One of the least understood aspects of human behavior is that every social interaction �" whether positive or negative �" has, at its core, the matter of property ownership. If you and I want to enter into a contract, or if I wish to bestow a gift upon you, or if another person or the state coerces me in some way, such acts are invariably connected to the question of how property is to be owned and controlled. This has nothing to do with how any legal or political system is constructed: human action �" in a social setting �" is unavoidably tied up with relationships over property. The question of the ownership of my car has nothing to do with my relationships to the car, but to you in connection with the car.

The question “who gets to make decisions about what?” is central to all social and political philosophy, but is rarely asked, primarily because its asking opens up all kinds of inquiries that the institutional establishment does not want examined. The distinction between “victimizing” and “victimless” crimes �" e.g., murder, rape, burglary versus drug use, prostitution, or gambling �" comes down to whether someone has been victimized by a property trespass. Such important distinctions are rarely made in schools, it being sufficient that we be taught “the law is the law” as a standard for our behavior.

In order to distract us from exploring our social and political problems as property questions �" whose resolutions can be achieved by the employment of such property principles as “who is the owner?”, “what are the boundaries?”, “did one person trespass the boundaries of another?” �" such inquiries are disguised as something else. Such concepts as “women’s rights,” “privacy,” “civil rights,” “national security,” “health,” and “gay marriage” are the many ways in which property questions become redefined as something less troublesome to establishment interests. The more troublesome aspects of American history involve failures to respect the inviolability of private property claims: slavery �" with its denial of self-ownership, the slaughter and despoliation of Indians, and the Civil War’s destruction and subjugation of the lives and other property interests of southerners, are rarely analyzed as transgressions against property. The issue of “environmentalism” is another such diversion.

“Environmentalism” is the latest secular religion, complete with the “original sin” of humanity’s very existence, an ever-expanding list of “commandments,” “saints” such as Al Gore and Rachel Carson, and a “judgment day” that is certain to follow unless we sinful humans mend our ways. Josie Appleton �" of Britain’s Manifesto Club - has accurately described this new religion as being based upon “Climate” as the new deity, it being the role of the true-believing scientists to function as the priesthood, and to pass onto humanity Climate’s will. One fundamentalist zealot of the Climate Cult �" Kari Norgaard �" is reported to favor having doubters of the faith subjected to “treatment.” Whether this proposed therapy would involve burning at the stake �" in the manner that earlier heretics were “treated” �" and whether drawing and quartering might be reserved for more stubborn cases, this woman did not say. 

The contention that one who dumps toxic wastes into rivers or into the ground water, or emits smoke from a factory that permeates the neighborhood, is committing a wrong against the environment, is difficult to support. What is the “environment,” and how are its boundaries defined? Is it the air, clouds, flowing water, or trees? One can at once see how bestowing personhood upon such an amorphous embodiment only multiplies the confusing and unfocused categories by which law and politics are already burdened.

Furthermore, how are we to determine whether any of these entities regard our acts as trespasses, the very essence of property violations? Anyone familiar with the most elementary nature of botany understands that plant life welcomes our emission of carbon dioxide, and emits oxygen in return, providing plants and animals with a symbiotic relationship beneficial to both forms of life. We can comprehend how individuals might try to project their sense of propriety onto the rest of nature, but is there any way to identify the preferences of their imagined beneficiaries?

On the other hand, a human being who asserts, vis-à-vis his neighbor, a “right” not to have his or her property boundaries violated can articulate a principled case against the polluter. The injuries that acts of pollution inflict are not to an abstract “nature,” but to other humans. Smoke emitted from chimneys get into the clothing, lungs, and land of self-owning persons. When we lived in Chicago, it was common to wipe soot from our foreheads when we were outdoors. Dumping industrial wastes into rivers or underground waters ends up on the lands, drinking water, or other property not belonging to the trespasser. These are just a few of the many ways in which some people dispose of the unwanted, entropic byproducts of their activities by imposing them upon others. That economists correctly define such behavior as “the socialization of costs,” is a tip-off to the violation of property principles involved.

It is the nature of every political system �" however defined and constituted �" to function by depriving private owners of the control that is the very essence of ownership. The new theocracy of “environmentalism” differs from other political tyrannies only in terms of the rationale by which it presumes to use violence against others. The environmentalists are not as concerned with protecting nature, as they are with amassing control over other humans. And they will resort to whatever arguments that might prove plausible to members of the boobeoisie. Thus, the forecast of “arctic cooling” advanced in the 1980s, was morphed into “global warming,” which was later modified to read “global change,” to accommodate the evidence that the earth had undergone climatic changes long before humans (with their SUVs) arrived. With a greater sense of desperation, one defender of the creed �" working at NASA �" went so far as to suggest that the denizens of other planets might choose to attack and destroy earth unless Al Gore’s words are accepted as gospel. 

When so-called “environmental” problems are seen for what they in fact are �" i.e., trespasses to private property �" and when the solutions offered by environmentalists consist of nothing more than institutionalized campaigns to make universal trespasses upon the lives and property interests of individuals, one more racket is exposed for what every political program amounts to: the effort of a few to control (and even destroy) the many.