The "Ambassador to the Environment", a hyperbolic description for the Chairman of the BEST Commission, has publicly turned the heat of political power on The Sandyport Development Company. This is troubling to anyone who values freedom and property rights. The effect of misplaced zeal, in this case "environmentalism" spreads well beyond the targeted Company and every one of us is affected to a greater or lesser degree.
Regrettably a number of people have embraced "environmentalism" with a kind of religious fervor having nothing to do with science but a lot to do with faith and dogma. It is no surprise then that a Reverend and a bureaucrat head up the attack team against the Sandyport Development Company.
Keod Smith the bureaucrat is quoted in The Tribune, "the developers ought not to have pursued what they are pursuing because they knew of the negative effect. However, Mr. Smith provides no evidence of the alleged "negative effect", just vague inferences and innuendo. But there is an effect of his grandstanding on the rest of the country when it is recognized as environmental terrorism and a jihad against property developers.
Something very fundamental is at risk when self-anointed visionaries, particularly government controlled ones, infringe on property rights.
"The right of property is the guardian of every other right, and to deprive the people of this, is in fact to deprive them of their liberty". (Arthur Lee of Virginia 1775).
Contrary to what the fascist left would have us believe, historical evidence shows that private ownership of property is the best means of protecting and conserving it because this is the way to increase its value.
Before interfering with the use of private property by either private or public groups, thoroughly scientific evidence by impartial investigators must be produced that describes in detail all adverse effects of sufficient seriousness to warrant deprivation of the use of the property by the owners. Developers change the environment but it is an erroneous assumption that by doing so they are harming it.
The activism of environmentalists may be dangerous to the survival of their own species – all of us. The country is in desperate need of a different kind of endangered species; that elusive "investor species" that has shown itself to be very particular about its habitat, and disappears when local environmental stress in the form of political threats and abuse makes it uncomfortable.
