The Green Movement: Anti-Everything

It's no secret around these parts that the environmental movement has beclowned itself over and over again, especially the really fringe elements. But they're even more nuts than you'd think, as we'll see below. I also have to come clean about something. Sorry.

So there are a lot of people in the world. And most environmentalists say that's a bad thing. But lots of people are also pet owners, which means at least some animals--cats, dogs, boa constrictors, etc.--ought to avoid extinction and the consequences of us raping Mother Earth pretty easily (as should all those houseplants). And that's a good thing. Right? Well, not so much, it seems.

At least, that's what New Zealand economist Gareth Morgan believes. In an interview last month, Morgan said that cats, in their way, are just as damaging to the environment as evil Homo sapiens. See, felines, if you weren't already aware of this, have a tendency to attack and kill birds (and then proudly leave the mangled remains on your doorstep). In New Zealand, a land with some very diverse native wildlife, this has supposedly led to the endangerment or extinction of numerous bird species. Probably there was a lot more at work than that, but sure, we'll say cats' predatory instincts didn't help. And of course, everyone wants to protect the beautiful rare birds. Morgan has a fairly simple proposal on how to do this: Kill all cats.

Okay, to be fair, Morgan didn't say that exactly. That would be twisting his words around, which is wrong. He merely suggested that it would be a good idea if:

a) all cats in the country were tagged;
b) all cats found wandering off their owners' property be confiscated;
c) said confiscated cats be euthanized by the authorities unless their owners claim them, in which case they have to pay a fine;
d) the government subsidize all this euthanasia; and
e) owners thus deprived of their pets be "encouraged" not to get a replacement feline.

See, he's totally not saying "Kill all cats."

Now, I have a slight admission to make before I go any further. As it happens....I love cats. Always have. I mean, come on! They're just so adorable when they purr or stretch out on the couch and they're so fluffy and cute when they're little kittens and--okay, that's getting too mushy. Anyway, point is, no, I do not kill cats in my spare time, nor have I ever done so. Sorry to disillusion you guys. But like all cat lovers, you can imagine that I did not take the opinion of this "expert" very well. And frankly, I don't have to give a scientific reason why I didn't. This is one of those examples of irrational, emotionally-based decisions sometimes counting for a lot. Of course cats (and other domesticated animals, not to mention mice and rats) have upset many ecosystems into which they've been introduced, sometimes very destructively. That doesn't mean I'm going to value "restoring the natural balance" over my kittycat. I just don't care about it to that degree.

And look, here's the thing: It's not the case that when humans and their accompanying critters encounter a previously untouched land, they're seeing it in its "pristine" state. No such condition exists, or has ever existed. Nature, as more reflective environmentalists might realize, has always been in a state of flux. Every ecosystem, humans or no, cats or no, has been upset at some point in its past, and in some sense, every species is an invasive one. Even the permanent-looking California redwoods have only been a part of their current habitat for the past few thousand years, which as anyone will tell you is a mere blip from the whole biosphere's point of view. To say that cats running loose among the native bird population, however regrettable that might be in some ways, is the end of the world only shows that you don't fully understand that phrase.

But there's another way in which this exposes the strange and twisted logic of the green movement. As it has repeatedly demonstrated, the environmentalist Left is inherently anti-human in sentiment, and has been increasingly open about it. A former president of PETA made waves a few years ago by declaring, "When it comes to feelings, a rat is a pig is a dog is a boy. There is no rational basis for declaring that human beings have special rights." It doesn't require much effort to pick apart the import of this statement as far as we're concerned, but consider the logical outflow here. If humans and animals are implicitly equal and have the same right to live, and if humans don't have a right to live, at least not a right that trumps "protecting the environment," then it stands to reason that animals don't have a right to live, either. If any species is threatening the supposed balance of their ecosystem, then that species ought to be eliminated or at least cut down to size. And who will be doing the--ahem--reduction? Why, the self-appointed guardians of Mother Earth, of course. Just consider the past demands to shrink the number of cattle because of their methane production, or now this particular case. See how we've gone from saving Bambi to potentially killing Bambi? "Bleeding heart" liberals, my you-know-what.

Anyway, yeah I do like cats. So there's that.