A Combination of Natural Resource Conservation And Resource Nationalism in Other Countries is Bringing Activist Environmentalism in the US Into ill Repute Rapidly

Implications: The US is not currently realizing any economic value from its large untapped reserves of oil, oil shale, iron, tungsten, copper, chromium, nickel, thorium, rare earths and many other metals and minerals, deposits of which are already proven and feasible to extract technologically? In light of this situation why doesn't the US conserve what it has by effectively mandating that its scrap metals and minerals be recycled here by simply placing a tax on their export equal to the difference between the adjusted value of the scrap, when its actual contents and cost of recovering them are taken into account, and its selling price?

Analysis: Environmentalist activism is moving towards a crisis. Not a crisis of pollution caused by irresponsible oil, gas, metal, and mineral production, but a crisis of confidence in the real effect of the environmentalist movement on the US economy and the health and welfare of the nation.

Environmentalists are for the most part the creators and perpetrators of a myth that the world of the past was a healthier place than the world of the present and that this is due to a degradation of the environment through oil production, metal and mineral production, and large scale agriculture mostly, in environmental activist lore, for the purpose of enriching a few greedy uncaring businessmen. The latest fantasy to have gripped their attention is that the improvement in the life style of billions of people by technology has resulted in a global climate warming that cannot be explained by natural variations beyond the control of mankind. 

Rather than extend the vast improvements in the standard of living brought by technology and rather than adjust to a warming climate by a shift in agriculture and living arrangements as mankind has done for thousands of years the environmentalists proclaim that those with technology must stop using it immediately, but since those without technology are now rapidly acquiring it, they must be chided and asked to rethink their massive move to modernity, but not punished for it, because they do not know what they are doing. Only the evil lords of capitalism, says this cult of environmentalism, must be made to pay even if it means actually bringing down our standard of living.

This clueless assault on the modernity, which has resulted globally in a massive uplifting of people's lives and health, has now begun to have foreseeable consequences on America's economic standing.

While other nations increasingly produce natural resources, manufactured goods, and energy from not only natural resources, such as coal, gas, and oil, but also from nuclear power the US has slowed down or eliminated development in all of these areas because of the influence of environmental activism focused on politicians.

Without regard for science and engineering except only as it agrees with their agenda environmental activists have assisted the non-American global economy to drive down the value of the US dollar and also to destroy the competitive advantage of American heavy industry by forcing it first to move its production overseas and, now that this move has become irreversible for some industries, by preventing it from re-sourcing back to America, not because of labor costs, but because of the non availability of critical and strategic raw materials.

It is time to stop the outflow of all valuable components of our scrap and other waste materials.

It is time to streamline the processes of opening new mines and reopening old ones.

It is time to develop the known additional American resources of oil and gas, and

It is time to license new nuclear power plants running on uranium and thorium, and to mandate a national waste management system for all American nuclear power plants in Nevada where senseless political chatter has been going on to prevent these moves for generations.