‘The greed of the fossil fuel industry’ is ‘destroying our planet’ To tell Senator Bernie Sanders. Young people agree. what is their solution? Socialism.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said that socialism ” all People who are not just a privileged minority. “
“Nonsense,” says Atlas Network’s Tom Palmer in my new video.
Palmer, unlike Ocasio-Cortez and most of us, spent a lot of time in socialist countries. He once smuggled books into the Soviet Union.
From what he has seen, he is convinced that the socialists in the environmental movement are wrong about what “green” is.
“We tried socialism,” says Palmer. “We did an experiment. It was a disaster. The worst environmental record on the planet.”
In China, socialist leaders found sparrows eating valuable grain and encouraged people to kill them.
“Billions of birds have been killed,” says Palmer.
A government official shot the bird. People without guns banged pots and honked their horns to scare the sparrows into staying in the air unbearably long.
“Poor, exhausted birds were falling from the sky,” says Palmer. “It was madness.”
I pointed out that when people watch videos of them killing sparrows, they seem to happily kill them.
“If you don’t show enthusiasm for the party’s socialist goals, you’re going to be in trouble,” Palmer replies.
The party’s campaign was successful. They killed almost all sparrows.
But “all it takes is two minutes of thinking and thinking, ‘Wait a minute.'” Who eats all the bugs? ‘ says Palmer.
If there were no sparrows, there would have been more insects. Insects devoured more crops than sparrows ate.
“People went hungry as a result,” says Palmer. “People confuse socialism with … ‘good government’ or ‘friendly government’ or ‘government made up of friends’.”
Socialism means central planning. It ends badly.
“What the AOC wants to do is basically give the Department of Defense and similar agencies control over society as a whole, and she thinks it will work,” Palmer says. “That’s a joke.”
China’s central planners are making mistakes.
Many lakes and rivers in China are bright green. Fertilizer runoff causes algae and kills all the fish. Air pollution in China kills 1 million people a year, according to Lancet research.
Wherever socialism is attempted, it creates nasty pollution.
In the Soviet Union, Joseph Stalin wanted cotton for the army. His central planner decided that he should cultivate near the Aral Sea. It drained so much water that the ocean, once the world’s fourth largest inland lake, shrunk to more than half its size.
“Soviet planners inflicted devastating environmental costs on the entire population,” says Palmer.
I push back “It was then. Now the rules would be different. Well, the rules would be ‘green’.” “
“We always hear socialists saying, ‘I’ll do it right next time.’ How many times can we get it next time?” Palmer asks.
But the American media still sometimes say that socialists are protecting the environment. An editorial in The New York Times claims that “Lenin’s environmental warriors” created “the world’s largest system of the most protected nature reserves.”
“This is not a nature reserve,” Palmer replies. “They use it as a dumping ground for heavy metals and radioactive waste. In what sense is it a nature reserve?”
Capitalists also destroy nature. A free society needs government regulations to protect the environment.
But the free market with property rights often protects nature more than the bureaucracy.
Palmer explained that private farmers are “concerned about whether their farms will be able to grow food next year, each year, and even after that farmer is gone. Why? capital value. That is “capital” in capitalism. They want to make the most of it. “
Because capitalism creates wealth, it also protects the environment. When people no longer worry about starving or freezing, they become interested in protecting nature. That’s why capitalist countries have clean air.
And capitalists can afford to pay for wildlife sanctuaries.
“When no one has property rights and people are poor, tigers and elephants are seen as a burden and they kill them,” says Palmer. “When you get rich, you care about the environment.”
socialist To tell They care, but the real world shows that capitalism works better for protecting the environment.
Stossel posts a new video every Tuesday on JohnStossel.com about the fight between government and freedom. He is the author of Give Me a Break: How I Ex Exposed Scammers, Scammers, Scammers and How the Liberal Media Became a Scourge.
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