Environmentalism Is Bad For The Environment

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Written By:
Rob Port

Jun 14, 2010
4:08pm

At least, big-government environmentalism as it is applied by the American left is bad for the environment.

…what good will punishing BP do? Let’s say we throw their top officers in federal prison, we force them to pay for the clean up, and we fine them billions of dollars in punitive damages just for good measure. Ok, then what? The leak still isn’t fixed, oil is still flooding the gulf instead of flooding the market, and no progress has been made. Unless you count the innate sense for politicians to find a scapegoat. Punishing BP might make the President, and his toadies in Congress, look good to the people for having “done something” but it solves nothing.

Incredibly, the solution that many are touting as a fix for this problem is more government. Their argument is that the oil industry isn’t regulated enough. Which is, of course, the fault of previous Republican administrations. Nothing could be further from the truth. The energy companies, especially the oil companies, are the most heavily regulated industries in the country. An oil executive can’t go to the bathroom with a letter of permission from the Secretary of the Interior.

So if the government is supposed to be in charge of oversight, and we have a catastrophe like this doesn’t that speak to the failure, and futility, of government regulation? Still the Democrats want more. There’s only one more step to take and that is outright nationalization of the oil industries, something that the environmentalists and their political allies have long lusted for.

Again, that solves nothing. If the government can’t oversee the oil industries in a competent fashion why should we believe that they could run them out right? It’s best to deregulate. If we get the government out of the way, and end many of these idiotic environmental regulations we will have fewer environmental problems.

This rings true, especially given how much of an obstacle environmental regulations have been in plugging the leak, dispersing oil already leaked and protecting the shores from spilled oil.

Put simply, while BP is certainly culpable for the original spill, the biggest stumbling block to stopping the leak and cleaning it up has been big-government environmentalism.