Book Reviews

A REVIEWER'S NOTEBOOK JOHN CHAMBERLAIN Progressand Privilege IT was Earl Dunckel, now a Wash ington publicist but then with the General Electric Company, who first called attention to the fact that the environmentalist movement was being exploited to keep less pri vi leged classes from rising in the world. The environmentalists, with their talk about the "population bomb," had linked themselves to the "zero population" drive. They resented new people. And, in their animus against "smokestack industry," they fre quently gave the impression that they would like to repeal the whole industrial revolution. Oddly, they found their most fer vent supporters in the wealthy, who could afford to drive their Porsches and Mercedes Benzes to the edge of wilderness areas and take off on backpack vacations that were be yond the reach of the blue collars among us. The blue collars, forced by circumstances to remain close to industry in states like Michigan and Pennsylvania, were limited to rab bit shooting or deer hunting in local non-wilderness woodlands if they 254 wished to gratify their love for the wild.

The alliance between the Sierra Club and the wealthy demanded consecration as "liberalism." Earl Dunckel called it "reactionary." The blacks and the poor, deserting their accustomed places in the old "Roo sevelt coalition," surprised the "lib erals" by agreeing with Dunckel. As I found out by writing columns about Dunckel's contentions, they wanted jobs even at the risk of some pollu tion. Not that they were against clean water and clean air; they sim ply asked for trade-offs that would permit them to work and to raise and educa te children in an expanding world. The trade-off movement had no intellectual sanction until Harper's Magazine began printing essays by William Tucker, himself an ex-"lib eral" who had made the discovery that environmentalism had been subverted by practitioners of the "politics of aristocracy." Tucker has now adapted his essays to a remark ably sensible book, Progress and PROGRESS AND PRIVILEGE 255 Privilege: America in the Age of En vironmentalism (New York: Anchor Press-Doubleday, 314 pp., $17.95).

The "have-nots" began to register their objections to environmental ism as a "no-more-growth" phenom enon at the very outset. When, on Earth Day, 1970, a group of Califor nia students buried an automobile to symbolize their renunciation of "materialism," the event was pick eted by black students, who thought the car might better have been used to help improve the condition of the poor. Bayard Rustin, the veteran civil rights leader, called the environ mentalists "self-righteous, elitist, neo-Malthusians who call for slow growth or no growth ... and who would condemn the black under class, the slum proletariat, and rural blacks, to permanent poverty." And Thomas Sowell, the black econo mist, remarked that "you don't see many black faces in the Sierra Club." Preservationists As William Tucker explains in the portions of his book that are devoted to back history, the modern environ mentalists have done violence to the whole memory of Theodore Roose velt, Gifford Pinchot and the other early-century. pioneers of the con servation movement. The modern environmentalists, says Tucker, are preservationists, not conservation ists. There is a world of difference between the two approaches to wilJohn Chamberlain's book re views have been a regular fea ture of The Freeman since 1950.

We are doubly grateful to John and to Henry Regnery for now making available John's autobi ography, A ute with the Printed Word. Copies of this remarkable account of a man and his times our times-are available at $12.95 from The Foundation for Economic Education, Irvington on-Hudson, New York 10533. derness. Preservationists think of the woods as temples (see John Muir), but they want to exclude people from the temples by denying them access roads or even the right to chop fire wood for camping trip cook-outs. They want no change whatsoever in the pristine environment. The conservationists, on the other hand, are for multiple use of the na tional reserves. What they insist upon is orderly exploitation that is compatible with sound restoration practices. They would allow timber cutting of "ripe" trees, but with the proviso that a new tree be planted for everyone that is sent to the lum ber mill. "Sustained yield" is the conservationist watchwor<:l-and our big forest products companies have quite honestly complied with the philosophy of renewed growth as it 256 THE FREEMAN was set forth by the followers of Teddy Roosevelt.

In the case of leased coal lands, the trade-off between commercial use and longterm conservation would be to make landscape contouring and soil restoration part of the contract. And proper clean-up practices would be demanded of oil companies and any miners lucky enough to find co balt in Idaho or molybdenum in Colorado. The Sagebrush Rebellion The modern preservationists lobby against a restoration of the Home stead Act and are for cancelling one hundred-year-old leases on federal grazing land. So the old conserva tionist compromises of the Teddy Roosevelt era are in danger of being eroded. Tucker notices, however, that it is an East Coast and West Coast Alliance of the rich that insists on backtracking from multiple use. The people who live in the mountain and intermountain areas and in the dry regions of Arizona and New Mexico are, he says, "still looking for growth and economic advancement." They feel they are being "excluded from their land." Hence the rise of the Sagebrush Rebellion.

Tucker doesn't want to see the Sagebrush Rebellion succeed in pulling "the government out of its monitoring rule entirely." He thinks this would resul t in burying the original Conservation ethic. The difference between the Conservation Era and the present, he says, is that the Conservation leaders-Roose velt, Pinchot, Powell, and the oth ers- "were able to grasp the ele ments of the situation and offer effective leadership that produced a reasonable compromise. Today, most political officials and opinion lead ers don't even know what they are talking about. They think conser vation is preservation, and spend most of their time floundering in their own rhetoric." Tucker is not impressed with "population bomb" fears. He notes that birthrates always tend to sta bilize as industrialization proceeds. The "revolt against science" is an old story, as Tucker emphasizes in his recapitulation of the attempts to outlaw the steam locomotive and the use of alternating electric current.

The environmentalists have tried in recent years to stop genetic engi neering. They are afraid that fooling with the genes might result in cre ating monsters. Tucker, citing re cent experiments, surmises that the Frankenstein phobia expressed in books such as Who Should Play God? is utterly misplaced. Tucker thinks of the Age of Envi ronmentalism as an interlude. "We are the wiser for it," he says. But "history is calling us" and there is still much to be done for progress. "It is time," he concludes, "to begin again." , the Freeman VOL. 33, NO.5 • MAY 1983 Criminal' Liberty and Civil Liability: Can Free Enterprise Survive? Jane M. Orient 259 The sad consequences when our court system fails to control crime, but attempts to control everything else. Hong Kong's Future Uncertain Henry W. Vanderleest 266 The prospects if control of the Crown Colony reverts to the People's Republic of China.