Protection for the Environment

In a time where the cause of environmental protection garners much media attention and many groups scrambling for the recognition of being its champion, but little serious effort or consideration, we have come to insist upon both a common-sense approach to this dire issue as well as far more serious undertaking of it.

While we reject the approach that would undermine the intrinsic dignity of man and relegate him to equal standing as the animals, tyrannically assuming that to protect the environment is to cull the human population or limit its growth, or otherwise sacrifice mankind’s legitimate needs for the sake of plants or animals, we likewise reject the approach that would fail to recognize that man is the steward of creation and not an unaccountable owner who may consider it a heap of raw material to be used according to the fleeting market demands of the moment, rendering it emptied, disfigured, and tainted.

Contrary to the approach of the mainstream corporate and government entities who in reality only seek their own benefit from their so-called “green” initiatives by the promotion of certain technologies or simply limiting a handful of chemicals, we insist that man’s action must always and everywhere respect, enhance, develop, and strive to render more beautiful the environment instead of degrading it. We therefore also reject the notion that the environment must remain untouched, for we see mankind’s subduing of the earth as a good thing so long as it is done with respect and reverence. We acknowledge that the steps that must be taken to protect the environment are difficult, but are neither complicated nor optional (as if a merely quantitative cost/benefit analysis could dissuade us from them), and rather are straightforward and absolutely necessary, and therefore we will never lose heart in our battle to ensure these steps are taken.

We first protect the environment by working to reduce the generation of garbage and waste and the cut back the overuse of energy, oil, gas, and water, for this wastefulness has, in America today, has reached astronomical proportions.

Therefore we strive to Reduce the Generation of Waste

We next strive to ensure that, whenever possible, human needs can be addressed and fulfilled on a local level, thereby encouraging community and helping to lessen the superabundance of motorized transportation.

Therefore we Enable and Promote Local Economy

We next fight to protect one of the most vital components of creation – the food we eat – from the multitude of ingredients, processes, and proportions known by science to be extremely detrimental to human health and to contribute to the unfortunate fact that, despite all of our knowledge and medical technology, modern Americans are among the least healthy people in history.

Therefore we Protect the Food Supply

We next work to ensure that the natural beauty with which creation surrounds us, and which truly serves a transcendent need of the human heart and an indispensable element of the common good, is not abused and destroyed by corporate and government interests that readily neglect all else in pursuit of their own single and self-serving interests. We insist upon a deference to this qualitative understanding and desire of the human heart for beauty in surroundings, instead of the status quo — which only listens to numbers and studies in its superficial and often only nominal pursuit of the protection of the environment.

Therefore we Protect Public Beauty

Reduce the Generation of Waste

In the throw-away culture that modern America has become, where our nation generates by far the most waste per-capita in the world; with each citizen causing thousands of pounds of it to be heaped into dumps around the country, to the point where our landfills can no longer contain it, our streets are littered with it, and the sight, stench, and toxicity of it permeates our cities, we have come to insist that bold measures to put an end to this insanity must be taken without delay. We further fight for strong measures to be taken to reduce our energy consumption, the magnitude of which is in stride with landfill waste, as well as our food waste (which alone could feed hundreds of millions of the world’s hungry).

We first fight for common-sense ways of decreasing our domestic energy consumption...

... while continuing to support – but not wait for – the invention of innovative technological solutions that themselves cut back consumption. Within this endeavor we first strive to enable and promote local living. We also strive to decrease the square footage to resident ratio of our nation’s homes, which are on average not capable of being sustainably and efficiently heated, cooled, or maintained. We do this first by honoring the family and enabling the flourishing of fruitful marriages, but we also advocate for this shift directly by streamlining, de-regulating, and financially incentivizing subletting and the conversion of oversized single family homes into multi-family homes.

We next advocate for a regulatory disincentives on the manufacture and import of plastic components...

...which cannot be safely burned or naturally biodegraded, with an especially high per-kilogram manufacturing tax on those types of plastics that, in addition, cannot be recycled. We reject having recourse only to recycling, however, as a sufficiently helpful long-term solution to our problems, as this merely involves the introduction of another costly, energy-consuming, and polluting industry. Instead, we believe that the free market itself should usually suffice in determining what materials are worth recycling.

Indeed, we support Capitalism and we reject a thinly veiled Socialism that sometimes wears the mask of a "Green New Deal," but Capitalism rightly understood cannot successfully exist if the market prices of goods and services do not reflect their actual societal costs. When such a disparity exists, we believe it is the absolute duty of the Government to step in and correct it in order not to subvert the free market, but to empower its healthy flourishing. In, for example, the case of Styrofoam, this material can be extremely cheaply manufactured and purchased with reckless disregard for the fact that it will occupy much space in a towering landfill for centuries. Were the price of manufacturing Styrofoam actually proportioned to its real societal costs, the free market would quickly and radically decrease its production.

We insist upon a similar approach to all industry; namely, an approach wherein the Government ensures that the prices of goods are not disproportionate to their actual societal costs. We believe that, with this relatively minor state mandate, the free market would largely succeed in operating less wastefully.

We next fight for far stricter regulations on landfills.

We especially insist that landfills be located further away from residential areas than is now permitted. We recognize the increased costs inherent in this, but insist upon it nonetheless, for the common good is seriously wounded by our garbage-inundated environment. The increased costs will serve to encourage less wasteful habits, but will also be largely offset by the aforementioned manufacturing tax, which will in turn rightfully discourage the manufacture of these plastic components.

We next fight the culture of disposable items and temporary use products.

We call for the implementation of consumer protections against the current inundation of designed-to-fail “durable goods” that not only overflow our landfills but also amount to a real form of fraud. We also call for legitimate regulations on the widespread abuse of disposable products by entities who find doing so profitable and therefore engage in such behaviors despite their grave detriment to the Common Good. Where disposable products are not truly necessary, durable and reusable ones should be used, and we support Government initiatives to encourage this transition.

Enable and Promote Local Economy and Community

In an age of superabundant motor vehicle transportation, when it is not uncommon for an average citizen to spend hours of his day sitting in a car in order simply to get to those places he needs to maintain his life, we insist that our government is called to take a far more active role in the promotion of local economy and community. We believe that the air pollution, noise pollution, excess of paved roads (which now are so abundant that they cannot even be properly maintained), unacceptable quantity of road fatalities and injuries, and unsustainable costs associated with motor-vehicle transportation on both an individual and societal level cannot be adequately addressed simply by incremental improvements in vehicles, roads, or public transportation, but rather constitute such an enormous loss to the Common Good that the root of the issue must finally be addressed in a serious manner: the pervasive lack of local economy and community in our nation today. We insist that, in this increasingly isolated and distant culture, our government do all it can to counter this dangerous trend with initiatives and practices aimed at the flourishing of local living.

First we strive to ensure that all of the local infrastructure is in place...

... for residents of cities, towns, and villages to be able to safely and conveniently walk from place to place. We insist that no advancement in transportation technology can alter the fact that mankind’s primary mode of travel is his God-given ability to walk, and that whenever reasonably possible this is given preference to motor-vehicle transport when their needs conflict.

We next work to rid society of those elements that encourage people to restrict their lives...

... to their own homes, cars, and offices: namely, the widespread dangers to physical, moral, spiritual, and psychological health that have become increasingly common today, especially in urban living. In this regard we especially seek to safeguard moral dignity, protect public beauty, and bring peace to the ordinary for the poor.

We next fight to abolish barriers to entry, which prevent local economy from truly flourishing.

We also work for safer, more reliable, more dignified, more prevalent, and more convenient public transportation, which is drastically less wasteful in many ways than individual motor vehicle transportation.

Protect the Food Supply

In an age of epidemic level obesity, diabetes, psychological disorders, heart disease, cancer, and the like, where countless billions are poured annually into research aimed at finding medical industry answers to these problems while the solutions of this type that we do currently employ risk economically destroying our nation’s GDP, we have come to call for sane and sober reflection upon the first step to our nation’s health: the food we eat. Far from advocating for the restriction of personal freedom to eat as one sees fit, we rather fight to protect mass-manufactured food from a lack of transparency and from those artificial ingredients and processes that are deemed by scientific consensus to be detrimental to human health.

We first seek to ensure that no novel and artificial ingredient in the food placed on store shelves is permitted until it has successfully passed a rigorous set of tests and studies to ensure it is safe for human consumption with respect to both its short term and long term effects.

We next fight for full disclosure in labeling.

We believe that consumers have a right to know not only each and every ingredient contained in the food they buy, but also the percentage of these ingredients as a fraction of the total product as well as any chemical treatments applied to these ingredients. We believe that consumers likewise have the right to know the ingredients --and percentages -- of all the chemicals they purchase. We lament that a few powerful voices are permitted to get away with calling such regulation an infringement on corporate freedom of speech, and we wish to rhetorically ask how many people today are sorry that Nutrition Facts and Ingredients must be included on mass-manufactured food on account of this requirement being "too regulatory." The answer, we assume, is that virtually no one is sorry that Nutrition Facts and Ingredients exist. These are common sense requirements of justice in an age of mass manufacturing, and we insist that these common sense requirements be not so restricted in scope.

We next strive to ensure that livestock facilities treat their animals with respect and care.

Far from advocating for so-called “animal rights” in such a form as to parallel human rights, we rather insist simply that these creatures are recognized not as mere indifferent matter to be manipulated in whatever way proves most profitable, but as living beings who, though lacking the intrinsic dignity of man, still deserve our respect and care. We advocate for stricter regulations on how these animals may be treated in business, especially on large corporate farms, and insist that they are given a manner of living that at least reasonably resembles how they are designed to exist.

Protect Public Beauty

In an ever increasingly industrialized, advertised, artificial, and noisy world, we have come to insist that beauty in surroundings — which these trends destroy — is an essential aspect of the Common Good that cannot be left to the vain hope that those who wield the economic and financial power will treat it respectfully. We regret that the mainstream environmental protection movements in modern politics seem limited to merely ensuring the absence of certain chemical pollutants or greenhouse gasses, and instead we insist that measures must be taken to ensure a foundational general principle is respected: namely, that creation ought always find itself more beautiful, not less beautiful, after mankind’s intervention. Being a transcendental need of man due to his very God given design, we do not believe that this principle can ever be neglected. While we respect the freedom of individuals over their own homes, we fight to prevent the destruction of natural beauty primarily by government or corporate initiatives that subject man’s true need for beauty in his environment to quantitative considerations of far less value; primarily their own pursuit of profit or cost-saving.

We first strive to reduce the pervasiveness of distracting, costly, and unsightly advertisements...

... now plastered even in those areas where those who have not consented to them must endure them; such as in roadside billboards, loud public audio advertisements, immense business signs, omnipresent city flyers and posters, and the like. While there is scarcely a person alive who will not readily admit that such ubiquitous advertisements all competing and shouting for attention is extremely detrimental to one’s peace, psychological health, and spiritual well-being, we are unfortunately burdened with the notion that the production and posting of such detriments to public beauty is somehow an inalienable right. We have come to insist that this is not only not a right at all, but is actually an offense against the Common Good which must even be fought with new legislation, given the prevalence and seriousness of the offenses.

We next fight the initiation and continuation of industrial projects needlessly close to residential areas.

Although it is true that distancing such projects from residential areas increases the costs incurred by them, this is no argument to avoid doing so. We lament that in modern rhetoric the mere insistence that a certain practice will cut costs seems to ensure that it is allowed, instead of first things coming first.

We next work to put a stop to the sloppy, unsightly, and low-quality construction methods that now dominate modern industry...

... and make it difficult to find a beautiful setting anywhere outside of a remote park, an untouched area of an old college campus, a rich rural/suburban residential area, or the like: largely thanks to lowest-bidder contract rewarding, unrealistic expectations, hasty new construction, and so forth. Such construction, in addition to its mere existence causing a serious detraction from public beauty, also condemns those nearby to an existence of continual exposure to the sight, sound, and danger of industrial projects due to the fact that this construction, in the short-sighted methods it employs, inevitably finds itself in excessive need of constant repair, maintenance, and replacement. In this regard – and while still being careful to always respect individual citizens’ rights over their own homes – we seek to require greater input and permission from local residents before any serious construction project is undertaken by a government or corporate entity. We likewise advocate for higher standards for such construction.