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!