With the arrival of the move to tax carbon that the human species ( particularly the most civilized version) are supposedly responsible for releasing into the atmosphere, we eventually will be faced with new choices. Assuming the world’s air and water would be pure as the untainted virgin stream ( a fantasy) without all that steam and emissions and waste what will we have when we stop the cooking, the heating and the driving? With a population that is increasing every day and a need for more human amenities such as food, clothing, shelter and transportation no matter how low the emissions become the result will be some must occur. How much? This is not being determined by actual human need for processes that require emissions but by political calculations based on what can the parasites demand and get away with as taxes and regulations.
It is well known that water can be filtered and air can be purified so the issue is not a political issue but it has been made one, just as climate change as the message by the politicians is that only the good people who get elected or appointed have the good morals to do what is best for the city, the county, the state or the nation. How getting into politics makes a person so morally superior might be a question the people who employ and pay the salaries of these pretentious pontificators might ask. When a politician talks of being concerned with something bigger than himself, you can bet he has plans to tax the hell out many people for their own good. Such ideas as clean water, clean air and climate change all have this high sounding attribute that at first glance seems incontrovertible. Such is not the case.
Man needs water and air but it doesn’t have to be untainted. In fact even if man had no technological genius and lived as a chimp there would still be inadvertent feces in the streams and volcanoes spewing. With ever increasing populations of humans the technology to supply potable water and breathable air must be found and implemented but it will not emerge from carbon taxes and emissions controls. Those who think government and force are the only methods for safe consumption forget that production must precede consumption and if the production ( which depends on profits) cannot continue because of regulation and taxation living standards will fall.
The rivers the first inhabitants found had no industrial waste in them but neither did the inhabitants have water that was inspected and treated for bacteria and contaminants. To eat, the inhabitants planted and cooked and kept warm from swirls of smoke going into the air revealing hearth fires that provided warmth and sustenance from cooked food. Soon the country grew and cooking was accomplished for those who wanted to do other things by large processing plants and thunderous tractors that burned fuel and the people lived longer and happier lives with more prosperity. This innovation and progress came not from the bumbling restrictions and regulations but from the people who wanted to make things better and profit from their efforts. This is the way of civilization.
Enter the road to primitive survival. If you can’t make too much smoke or discharge any waste, what happens to the functions a human must perform to live. Human functions do not change. Humans require food which must be produced in huge quantities for large populations and this requires land, implements, machinery, tractors, fertilizer, (which must be processed) an incentive ( i.e. possibility of profit), fuel and a way to discharge waste. The dreamers who think this process can be accomplished by taking away incentives ( the possibility of profit) by taxing to the point of exhaustion and regulating to the point where costs exceed revenue will find they too will be faced with a lack of food they took for granted.
The same issue is evident in clothing and housing. Waste must occur and be disposed of. It cannot be eliminated and the more it is punished the more the overall process is damaged. This dreamy notion that all can be returned to the pristine by simply trampling on the people who recognize what human survival requires and working to make it happen is just fantasy. Like climate change, which is driving most of this nonsense, it is a far off fear that is being propagated and instilled into the gullible by those who use political power to extract money from the human survival production system for whatever buys votes to retain perpetual power.
Term limits turned out to be possible and practical for the office of president but it now is time to require the same of the many perpetual mini dictators in Congress who should not be allowed to establish a career on the public payroll.
The truth is there is only so much interference in trade and production that can be tolerated. If action is not taken to reverse this trend of political control the result will be what the title of this essay outlines. It may not happen tomorrow but the total needs of humanity cannot be provided through air and water alone. We will always have to contaminate and produce waste from our processes both individually and by way of our industrial production. To what extent this can be reduced must be based on the technology possible and not the regulations that can be arbitrarily imposed. Politicians will not feed or house, they produce nothing. The contamination of freedom is the biggest concern we must address if we do not want to scratch among the shackles for a morsel of food. Freedom for the individual to work and think and reap must be pure and clean without the pollution of government which should only protect the individual from the initiation of force. This is the purity that will ensure human survival. Not the air and the water which the innovator can refine and produce to meet the needs of tomorrow
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