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# Don’t be so selfish
- URL: https://www.smdp.com/dont-be-so-selfish-editor/
- Published: 2008-04-23T15:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-24T19:21:07.000Z
- Author: Guest Author
- Tags: Opinion, Santa Monica, #archive-import

*By Robert T. Baker Santa Monica*

Libertarians are fond of railing against government regulation. Objectivists take the rant one step further, claiming that man is morally obligated to be selfish. I usually tolerate this behavior when I hear it in its most common context, fiscal policy.

However, it is downright offensive when applied to environmentalism, as Michael Berliner does in his column of April 21, 2008 (“The Rand Stand: The Danger of Environmentalism,” reprinted from Capitalism Magazine, April 17, 2008).

When an objectivist hoards money without regard for the society around him, poverty festers outside of his gated community, but at least there is no direct physical injury.

However, when an objectivist hoards and burns resources without regard for the society around him, he creates externalities that do cause direct physical injury. Mr. Berliner was even kind enough to name some of them — “acid rain, global warming, smog” — before contemptuously dismissing them.

Libertarians and objectivists advocate individual freedom so long as it does not manifest as an unprovoked initiation of force against another.

Thus, assault, rape, and murder are still forbidden in their code. However, by that same logic, an industrialist should be responsible for toxic run-off seeping into a city’s water supply, a toy maker should be responsible for the lead found in its dolls, and an SUV driver should be responsible for the exhaust belching out of his tailpipe.

All of these are unprovoked initiations of force against fellow citizens.

Mr. Berliner believes technology will save us from these externalities. Maybe so, but time and time again the cure does not arrive until well after the illness is diagnosed and deemed irreversible (e.g., global warming), and often doesn’t arrive at all unless someone sees profit potential.

Mr. Berliner also mischaracterizes the goal of environmentalism as the protection of nature from man, when it is actually the opposite.

Our assaults against nature prompt nature to assault us in kind: Every tree we raze leaves more atmosphere-cooking carbon dioxide in the air, and most “nonhuman” extinctions ripple through the ecosystem right to our dinner plates.

Contrary to bumper sticker wisdom, the earth will survive long after we have destroyed ourselves. The question is, how long do we want to last on its surface?

Ultimately, objectivism may provide a useful perspective in the context of civil liberties and fiscal policy.

However, when it comes to my lungs, Mr. Berliner does not have “a moral right to live his own life for his own sake” with “no duty … to the needs of others.” This twisted ethic, along with his admitted goal of reckless “intrusion,” is the very threat against which environmental regulation protects us in the first place.

*Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on April 23, 2008.* [Read the original PDF.](https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/smdp%5Fbackissues/042308.pdf?ref=smdp.com)