I was watching Pоlіtіcаlly Incоrrеct the other night and they were talking about how great it was for China to have convinced an entire nation to restrict themselves to one child per couple. Bіll Mаhеr, the host, said he admired how they had recognized that overpopulation is the greatest threat to the earth and had acted on it.

But in China, if you already had a child, and your wife got pregnant again, she would be forced to have an abortion. So if you're like me you're asking yourself how anyone can sink to the level of relishing the thought of being forced to kill your own unborn children.

I suppose we should remember that Bіll Mаhеr lives in LA. And he is basing all his judgments in what he sees around him. He sees overcrowding, overdevelopment, pollution, and a general lack of green. But to form opinions about global problems, one has to lift his nose from the ground in front of him and look at the bigger picture. One has to leave LA.

For example, the surest argument against environmentalism is to get into a small airplane, climb to about 10,000 feet, and look around. All you will see is huge green patches with tiny little areas of human development. This is true for almost anywhere in the world, even LA.

And it applies on a global scale. Look at a map of the earth sometime. It is still 99% green.

But environmentalism is designed to prevent this kind of common sense. It proposes to create global awareness by reducing one's vision to the square yard in front of him, and worse, it is designed to make people ignore their own perceptions completely, and to accept what they hear from others, over and over, as the truth. It is the credibility of the human mind that environmentalism is designed to destroy.

And it seems to be working. Maher's kind of short-sightedness is rampant in modern thought.

For example, a while back, many people voiced concerns that burning the rainforest would use up most of the earth's oxygen supply, and we would all asphyxiate. But in this case, even the most short-sighted, concrete-bound mentality can see plainly for himself that there is no shortage of oxygen in the earth's atmosphere. All he has to do is take a deep breath. He will not notice any problems with a lack of oxygen. Of course not. The earth's oxygen supply is fine.

Similar common sense tests can be found for almost all environmental concerns. Global warming for example. A simple check of the average global temperatures for the last 100 years ought to answer that question. Yet no one to my knowledge has ever bothered to check. If they have, they've kept the results of that test awfully quiet. Now, why do you suppose they'd do that? Perhaps because there is no such thing as global warming.

Perhaps the only real environmental threat man is facing today is the depletion of the ozone layer. And I say "perhaps", because it's the same people who warn of global warming, and overpopulation that freak over the ozone layer. But common sense tells me that I burn faster when I go out on a sunny day than I used to, so I guess it could be true.

But surely the solution to such a threat is to get rid of its cause. And here I mean 'cause' in the big picture. It's cause - in the big picture - is not automobiles burning carbon based fuels; its cause is the kind of anti-technological sentiments that have prevented mankind from progressing to using something better.

For example, a few years ago the environmentally friendly political regime here in Ontario, Canada, banned all new research into nuclear power, ending over 10 years of promising research into developing a perfectly harmless fusion reactor. Now we are stuck with our dangerous nuclear fission reactors indefinitely. But since the world doesn't stand still even when man does, the reactors we now have are breaking down all over the place and will soon have to be scrapped completely. Seems we no longer have the knowledge necessary to salvage them, which means we will be burning coal for electric power in the very near future. Now that ought to be good for the ozone layer!

The environmentalist solution always seems to be a ban on all new technologies, which forces us to perpetuate our destructive ways indefinitely.

Whatever environmentalism's purpose - and as hard to believe as it may be - protecting the environment doesn't seem to be one of them!

In fact there is no way to freeze progress. There are only two ways to go, forward, or backward. And if you prevent progress, prevent human invention, backwards we will go. Therefore, even from an environmentalist point of view, everyone should - and must - be allowed to pursue new technologies. Yet environmentalism is the movement dedicated to preventing that. Environmentalists are the real-life versions of the people in the movies who are always trying to prevent the creative genius from introducing a new idea - a creative genius whose reckless pursuit of scientific truth leads invariably to his bloody demise and often the destruction of mankind.

But imagine what the world would look like today, in real life, had mankind been allowed to progress unhindered these last 100 years.

If not for the kind of thinking inherent in environmentalism we'd have almost unlimited power from pollution- and risk-free nuclear fusion reactors, and hydrogen-powered automobiles whose only by-product would be perfectly pure H2O. We might all even have jet packs to get around. Thе Sаhаrа desert would be the largest fertile green belt in the world. There'd be none of the diseases we know today - no AIDS, no cancer, no heart disease. Medical science would not only have found cures for these diseases, it would also have found a cure for aging. Which means, if not for environmentalism and the thinking it is based on, none of us in this generation, or in the generations to come, would ever have to die! Moreover we'd all be able to choose our genetic makeup, or at least that of our children. No one would have to grow up short, deformed, ugly, or stupid. Which means none of us would have to go through life never knowing love, never falling in love, never getting a chance to make love.

Whatever the motivations of environmentalists, we know that compassion is NOT one of them.

Sure these technological wonders would bring their own sets of problems, but what's important to notice is that the past, purpose, and pride of technology is that the problems it creates are always smaller than the ones it solves. We have to remember that in real life, when you prevent individual thought and accomplishment, you are preventing any and all ideas that can get us out of any mess we might be in, just as preventing people from having more than one child will prevent the geniuses we need from being born. Who can say where the next Einstein will come from? Or the next Mоthеr Thеrеsа.

Yet environmentalism's true purpose is precisely that, i.e., to create systematic short-sightedness in order to prevent individual perception and thought. In the Bіg Pіctυrе - which it doesn't want you to see - environmentalism is the modern form of the political movement dedicated to eradicating individualism: communism. It is our ideological link to China, which is what Bіll Mаhеr was picking up on. But what he doesn't realize is that it also a hole to China - that it's purpose is the same as communism: sacrifice. Not sacrifice for the state, for the good of mankind, or for the environment, but sacrifice for the sake of sacrifice.

An obvious example is the idea that we must preserve our planet the way it is now for future generations, which means, in reality, for no one, since future generations won't be allowed to use the planet either, for the sake of the generations that will follow them.

I always find it interesting that the same people who shriek that we must preserve the world for our children also scream that to preserve the world we must stop having kids. Obviously, they don't really care about either. The general theme of their demands is to stop doing anything. Stop having children. Stop working. Stop living. That's the true goal of environmentalists, whether they admit it to themselves or not.

I say the purpose of life is to live. To be fruitful, and multiply. Let's think, invent, and produce; rather than reduce, reuse, and recycle. Why not truly create a better place for our children to live?

But of course, to do that, we have to be allowed to have them.

Some of you might be wondering what environmentalism and poilitical issues have to do with female beauty. Well, I'll tell you. It was my passion for female beauty - and my desire to understand and explain it - that inspired me to start thinking in the first place. Female beauty is responsible for the mind I have today. It's the 'mind' in Body in Mind.

Feedback: dbell@bodyinmind.com