Greenies Got it Bass-ackward

In London last Friday, animal rights activists used baseball bats to attack an executive of a company that does animal research. At the time of this writing, other activists in Newchurch, also in England, were protesting outside a guinea pig farm. This group was defeating its own purpose – there happens to be an outbreak among local livestock of foot-in-mouth disease that is so contagious local experts fear the activists will spread it to uninfected animals. Here in the United States, PETA members are proud to frighten children: "We were outside a school in Peoria, Ill., yesterday, and it was great. At one point, I was speaking to half a dozen 11-year-old girls, telling them how the dairy industry rips the baby calves away from their dairy cow mothers a few days after birth. They were just horrified." Other animal-rights activist tactics emulate terrorism, adding arson and sabotage to the sort of assault mentioned above.

Nor are the animal-rights activists the only attackers. Anti-biotechnologyniks in Seattle in December of 1999, by protesting orange-colored genetically engineered rice with carotene, were in essence attacking the hopes of millions of children who go blind each year from Vitamin A deficiency in poorer cultures that use rice as a staple. Monsanto, a developer of such rice, still has to keep it in Switzerland andunder guard because of the threat of sabotage. And we've all heard many times of the trees' rights activists in the northwestern United States spiking trees to injure loggers.

The list of victim groups fingered by the greenies you can find in 15 minutes' worth of searching the web via Google and Junkscience.com thus includes a lone executive; small farmers; children face-to-face; faceless children in other countries; corporations who have a real chance to end world hunger; faceless semiskilled and skilled laborers; and of course we remember the stories of these nuts painting fur-wearing women in the streets. The final victim group is sometimes the animals themselves, as when activists released minks from a farm in England last summer. Minks can be aggressive little devils – they attacked animals on neighboring farms and fought each other. Some were attacked by dogs or run over by cars, and those that avoided trouble starved: They were farm-raised, and didn't have any survival skills. Per the second link at the top of this article, activists were willing to spread disease among animals in order to call attention to the animals' lack of freedom.

The activists have cause and effect bass-ackward. The industries they oppose, as with every industry, are demand-driven. If today you remove every lumberjack from the planet, they'll be replaced tomorrow. If, however, everyone stops buying lumber today, the lumberjacks will stop lumbering. So here is how the ecofreaks should proceed from now on:

Instead of beating up executives who administrate animal research, knock on the doors of known adult women and confront them regarding their use of skin care products. Of course, it might take more courage to face a beer-bellied homeowner whose wife you've just insulted than to attack someone from behind. How about this: To reduce demand for bioengineered food, go to Beijing and tell Deng how you oppose it. Alas, the Chinese Premier might not take kindly to your advice, but that's the only way to solve the problem – burning warehouses full of corn hasn't worked. Spiking trees and injuring lumberjacks, sometimes critically, fails to stop the tree cutting. It would not be possible to locate everyone who might buy a new house someday, so perhaps you could work at least a little farther up the demand chain by attacking homebuilders. This plan might hit a snag, however, in the form of annoyed carpenters wielding hammers and crowbars, but at least the greengeeks would be working closer to the source of the problem.

Here's a solution I'd like to see: Instead of spray painting fur-wearing rich women, who will only replace their furs using insurance money (increasing demand rather than curbing it), go after animal-skin wearers who likely don't have insurance and can't afford to replace expensive clothing very often. I'm talking about Hell's Angels and other Harley-riding types, who wear leather jackets, boots, gloves, and sometimes pants. Can anybody imagine why PETA hasn't thought of this already?

More seriously, the animal-rights and anti-biotech loonies are fighting a war we know has already been decided. People worldwide want to be safe, healthy, comfortable, even entertained. Free markets are constantly making new products that tread less on the earth than before, for less money and with greater quality. No number of violent wackos is going to stop 6.2 billion people from getting what they want, nor should they. They are the Luddites of today, but in the meantime they are responsible for unnecessary damage and injury on a daily basis. We need to find a way to get them interested in something else.

March 1, 2001

Brad Edmonds, Doctor of Musical Arts, is a banker in Alabama.