How would the natural environment be protected?

Protection of the environment in a free society derives from the recognition that nature's resources have value to human beings, which necessitates that they should not be needlessly squandered or debased. The concern for the human significance of the environment follows directly from the primary goal of ethics: to determine what will objectively benefit the life and health of human individuals (p. 3.2:1). In contrast to this perspective, some environmental radicals profess allegiance to a mystical spiritual entity, sometimes personified by the Earth-goddess "Gaia," of which (or of whom?) humans are supposedly a minuscule part. Others may not subscribe to such overt mysticism but share its implied hostility toward human civilization, as expressed in the tracts of the Unabomber. While more "mainstream" environmentalists may not worship "Gaia" or condone the Unabomber's tactics, many of them are guided more by subjective feelings than by scientific facts. Hence they are easily beguiled by spurious theories such as global warming (), founded not on empirical data but on hysterical alarmism, and capitalizing on the anticapitalist and anti-industrial biases that pervade our culture.