Our friends R.J Smith and Iain Murray up at the Competitive Enterprise Institute have a great article in today’s National Review Online dissecting astronaut Eileen Collins’ observations about “environmental degradation” as observed from the orbiting shuttle. Their analysis is summed up thusly:
“As for Eileen Collins?s comments themselves, a moment?s thought reveals them for the platitudinous claptrap we have come to expect from people who don?t know all that much about Spaceship Earth. She has seen ?widespread environmental damage,? whatever that may be. ?Sometimes you can see how there is erosion.? Huh? That is one of the most fundamental and basic processes on the planet. There is uplift and there is erosion ? the two big players in the geological game. What are wind and rain and freezing and thawing supposed to do besides erode? ?And you can see how there is deforestation.? Again so what? And why? Why do you suppose the trees get replanted in the vast clear-cuts of the giant timber companies, but not in mankind’s common tropical forests?
She keeps on going: ?We would like to see. . . people take good care of the Earth and replace the resources that have been used.? What is that supposed to mean? Refill copper mines with more copper or start pumping crude oil into depleted reservoirs?
As for the comment, ?We don’t have much air,? well. . . what is her concern? That people are using it all up by breathing? This is grade-school environmentalism at best, not the sort of thinking we should expect from the highly qualified scientists that astronauts are supposed to be.”
