I wrote before ("Absolute Values") that many very bad political ideas arise when people begin to think in terms of "absolute values". Now, as this article generated a number of angry responses when it was featured on Townhall, let me explain very simply. I do not mean "absolute values" in ethical terms, what I am discussing is economics. For example, when people say "we will spend any amount to save a life". It sounds nice, but in practice it is nonsense, as it would result in absurd situations.

Allow me to give an example. Many politicians treat "health" as an absolute good, arguing seemingly sensible positions such as "what good is money if you are too sick to enjoy it?" But think about what it would mean to truly value "health" absolutely. Skydiving would clearly be illegal, as would bungee jumping. But so would football, baseball and soccer, as all increase the risk of injury. Motorcycles are riskier than cars, so they would be out., and cars would be limited to 5 miles per hour to prevent even the risk of a crash. All of your food would be government regulated to ensure maximum health benefit, as would your activities to maximize exercise. In fact, if we truly want to ensure health, all of your comings and goings would need to be monitored, both to prevent the risk of injury and to minimize the chance of contagion. Better safe than sorry.

Of course that is nonsense, and no politician would dare to propose it, but that is the logic of :sparing no expense to protect health". Certainly no politician would consistently follow through on their assertion that health or life or anything else is "absolutely good" or "worth any cost", but such assertions are still damaging. Why? For the reasons I gave above, it would justify almost anything, provided it could be tied to the subject in question. Once you have created an "absolute good", you have given yourself free reign to enact any law you wish.

The truth is, every good has a cost, and we need to consider that cost, or else risk creating a truly horrible situation. For instance, national defense. While we all (or almost all) would agree defending the nation is a valuable activity, we would not say it is "worth any price". Some may scoff, but let me give an example. We could stop being a target of Islamic terrorism tomorrow by turning into an Islamic state and forcing conversion on all our citizens. Would we do that to protect our nation? If not, then we have limits and recognize some costs are too great. And that means that we are (quite reasonably) engaging in cost-benefit analysis when it comes to national defense.

Which brings me to my main topic, environmentalism. I have mentioned this before in another context, but environmentalism is yet another philosophy which encourages thinking in terms of absolutes. In this case, the absolute value of nature. And, as a result those espousing environmentalist belief tend to overlook solutions which, while still producing some pollution, would serve to dramatically reduce pollution.

For example, as I mentioned before, if the environmental movement were truly concerned about the risks of carbon dioxide, the obvious solution would be to encourage the production of nuclear power. Were they to fight for a reduction of regulations and other impediments to producing nuclear power, the environmental movement would certainly see a serious decline in the production of carbon dioxide by mankind. Why, if electricity were cheap enough, the electrical production of hydrogen may even manage to make their cherished non-petroleum autos viable.

But as there are some environmentalist complaints against nuclear power, in other words since nuclear power is not perfect*, they turn against it and refuse to accept a solution which would meet 90% or more of their goals. By placing an absolute value on "nature" they fail to accept a plausible solution to what they believe is a problem**.

A similar issue arises with the environmentalist obsession with pesticides. In this case the issue is a little less cut and dried, as the cost-benefit analysis is not so one sided (at least from the environmentalist perspective), but still their belief in the absolute value of "nature" makes them unable to make a rational decision.

The problem is that environmentalist both detest pesticides and fertilize, champion the primitive agriculture they term "organic", while, at the same time, detesting the use of land for agriculture. Unfortunately, without pesticides and fertilizers, even with the most clever "organic" alternatives, we would need many times more land to produce the same amount of food. But, because the alternative is to allow pesticides and fertilizers in the name of allowing more land to remain in a natural state, environmentalists are unwilling to consider either, and so their belief in the absolute value of nature leads to an impossible situation***.

And that is the price of absolute values, the inability to consider alternatives. Once you say something is worth any cost, then you will find yourself, provided you are consistent, sacrificing everything else you value. In the case of environmentalism, once nature is an absolute good, then you will, over time, find that you must sacrifice all the advantages of human society, civilization and technology, and, eventually, human kind itself. As the only way to be certain that man does not harm the environment is, in the end, to eliminate mankind.

That is the logical outcome of absolute values.

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* Oddly, the same environmentalists overlook the pollution inherent in producing photovoltaic cells when pushing solar power. They also overlook the environmental impact an all solar infrastructure would have (see "G-d Save Us From Simple Solutions", "A Thought On Solar Energy" and "A Question For Those Worried About Climate Change").

** In some ways this is similar to the behavior or single issue voters I discussed in "Cigarettes, Sudan and Abortion" and "Single Issue Voting".

*** This applies only to rank-and-file environmentalists. As I stated in "The Lie of Environmentalism", some environmentalist leaders and theorists are doing a cost-benefit analysis here, and valuing nature above human life. But the rank and file, for the most part, has not yet adopted the anti-man stand, and so in their case this is truly an impossible situation.

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POSTSCRIPT

The most popular modern absolute value is one that is never explicitly stated as such, that is the cliched "for the children". The fact is that politicians know that people would sacrifice almost anything for the good of children, and so, taking advantage of this implicit absolute value, they have tried to tie any absurd policy to the welfare of children, using it to such a degree it has become something of a political punchline.