Everyone, it is Earth Day.  I remember painting garbage cans and lids with peace signs as a Sophomore in high school in the early 1970s to celebrate this hallowed day–at least for the radical environmentalists.  Look, I support clean air and water–though not the eradication of CO2, which I breath out and trees and plants take in.  But it certainly looks like the religionist environmentalists have co-opted the environmental issue and populate the upper reaches of governmental agencies dealing with all things environmental.  That I assert is quite bad.  Would some of these radicals kill humans to advance their cause?  Yes, they have said so themselves.  Do some worship the earth?  Yes, they have told us they do.  Do many want to eliminate any cost-benefit analysis before pursuing ever more intrusive regulations?  Yes, they already do in the EPA.  The “sky-is-falling” mantra today of course in global warming, I mean global climate change, or is it global cooling?

OK, this sounds like a rant; I suppose it is up to this point.  But I have studied enough environmental economics and policy analysis to see that the core of the environmental movement has come a long way.  We used to talk about lowering pollution but carefully, considering other costs to real people–to their property, their livelihoods, their ability to grow and get food, their ability to travel, their general well-being.  But that was the 70’s and 80’s.  Since then the EPA in Washington and the little EPAs around the country have gradually fallen under the influence of those who seem to want to have a planet so pristine that no one could actually live on it.  They no longer seem particularly interested in what all these stricter and stricter regulations are doing to real people or that they seldom result in much reduction of pollution if any, or that some of what they label pollutants are not at all pollutants by any sane standard.

The free reign of unelected bureaucrats must be stopped.  Congress must begin to take its power back.  And of course the president ought to be a part of the solution.  I am not calling for a completely common environment as a community dumping ground for anya nd everyone.  But reason is called for here.  We have lost that I fear.

So I am not celebrating Earth Day.  I did my part 44 years ago.  But I will advocate for reasonable and thoughtful laws and regulations that actually put people first instead of nature.