I made the mistake

I made the mistake of reading George Will's column this morning: "Our Fake Drilling Debate." Fake, indeed. He lumps up the environmental cause like this: "to enlarge governmental supervision of individuals' lives." George Will -- I prefer his bedside name of Snuffy the Butler -- doesn't pay much attention to actual environmentalist claims and arguments or even those of environmental economics (which still makes me itch, given its neoclassical orthodoxy in a green outfit). Another irrelevant columnist. So, why bother? I don't know. I just made the mistake of reading this dumb column.

Okay, so given that Will poses as one of our grand intellectuals, we're supposed to engage him as intellectuals. Public debate and all that (taking note that it's an elite, of which Snuffy is a member, that dictates public debate by guiding us all into a cardboard box at the end of an alley).

I'm also still grading papers.

So -- red check here, moving into "minus" territory -- just exactly who are these collectivist environmentalists, George Will? You need a citation here. Probably a few cites. And be careful not to generalize from some imaginary enemy to millions of people with a diversity of views regarding the environment, including the case of ANWR. I suggest taking a course in environmental ethics and/or policy or environment and development, if you truly have an interest in environmental and energy issues. This might help you to develop your thoughts better. Further, the suggestion that environmentalists are hiding some big collectivist secret is simply paranoid. Very few make that claim. In general, environmentalists tend towards smaller-scale, environmentally sustainable forms of governance when discussing the political dimension. Do some research! Avoid the strawman! It only makes your claims weaker.

Second, "produce scarcities"? Toss-off economic language does not an economist make. Besides, environmentalists do not produce scarcities. They generally demand that we understand that approaching scarcities -- of which price (e.g., petroleum) is perhaps an indicator? -- may no longer be resolved through the neoclassical religious faith in technological progress. We have only weak and ineffective technological choices regarding biodiversity loss. We have no technological choices for global warming, for instance, apart from giving up on fossil fuels. ANWR is no answer there, plus drilling ANWR has few real benefits in terms of an increase in oil production and reducing "reliance on foreign oil." You need to discuss this further in order to strengthen your paper.

Third, modernity has produced goods and bads. How do we assess these -- from the position of modernist assumptions about good and bad? Simply stating that what's modern is modern and that what's modern should stick around is intellectually lazy and wholly confuses descriptive and normative dimensions of the issue. The descriptive and the normative are never entirely distinct, but to claim flatly that a given state ought to be the case requires further argument, especially when the qualities of that given state are at issue. Would you say, analogously, that the mess in Iraq ought to be the case just because what it is is a mess [ed. note: yes, yes he would]? Are you suggesting that the assumptions of neoclassical economics hold the end-of-history key to what ails us environmentally and in terms of energy sources? Take a look at the work of the many economic and philosophical critics of neoclassical orthodoxy, including that of several Nobel Prize laureates. Should history always remain "modern"? What do you mean by "modern" in the first place? Are you a Cartesian? Kantian? Newtonian? Keynesian? Dickensian? This statement requires further research and unpacking.

Fourth, you should also do some research on current debates about energy sources. Your paper suffers greatly on this point. One big debate at present, for example, involves nuclear power vs. fossil fuel power in the face of global warming. The debate does not involve the complete elimination of traditional (or "modern") energy sources. That's just a silly claim on your part. No one advocates totally eliminating energy sources. Many advocate more intelligent uses of energy sources we do use combined with the development of alternative technologies that pollute less, consume less, and, in some cases, cost less. Even the energy industry has started to invest more in this direction. This section needs complete reworking.

Finally, although there's more to be said here on the substantive side, we are all on deadlines. You need to manage your time better, and a spate of holiday dinner parties in Georgetown does not count as a medical excuse, despite the rich cheesecake. This paper demonstrates last-minute preparation and ill-formed thoughts. It is premised on a strawman from which you make inferences that have no further support. The paper receives a C - (and I inflate grades). If this continues, you may expect a poor overall grade. Unless your work improves, I suggest considering a career as a butler, or perhaps joining the military, rather than continuing your aspirations to being a public intellectual.

For some people, environmentalism is collectivism in drag. Such people use environmental causes and rhetoric not to change the political climate for the purpose of environmental improvement. Rather, for them, changing the society's politics is the end, and environmental policies are mere means to that end.

The unending argument in political philosophy concerns constantly adjusting society's balance between freedom and equality. The primary goal of collectivism -- of socialism in Europe and contemporary liberalism in America -- is to enlarge governmental supervision of individuals' lives. This is done in the name of equality.

People are to be conscripted into one large cohort, everyone equal (although not equal in status or power to the governing class) in their status as wards of a self-aggrandizing government. Government says the constant enlargement of its supervising power is necessary for the equitable or efficient allocation of scarce resources.

Therefore, one of the collectivists' tactics is to produce scarcities, particularly of what makes modern society modern -- the energy requisite for social dynamism and individual autonomy. Hence collectivists use environmentalism to advance a collectivizing energy policy. Focusing on one energy source at a time, they stress the environmental hazards of finding, developing, transporting, manufacturing or using oil, natural gas, coal or nuclear power.