIIFares The Land, Western Islands, 1966.

15

need for a year." (That breakthrough iswith a prote in that come s from a fish­powder concentrate .) Plans are alreadybeing made to grow fish in underwater" factories" like chickens. Scotland iseven now using the warm water pro­duced by power plants to stimulate thegrowth of fish and shell fish .

The automobile is, of course , thechief polluter of the air; but technicalbreakthroughs have already been madein the production of less toxic gasolinesand auto pollution-control devices . Be­cause of this , the Los Angeles Times wasable to rep ort on March 16, 1970:

Southlanders may be breathingclean air - at least air free of autoemissions - as much as three yearsearlier than originally anticipated.

Meanwhile, scientists are hard atwork to develop electric , turbine , orsteam-driven cars . Corporations are atwork developing techniques for recover­ing pollutants (which are, after all , lostresources) now being pumped into theair by factory chimneys . Literallydozens of top business concerns are atwork on processes to remove pollutantsfrom the water and turn them intoprofits.

The radical ecologists claim the profitmotive is responsible for the pollutionof America. It is true that some busi­nesses have polluted air and water intheir search for the cheapest way todispose of wastes, but the answer to thisproblem is to use our technology toturn those wastes into profits. The factis that much of our pollution is causedby city-operated trash and sewagedisposals, which have usurped the fieldand precluded the opportunity for pri­vate initiative to find a way to re-use

* Fo r numerous examples of how elimination ofwastes and pollution can be turned into profitssee "Use Pollution To Benefit Mankind," by 1.Leon Potter, Congressional Record, June 16,1969, Page E4962 .

16

trash and garbage . A Japanese concernhas discovered a way to turn trash intobuilding blocks, and a unit is even nowbeing built in Muskegon , Michigan, toturn sewage into valuable fertilizer. *These problems can be solved withoutPolice State methods . According to theChicago Tribune, "On a percentagebasis , business is already spending 10times more money [to stop pollution]than the really big polluters of ourenvironment - the municipal govern­ments. "

Sanity and balance are needed to solveour environmental problems . Ecologyisn 't a moral crusade , it is a science - ascience which is being perverted by anorganized campaign to propagandizeAmericans into accepting governmentland grabs, bureaucratic population con­trol, and a further proliferation of govern­ment bureaus to manage every con­ceivable phase of our environment. Thelegitimate purpose of government is theprotection of life and property . Sincepollution is an attack on another man'slife and property, conservatives will sup­port private law suits and local legislationto put an end to it. Only in this way canthese problems be dealt with in anywherenear a simp le and efficient manner. Butthis is not the way it is going to behandled unless Americans wake up to thefact that they are being propagandized andused by a well organized army of phonyenvironmentalists, self-seeking bureau­crats , and radical politicians.

America has major problems , but thesolutions are not the ones the environ­mental ideologues are talking about.These people are part of the problem, notpart of the solution . Many of them don'tgive a farthing about the problems ofpollution, but are using this issue as apretense to advance Marxist politicalschemes. The biggest pollution problemwe face is the pollution by the collectivistEstablishment and Marxist revolutionariesof the minds of a once thoroughly inde­pendent and free people . __

AMERICA N OPINION