Quote of the day - Ann Coulter - conservation vs. civilization

We're Americans. This is a prosperous country. We will not live like Swedes. We want 18-ton Ford Exploro-cruisers, cell phones, CDs, hot showers, blow dryers, DVD players and jet skis.

Fuel is the metric of prosperity, and conservationism is an acknowledgement that we are in decline of prosperity -- that this is the beginning of the long bleak twilight of civilization. If you posit that we have fixed energy sources and we have to ration them, then we are dying as a species.

The ethic of conservation is the explicit abnegation of man's dominion over the Earth. The lower species are here for our use. God said so: Go forth, be fruitful, multiply, and rape the planet -- it's yours. That's our job: drilling, mining and stripping. Sweaters are the anti-Biblical view. Big gas-guzzling cars with phones and CD players and wet bars -- that's the Biblical view.

Producing oil isn't so bad for the environment anyway. During World War II, our boats were going at breakneck speed to get oil to England (what with the war and all). There were oil spills everywhere. Half the beaches in the United States were slathered in oil. Six weeks later all the birds were back.

You couldn't get rid of the environment if you tried. Alaska is immense, caribou love the Alaskan pipeline, they've grouped there, frolicking and leaping over the pipeline ... but I'm lost in an irrelevancy. The point is: We need oil for our CAT scan machines, airplanes, computers and refrigerators.

Ann Coulter - October 12, 2000