-- Environmentalist author Stewart Brand

A year ago, I wrote a column decrying the ruinous effects environmental legislation was having on large civic engineering projects in the U.S.  In past decades, environmental activism has blocked countless dams, bridges, and factories, but today, a new milestone was reached. Citing global warming concerns, the California Attorney General's Office today announced a plan to protect citizens by blocking construction of a major new industrial facility.

What is this new terror of pollution the state of California considers too deadly to build? A massive oil refinery? A vast strip mine? A toxic waste dump perhaps?

None of the above. It's a bottling plant . . . and it's bottling water.

The plant is sponsored by Nestle Waters North America, which has been trying for several years to get the project approved. Their original plan was to bottle a million gallons a day, but opposition from the Sierra Club forced the design to be scaled back to half that.  Now the State Attorney General, Jerry Brown, says the plant may have serious effects on global warming, and he will sue to prevent construction from proceeding until those effects are fully evaluated. 

Brown says, "It takes massive quantities of oil to produce plastic water bottles and to ship them in diesel trucks across the United States."  According to Brown, the consequences of all these plastic bottles are "unknown" and must be subjected to further study.  Nestle, which had already completed a previous environmental impact assessment, declined to fight the decision.

A new assessment is expected to take two or three years. In the meantime the plant -- and the people it would have employed -- are on hold.

Some of you may find this story amusing. I find it terrifying. How is a state -- or a nation -- expected to maintain a healthy economy and manufacture all the products needed for modern society, when even something as innocuous as bottling water is now considered too risky? If putting water into plastic bottles is too dangerous, do cars and computers even have a chance? Will we let China and India manufacture all our goods for us? How will we pay for them, when the U.S. no longer produces anything they want to buy? Where does it end?

The Roman Empire ruled the known world for five centuries; its fall plunged Europe into a thousand years of darkness. Ultimately, that fall was caused by nothing more than a change in cultural philosophy; a loss of the pride in their civilization and its accomplishments.  Could we be seeing signs of the same sickness today? Is Western civilization doomed once again?

Environmentalism has devolved from its original roots into a hatred of modern industrial society and a hatred of all mankind's works.  Where we once proudly built cities and farms to civilize the wilderness, we're now told to minimize our "footprint" on a planet far too good for the likes of us.  And our most promising scientific and technological advances -- genetic engineering, nuclear power, nanotech -- are on the hit list of every environmental group.   Like the Romans, we no longer have pride in what made us great.

Fifty years ago, half the manufactured goods in the world were made in the U.S. Half! But since the '60 spawned a tide of ever-more restrictive environmental legislation, manufacturing output has declined continuously.  Those regulations began with good intentions, but they're no longer being used to protect human health, but as a tool to roll back the industrial revolution.

Today, manufacturing is a small part of the U.S. economy.  Production of vital resources such as metals, chemicals, and even electronics and medicines are carried out elsewhere.  Four fifths of the nation's GDP is now services... services increasingly being sold overseas to countries which actually produce something.