Throughout history there’ve been societies that promoted self-destructive ideas. Wars being one glaring case, the medieval religious attitude with its inquisitions, and saintly self-immolations glorifying salvation through pain being another. The Muslim dynamite belt is a modern example of that kind of medieval self-destructive mindset.

But let’s look at our very own socially self-destructive idea – the great green environmental religion of our day, in this case, particularly those strident voices protesting the shipment of oil.

The green movement seeks to eliminate mankind’s influence on nature, to minimize our environmental impact mainly by eliminating the use of fossil fuels.

But what is left when we use no oil, when we build no factories, when we stop mining the earth or logging the forests?

Do our educators and our journalists lack the understanding of how many things we’d lose if we stop using oil? Are they unaware that Ipods, cars, paint, clothes, food and medicine are but some of the bounty that would disappear in an oil-less society?

Why do so many educated people stridently support the belief that a few extra molecules of plant food will cook our planet?

Our children learn all about recycling and reducing carbon foot-prints but learn little about what would be left of life in an energy impoverished world. Our journalists appear to have no idea of what makes microphones, computers, printing presses and television studios available to them. Ignoring the role of energy in life places life itself in peril.

Do the protesters realize the sign that reads “ship no oil” has “suicide” written on its opposite side?

And while birds may fly into windows and rabbits will run under cars, it is not because they seek to destroy themselves. In the biological world, life and procreation has always been the ultimate goal.  Only human beings can be programmed to destroy the very thing that makes life possible – access to a low cost, abundant energy supply.