[00:00.00] Protecting nature certainly has benefits, but it has costs as well

[00:05.80]How are we to balance the two when deciding how far we should go in caring for the environment?

[00:13.79]SAVING NATURE, BUT ONLY FOR MAN by Charles Krauthammer

[00:20.98]Environmental sensitivity is now as required an attitude in polite society as is, say,

[00:30.17]belief in democracy or aversion to nylon. But now that everyone has claims to love Mother Earth,

[00:39.26]how are we to choose among the dozens of conflicting proposals, restrictions, projects,

[00:47.20]regulations and laws advanced in the name of the environment?

[00:54.07]Clearly not everything with an environmental claim is worth doing. How to choose?

[01:01.78]There is a simple way. First, distinguish between environmental luxu ries and env'n'onmental necessities.

[01:11.50]Luxuries are those things it would be nice to have if costless.Necessities are those things we must have regardless.

[01:23.02]Then apply a rule. Call it the fundamental principle of sensible environmentalism: Combating ecological change

[01:34.17]that directly threatens the health and safety of people is an environmental necessity. All else is luxury.

[01:44.49]For example: preserving the atmosphere, by both protecting the ozone layer and halting the greenhouse effect,

[01:53.87]is an environmental necessity. In April scientists reported that ozone damage

[02:03.01]is far worse than previously thought. Ozone reduction not only causes skin cancer and eye cataracts,

[02:13.54]it also destroys plankton, the beginning of the food chain on top of which we humanssit.

[02:21.82]The reality of the greenhouse effect is more speculative, though its possible consequences are far deadlier:

[02:31.43]melting ice caps, flooded coastlines, disturbed climate, dried up plains and, ullLrnately, empty breadbaskets.

[02:42.56]The American Midwest feeds the world.

[02:47.34]Are we prepared to see Iowa acquire Albuquerque's climate? And Siberia acquire Iowa's?

[02:56.48]Ozone reduction and the greenhouse effect are human disasters. They happen to occur in the environment.

[03:06.38]But they are urgent because they direedy threaten man. A sensible environmentalism,

[03:15.21]the only kind of environ- mentalism that will win universal public support,

[03:21.77]begins by unashamedly declaring that nature is here to serve man.A sensible environmentalism is entirely man-centered:

[03:33.94]it calls for man to preserve nature, but on the grounds of self-preservation.

[03:41.47]A sensible environmentalism does not sentimentalize the earth.

[03:47.92]It does not ask people to sacrifice in the name of other creatures. After all,

[03:56.09]it is hard enough to ask people to sacrifice in the name of other humans.

[04:03.04]Think of the public resistance to foreign aid and welfare.Ask hardworking voters to sacrifice in the name of the snail dartei;

[04:14.54]and, if they are feeling polite, they will give you a shrug.

[04:20.68]Of course, this man-centeredness runs against the grain ofa contemporary environmentalism

[04:28.62]that worships the earth to the point of excess.

[04:33.82]One scientific theory Gaiatheory actually claims that Earthis allying organism.

[04:42.85]This kind of environmentalism likes to consider itself spiritual. It is nothing more than sentimental.

[04:52.05]It takes, for example, a highly selective view of the kindliness of nature.

[04:59.70]My nature worship stops with the May storms that killed more than 125,000 Bengalis and left 10 million homeless.

[05:11.01]A non-sentimental environmentalism is one founded on Protagoras' principle that "Man is the measure of all things."

[05:20.63]Such a principle helps us to fight our way through the jungle of environmental argument.

[05:27.99]Take the current debate raging over oil drilling in a corner of the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge.

[05:36.64]Environmentalists, fighting against a bill working its way through Congress to permit such exploration,

[05:45.68]argue that we should be con i serving energy instead of drilling for it. This is a false either/or proposition.

[05:55.16]The country does need a substantial energy tax to reduce consumption. But it needs more production too.

[06:04.59]Government estimates indicate a nearly fify-fifty chance

[06:11.15]that under the ANWR lies one of the five largest oil fields ever discovered in America.

[06:19.95]We have just come through a war2 fought in part over oil:

[06:25.83]Energy dependence costs Americans not just dollars but lives. It is a ridiculous sentimentalism that

[06:35.89]would deny ourselves oil that is peacefullyattalnable because it risks disrupting the breeding grounds of Arctic reindeer.

[06:46.02]I like the reindeer as much as the next man. And I would be rather sorry if their mating patterns are disturbed.

[06:54.56]But you can't have everything.And if the choice is between the welfare of reindeer

[07:01.90]and reducing oil dependence that gets people killed in wars, I choose man over reindeer every time.

[07:10.50]Similarly the spotted owl. I am no enemy of the owl. If it could be preserved at no or little cost,

[07:20.71]I would agree: the variety of nature is a good, ahigh aesthetic good. But it is no more than that.

[07:30.48]And sometimes aesthetic goods have to be sacrificed to the more fundamental ones.

[07:38.76]If the cost of preserving the spotted owl is the loss of livelihood for 30,000 logging fami- lies,

[07:47.96]I choose family over owl.

[07:52.08]The important distinction is between those environmental goods

[07:58.33]that are fundamental and those that are merely aesthetic. Nature is our charge. It is not our master.

[08:07.76]It is to be respected and even cultivated. But it is man's world.

[08:14.84]And when man has to choose between his well-being and that of nature, nature will have to accommodate.

[08:23.43]Man should accommodate only when his fate and that of nature are bound up together.

[08:30.62]The most urgent accommodation must be made when the very integrity of man's environment e.g.,

[08:39.73]atmospheric ozone-is threat-ened. When the threat to man is of a lesser order

[08:47.62](say, the pollutants from coal- and oil-fired generators that cause death from disease but not fatal damage to the ecosystem),

[08:58.41]a more moderate accommodation that balances economic against health concerns is in order.

[09:05.80]But in either case the principle is the same: protect the environment--because it is man's environment.

[09:14.97]The sentimental environmentalists will call this saving nature with a totally wrong flame of mind.

[09:23.23]Exactly. A sensible-- a humanistic --environ- mentalism does it not for nature's sake but for our own.

[09:34.07]Language Sence Enhancement

[09:37.52]2 Read aloud the following poem

[09:40.89]The Beauty of Nature James Teh

[09:46.14]One cool evening,I put aside all duty,To sit alone, watching the sun set,

[09:54.94]And as I do,I think of scenes filled with beauty,Scenes I wish to never forget.

[10:02.46]I think of the beach,with the sand and the sea,The waves roaring up,then gently lapping the beach,

[10:11.97]The cries of the seagulls1, so happy, so free,If only men realized the lesson it can teach.

[10:21.82]I think of a lake, the crystal clear water,So pure, so smooth, and cool on my skin,

[10:30.65]The air,so clean, no toxicz slaughter,There's a key,a lesson held within.

[10:39.79]I think of a waterfall, water freely flowing, The gentle gush1, gurglingz in my ears,

[10:48.70]The wind on my face, calmly blowing,So many have not learnt in so many years.

[10:56.80]The sunset,the beach,the lake, the waterfall, They're things of nature, not man-made at all,

[11:06.07]Characteristics unbeatable by man have they all,They're peace and beauty both of which it seems men want to fall.

[11:17.85]3 Read the following quotations. Learn them by heart if you can. You might need to look up new words in a dictionary.

[11:28.33]Complete adaptation to environment means death,

[11:33.26]The essential point in all response is the desire to control environment. John Deweu

[11:42.75]We won't have a society if we destroy the environment. Marqaret Mead

[11:51.34]We make the world we live in and shape our own environment. Orison Swett Marden

[12:00.17]When man is happy,he is in harmony with himself and his environment. Oscar Wilder

[12:09.78]4 Read the following joke for fun:

[12:15.01]How many environmentalists does it take to change a light bulb?

[12:20.57]Ten. One to install the new bulb and nine to figure out what to do with