THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA
An Online Journal of Political Commentary & Analysis
Volume VI, Issue # 161, July 21, 2004
Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
Government Committed to & Acting in Accord with Conservative Principles
Ensures a Nation's Strength, Progress, & Prosperity
ENVIRONMENTALISTS: PRESENT-DAY ADVOCATES OF TECHNOPHOBIA
By Alan Caruba
FULL STORY:
We think nothing of turning on the lights in our homes, but did you know that, “more than thirty years after Thomas Edison invented
the incandescent bulb in 1879 and soon thereafter installed a lighting system in a business section of lower Manhattan, barely ten
percent of American homes were wired”?
Americans did not immediately embrace electric lighting and, “Even after the First World War, that percentage rose only to twenty
percent.” So, for the first twenty years or more of the last century, Americans were often more fearful of electric lighting than grateful
for its ability to dispel the dark more safely than gas lighting, the then preferred method.
At the same time, however, countless Americans embraced “electrotherapy,” allowing themselves to be strapped to a machine that
sent tiny amounts of electricity through their bodies as a cure for almost any kind of disorder and disease you can name. It was
endorsed by the medical establishments throughout America and Europe. Medicine, in those times, however, was still in the virtual
Dark Ages, and it only took a few months study and a short apprenticeship to become a physician.
Electricity was magic, both feared and embraced, but in different ways. I learned about this in a fascinating new book, Dark Light,
by Linda Simon ($25.00, Harcourt). For anyone who enjoys reading about history and science, it will provide many insights. What it
did for me, however, was to illuminate the many ways technophobia is still widely advocated by many environmental and other
pseudo-scientific organizations.
The same fears that earlier generations held concerning the introduction of new technologies are alive and well today, fanned
constantly by those who oppose everything from irradiated meat, the extraction and use of petrochemicals, cellular phones, and, yes,
even electrical transmission lines.
It took decades for electric lighting to become commonplace throughout America and the rest of the world. In its early days,
“Newspapers frequently reported electrical fires and accidental electrocutions, and magazines offered long lists of cautions for those
who dared to install electricity.” In fact, “Because incandescent light had a different quality from gas, some people worried about
becoming blind from reading by electricity.” This is a long way from the Energizer Bunny’s portable use of electricity!
So, why did people gladly submit to having electrodes strapped to them to cure their ills?
It was a widely held belief that “energies were mutually convertible, that our own vital force was electrical…” Little wonder the story
of Frankenstein has this creature activated by a giant jolt of electricity. In an age when medical care could just as easily kill you as
cure you, the notion that electrically stimulating the body’s nervous system to help it fight disease or mental disorders was widely
accepted.
This is not all that different from the endless succession of diets offered as ways to insure against all manner of disease and against
obesity, a problem that only a society that provides an abundance of food could encounter. Food, however, does not magically
appear in the supermarket. It must be grown, requiring extensive and highly scientific agricultural techniques. It must be provided
through vast ranching enterprises for cattle and sheep, and massive farms to raise chickens or pigs. Today, there are also fish farms.
Why, then, do environmentalists target agriculture and ranching, so necessary to feed a huge worldwide population? Why have the
Greens succeeded in banning many of the pesticides that protect crops against the many insects that attack them or herbicides that
protect crops against the weeds that can destroy them? Why would Greens want DDT banned when there is no proof it poses a
health threat and, indeed, could protect the millions who die every year from malaria for lack of it?
Why is there an army of “food police” calling for the banning of “junk food,” sodas, and snack foods? Why do organizations
working through the United Nations seek to thwart the use of hydroelectricity in nations such as India for the provision of power
and the irrigation of new and existing farmland? Why, at one UN conference, was the introduction of flush toilets opposed for use
in many underdeveloped nations? Why was spraying mosquitoes opposed when the West Nile Fever was first introduced in the
United States in the late 1990s?
Why is the use of nuclear power for the generation of electricity opposed by the Greens? Why is the construction of much-needed
new refineries opposed? Why is the extraction of oil from a tiny section of Alaska opposed? The answer to these questions is that
both the environmental and the animal rights movements are essentially opposed to the existence of the human population on Earth.
Whatever may contribute to diminishing that population is encouraged. Whatever may contribute to ending famine or the diseases
that kill people is discouraged.
In general, Americans and other Westerners are living longer, healthier lives than ever before. Many factors contribute to this, not
the least of which is the use of inexpensive electric energy.
We need only inform ourselves of the endless ways Americans in the 1800s and early 1900s died for lack of science-based medical
knowledge and techniques to understand why no one would want to return to a world lighted by gas or cured by bleeding the
patient, a world that knew nothing of germs or their transmission.
We have come a long way from just over a century ago to a world connected by communications powered by electricity; a world
connected by forms of transportation that were the stuff of science fiction novels; a world that has the knowledge to feed everyone
and to respond to the threat of new diseases.
There are, however, forces in the world that would return us to darkness. Some reflect an Islam that preaches intolerance and
oppression of the human spirit. Others reflect the deliberate fear mongering that distorts science to thwart its march toward a better
world for everyone. The technophobia that troubled people who were fearful of the use of electricity to light the darkness is with us
still. It is called environmentalism.
LINKS TO RELATED TOPICS:
Policy Issues Relating to Energy, Environment,
& Natural Resources
Alan Caruba is a veteran business and science writer, a Public Relations Counselor, Communications Director of the American Policy Center,
and Founder of the National Anxiety Center, a clearinghouse for information about media-driven scare campaigns. Caruba writes a weekly
column, "Warning Signs," posted on the Internet website of the National Anxiety Center
(www.anxietycenter.com). A compilation of his past columns, entitled Warning Signs, is published by Merril Press. In addition
to Warning Signs, Caruba is the author of A Pocket Guide to Militant Islam and The United Nations vs. the United States,
both of which are available from the National Anxiety Center, 9 Brookside Road, Maplewood, New Jersey, 07040.
Copyright 2004 Alan Caruba
Published with Permission of Alan Caruba
ACaruba@AOL.Com
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Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
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