Dear Friends,
It seems to me, central planning an ecology is just as disastrous as central planning an economy. I can see where the idea of central planning comes from. It’s the natural extension of the success of farming, cities, and industrialization. Central planners believe they can plan a nation’s economy to be as efficient as a factory. It naturally follows that a brainiac can centrally plan an ecology to be as efficient as a factory as well. Billions of dollars are spent to that end. To have ecologists centrally plan the vast national park ecologies. Introduce species, set bounties, gene edit, etc… these are the tools of environmental central planners. Yet the success that helped the industrial revolution build the modern world eludes them. Their vain attempts come to naught or worse, ecological disaster.
Farms are a microcosm of what environmental central planners want to do. The lowly farmer, however, contending with sleet, drought, frost, fire, and markets is more successful than any ecologist. What really annoys the intelligentsia is that most farmers have little or no education. The Amish, for example, yet they are astoundingly successful. Despite the regulations designed to drive them to failure. Many family farms have succumbed to the perverse regulations and predatory banking system. But those are man made stumbling blocks. The smartest people who have ever lived, if you ask them, can’t get anything right. Their brilliant ideas create ecological disasters. Cane toads in Australia, Africanized honey bees in South America, and Chinese chestnuts in Central Park to name a few.
When I was a kid we went on a school field trip to the state environmental office. Back then they had classified the water bodies as safe to eat fish from, unsafe to eat fish from, and unsafe to swim in. They had spent millions to fight the water pollution. In some places the water was constantly chocolate brown. At the same time, zebra mussels were introduced into the Great Lakes via cargo ship ballast water. They quickly spread and became a disaster. They plugged water pipes and invaded every waterbody connected to the St. Lawrence. Lake Champlain was infested with the little monsters. Millions were spent to eradicate them to no avail. Then the chocolate brown water became clear as a spring, Perch started eating the zebra mussels, and now they are a background species.
Today in Florida the Burmese Python has become an ecological disaster… and the central planners have dozens of ideas how to fix it. Millions of dollars have been spent so far. Mechanical rabbits to spy on the python/gator duels, roundups, and paying phD’s to hunt snakes in the dark. So far, the central planners have not only failed in their attempts to centrally plan an ecology but have made things worse… this time will be no different. In fact, keeping the population from getting totally out of control allows the pythons to continue being a problem. If their population gets high enough, something will cut them down. That’s the way nature works. It’s perfect competition that is not subject to monopoly. Therefore, the larger the scale of control the harder nature fights.
In their hubris the environmental central planners will continue to try to make the planet their own little Monsanto’s garden. Fighting nature’s perfect competition with central planning on an ever larger scale. Because in their minds, what works on a small scale must work better on a large scale! Just like if a standard is good, a double standard must be twice as good. They follow the same logic. Meanwhile they spend millions of dollars of our money on their boondoggles and in doing so make our lives worse. The best thing to come of the millions spent, is the video of the python/gator duels. So the central planners in Europe are shutting down farms in Europe, and assuring the people they will have plenty of food, because they will clear cut the rainforest to grow it… just brilliant!
Sincerely,
John Pepin
