The following is a letter to the editor that I submitted to the Richmond Times Dispatch on April 11, 2003. Editor, Times Dispatch: I will not be celebrating Earth Day. Earth Day was founded on the premise that nature has intrinsic value. However, since man is the only creature capable of using reason to shape the environment to improve his life, nature can only have value to man. Therefore, it is our right to exploit the environment to meet our needs. The first Earth Day was the beginning of the modern environmentalist movement. However, if you refrain from littering or dumping used motor oil onto your neighbor’s lawn, you are not an “environmentalist.” You are a rational human being who respects the rights of others. These rights are made concrete through the right to private property, which is the only way to truly protect the environment for man’s use. For example, the paper company Weyerhauser plants far more trees that it cuts down. Otherwise, it would not profit from the land. Environmentalists, on the other hand, have no desire to protect nature for the benefit of man. Instead, they use junk science to sabotage progress through such acts as lobbying to ban DDT (which was highly effective in preventing malaria in Third World nations). In addition, they insist that the Earth is running out of resources even though there are mounds of data to the contrary. Each year, the environmentalist dogma must push back the latest estimated date for the extinction of Earth’s resources. The free market adjusts prices of resources in order to deal with any potential scarcity. If environmentalists were truly concerned with improving man’s happiness, they would lobby for stronger private property rights instead of destructive regulations. On Earth Day, let’s celebrate capitalism instead of environmentalism. -Bob Murphy. Richmond