Happy Earth Day - You Greedy, Exploitive Capitalists!

By Rick Moran

Evo Morales, the far left wing President of Bolivia, has an idea of how we can save the planet; destroy capitalism:

“If we want to save our planet earth, we have a duty to put an end to the capitalist system,” he said. Opening an UN meeting in New York on the rights of indigenous people, he also said the development of biofuels harmed the world’s poorest people.

The forum’s theme is the global impact of climate change on native people. Mr Morales gave the keynote address at the opening of the seventh session of the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues. As a descendent of the Aymara people, he is Bolivia’s first indigenous president.

Bolivia’s left-wing president said unbridled industrial development was responsible for the pillaging of natural resources. Speaking through an interpreter at the UN headquarters in New York, he had this uncompromising message:

“If we want to save our planet earth, to save life, to save mankind, we have a duty to put an end to the capitalist system.”

(HT: Michelle Malkin)

Today is earth day. We will be inundated all day long with speeches against industry, against development, against corporations and business of any kind. But the Heartland Institute put this day in perspective a couple of years ago:

Contrary to the slogans of demonstrators throughout the world, the nations that have the best track records on environmental protection and improvement are those with the highest amount of free-market capitalism.

Make no mistake, the anti-capitalism demonstrators often add environmentalism to their claimed objectives solely because it attracts many gullible young persons and appears to legitimize their activities, which often have little or nothing to do with the environment.

Nations with the freest economic systems are the ones whose citizens can afford the luxury of protecting their environments. Conversely, persons living in command-and-control economies barely surviving on life’s necessities of food, clothing, and shelter use their natural resources to the absolute limit. They have no other choice in providing for themselves and their families…

Environmental protection is a luxury because by its very nature, it stifles economic activity - something that we can do in the west but that socialist countries, where people live day to day and can't afford a reduction in production, can never achieve. The biggest polluter in the history of industrialized civilization was the old Soviet Union (and modern Russia isn't much better) where huge swaths of its territory is uninhabitable as a result of chemical pollution.

And the solution of these greenies is more socialism?

The environmentalists will never admit that the free market is better in the long run for the earth because it would ruin their plan for control - control of not only the economy but the world's population as well.

After all, they know best for us all.