MORE DESTROYED THAN EVER EXISTED (C)1996 Alan M. Schwartz Environmentalism is that philosophy and dialectic condemning progress in its every form. Hard by the front of the Luddite vanguard - but enough to the rear to avoid shrapnel - lurks the Sierra Club. The spotted owl was shown to happily catch rats in Home Base plywood bins as the price of lumber fully doubled, US housing starts plummeted, and the northwest forestry industry employment withered. So? Sierra Clubbers already have their wood frame houses, they wouldn't know a ripper from a peavey, and they make their money from donations, not labor. The January/February 1996 Sierra magazine launches a fresh Environmentalist pogrom to loosen folding green from adherents' wallets. The AIDS epidemic is constantly redefined to keep its statistics fat and sassy, though more Indian children die of infantile diarrhea daily than US gays of AIDS annually. Environmentalism is scraping the bottom of its recycled plastic barrel looking for new atrocities. They found one, but they had to go to a supermarket to do it. Bad grocery stores, bad, bad! We must all eat huge quantities of food we don't like, or the vast ecological diversity of Brussels sprouts and kohlrabi will vanish from the Earth. (It's the best news I've heard all month.) Say it softly, "ENDANGERED SPECIES!!!" On page 12 we learn that since 1900 "6000 varieties of apples have become extinct." If we theorize that apples grow on trees which are collected in one place as orchards, that apple orchards must be at least 20 trees on a side to provide enough produce to keep the apple grower alive, and that each variety of apple was grown in only ten orchards nationwide, then somebody has cut down maybe 24 million apple trees - when the growers weren't looking, one presumes. I cannot remember there ever being 6000 different kinds of apples from which to choose at the grocery store in the 1950s with my Mom. The devastation was upon us even then! "The supermarket is an ideal venue for eater activism." We are exhorted not to eat beautiful, crisp, large, perfect apples; juicy sweet oranges, tart tangerines, Ruby grapefruit; bananas, plantains, cherimoyas, tomatillos, papayas, kiwi fruit, gobo root, ugli fruit, celeriac, cassava, nopal... because when we do, we destroy biodiversity. Only crappy, wormy, wrinkled things endemic as weeds in Medieval Europe nobody short of a Bosnian or a Biafran would consider as food are politically correct to eat. Environmentalism demands "open pollination," "organic produce," "heirloom crops," and one presumes, free-ranging lemons. Sierra Club banquets are exempt from their own exhortations, as psychological evaluations make special exemptions for beliefs of priests, which would mark ordinary men as being delirious. We are being goaded to abandon 2% of the American population laboring on farms for a more natural 30%, as in India and Asia where the majority of humankind resides. Chemical fertilizer is death! Raw feces and compost are the proper venues, and hookworm is a sign of Gaia's love. Some sacrifices would be made in terms of quality, quantity and price. Heavy government subsidies will be vital to making the new system work. The Sierra Club is eager to bravely stand first in line with its hand out. There are certain infallible indications, spoor if you will, of Environmentalist piety. Alms-begging is one of them, but it is insufficiently specific. New Age presence is readily gauged by the prevalence of high colonic clinics, the Catholic priesthood by pederasty. On page 44 of Sierra magazine we are privileged to witness the hallmark of Environmentalism - a hugely enlarged picture of a Furbish Lousewort. How many people would suspect that those two dozen square inches of color photograph depict a weed smaller than your little finger? The Russians call it "Pravda" - Official truth. The Sierra Club calls it "activism," and would you please send in your tax-deductible donation? Sierra magazine is printed upon the finest virgin paper using quality heavy metal pigments. The covers are UV-polymerized glossy coatings. The whole of it is the product of despoiled natural resources, a recycling nightmare, and a generator of manifold hazardous wastes in both production and disposal. Would not one expect recycled paper, soybean inks, natural pigments... Do traffic cops obey the speed limit? 6000 varieties of apples have vanished forever because YOU killed them. The only thing missing from this natty exercise is a list of the decedents. Perhaps they are like the graveyard vote in Chicago politics, dutifully showing up at the polls but awkwardly non-existent to factual query. Liars!