Mother Nature; C.LaDow

Now that over 70 per cent of our population live and work in cities, we are entertained with a different logic; or should we say propaganda? A TV ad warns us that "It's not nice to fool Mother Nature." Some of the most attrac tive programing, in that medium, narrated by its more popular and impelling voices, shows us the beauties of the wild while ex pounding upon the marvelous "bal ance of nature," into which man intrudes in a manner which we are led to believe is totally inex cusable. The raw realities of nature are 1976 MOTHER NATURE: FRIEND OR FOE? 203 now so remote to most of us that apparently the credibility of this message is not widely questioned. Having worn out our attention concerning the "War on Poverty," and lost the subject of the Viet nam War, those who presume to tailor public opinion have found a substitute in ecology. Voting rec ords in, and out of, our legisla tures indicate that they have had recent success.

DDT , which has saved millions of human lives and helped us to develop an agricultural production unprecedented in history, is banned - largely on 'circumstantial evidence - in favor of untried sub stitutes. Construction has been brought to a near standstill by the demands of new committees with "environmental" requirements. Dredging of harbors is endlessly delayed, when not prohibited, due to official concern over the "food chain" of wildlife - a concern so belated, in any case, as to be al most comical, if it were not tragic in its lack of proportion. The oceans still teem with life and most of the world's coastlines are still primitively pristine. Ameri cans simply prefer beef, lamb, and pork and are relatively careless of their own fisheries. Changing tastes by law isa wasteful task. But the most deadly impact of environmentalism has been upon the automobile industry, which is the hub of our entire industrial economy. This is not to suggest that nothing should be done about exhaust pollution; but it is to say that the matter has been ap proached with a celerity and lack of intelligence which boggles the understanding. There has been little recourse to Pericles' princi ple : "We think before we act."

The Situation Which Prevails Just what is the "balance of nature," anyway? It is nothing more than the situa tion which, pre vails in any given area at any given instant. An 'earthquake, vol canic eruption, tidal wave, flood, windstorm, rain, disease, or drought can drastically alter, or even eliminate it, at a moment's notice. Nor can we assume that the other animals are· more assiduous than we in maintaining a balance in nature. That most of them do not kill for fun is a matter of in dolence, or prudence, rather than wisdom or foresight. Killing is work and dangerous too. Left to themselves wild animals will also overgraze, or overkill, and run themselves out of food when their numbers grow too large. Lemmings are not the only ones to have practiced suicidal imbalance. Man is very likely the only animal with a wild enough imagination to see balance in the total scene. When we 'look at the fossil record 204 THE FREEMAN April and see how many species have vanished, what delusions of gran deur can drive us to dream that we can save "endangered species,"

other than in a zoo? One would think it unnecessary to point out that this effort is not intended to decry conservation or any efforts, reasonably pursued, to protect or improve the environ ment. However, the fashionable lunatic fringe of environmentalism has simply become a vehicle for further erosion of the free market, private property, and this best stand of human liberty on earth. Theirs is no eff'ort to deter us from lamentable wastefulness. It is an attempt to dominate our free so society - one more wedge of so cialism. Not content with punish ing our ill-doing, these illiberal extremists would "make us be good." This is not conservation. It is more like revolution - by brain washing. The study of nature is, of course, man's most pressing task, upon which ou~ survival depends. Nature includes all things, living, dead, or inanimate, including man himself. There is nothing else then, Ibut nature, to study; so let us not 'be accused of belittling such study or of being "unscientific."

The trouble is that too many scien tists are being unscientific,-in pre tending that things are not as they are, in order to further some hobby. Aesthetic pleasure is grand and everyone has the right, if not the duty, to luxuriate in his own particular Walden; but let us not institutionalize and politicize it into national madness. The "deli cate balance of nature" is as ephemeral as a sunset. Let us leave it at that and clarify our study of nature,as science, as one of a worthy antagonist which we must bend to rational use: a splendid and beautiful servant, but an unrelentingly destructive master. An Ancient Idea The elevation of Mother Nature to sainthood, of course, dates to the most ancient times. Nature male, female, or neuter - in the secular sense stands for all which is beyond our control and which eludes our total understanding. Awareness of this awesome ig norance, and ultimate helplessness, undoubtedly led to the develop ment of the primitive pantheistic religions. The anthropomorphic Greek and Roman religions grew into a secular humanism which was eventually made captive by Christianity in its Roman tri umph. Yet anyone who has read Fraser's Golden Bough can see how persistent pantheism and magic had been, and it is not at all surprising that it continues to surface in the Christian tradition.

1976 MOTHER NATURE: FRIEND OR FOE? / 205 The most noted devotee of nature worship in modern times was, of course, Jean Jacques Rousseau. In his Liberty - Book-of-the Month Club selection, for June, 1930 - Everett Dean Martin, wrote: "Rousseau made liberalism a gospel of universal emancipa tion by the simple process of trans ferring the hope of freedom from culture to nature. Man in the state of nature was not only free, he was wise and good. The laws of nature are rational and benevolent, and from their contemplation arise the loftiest moral sentiments ... Instinct and emotion, when not perverted by the artificial re straints of civilization, are voices of nature and guides to the good life. Hence in the struggle for lib erty the m,an of nature is set in opposition to the man of culture." How near does this characteri zation of Rousseau's attitude co incide with that of our current na ture-worshipping liberals? Our "natural instincts," untutored by such propaganda, would undoubt edly bid us to be suspicious, if not afraid, of nature. We very well know that the rattlesnake, water buffalo, tiger, or other beast which we view in safety on the television screen, 'could kill or rend us to pieces in a moment. The millions of people who have viewed the movie "Jaws" certainly do not ap pear to have reacted to the shark as a benign enforcer of the "bal ance of nature." That so many of us apparently accept the views of ecologists would seem to be an aberration rather than a "natural reaction."

The Concept Abused Understood in its original in tention, the term "Nature, or Na ture's God," is a harmless signal of our ignorance and insignifi cance in the extent of the universe, and the Great Unknown whom we variously recognize as God. It is a guarantee for modesty and against hubris. However, it could have been unfortunate that our eigh teenth-century mentors fastened upon the term "natural law" to underline their ethics. Had they called it "human law," or "cultural raw," it is just possible that they could have avoided its capture by our recent "scientific" pantheists. These late comers seem not only ready to do in our eighteenth-cen tury tradition of "natural law", but also seem willing to destroy our material accomplishments all in the name of a nature which never has existed as they see it and, at any rate, is irretrievably gone, as Rousseau's "noble sav age" sa.w it. ~ The 1975 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics: Sotne Vncotnfortoble Reflections ISRAEL M. KIRZNER ON DECEMBER 10, 1975, at what the N ew York Times described as a glittering Stockholm ceremony, the Nobel Memorial Prize in Eco nomics was awarded jointly to Professor Leonid Vitalyevich Kan torovich, of the Moscow Institute of Economic Management, and to Professor Tjalling Clharles Koop mans of Yale University. Their prize was awarded for their con tributions to the theory of opti mum allocation of resources.