MARINA DEL REY, CA -- For the first time in American history, the government is ordering the destruction of a dam -- for environmental reasons.

This July, Edwards Dam, a small hydroelectric facility on the Kenebec River in Augusta, Maine, will be torn down by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, because the dam is blocking the path of salmon that swim upstream to spawn.

"On Earth Day, it is worth noting this event, for it illuminates the essential meaning of environmentalism," said Peter Schwartz, chairman of the board of directors of the Ayn Rand Institute. "The closing of Edwards Dam is the implementation of environmentalism's fundamental, though often unrecognized, tenet: that man ought to be sacrificed for the sake of nature."

Schwartz said that the common view that environmentalism seeks the betterment of mankind -- that it wants to purify the air and clean up parks so that people can live healthier and happier lives' is a superficial interpretation.

"Litter-free streets or pollution-free air -- or any provable benefit to man -- is not what environmentalists seek," he said. "Their aim is to eliminate the benefits of the man-made in order to preserve -- unchanged -- nature's animals, plants and dirt. They want to protect nature, not for man, but from man."

Schwartz is also the editor and contributing author of the recently published "Return of the Primitive: The Anti-Industrial Revolution" by Ayn Rand (Meridian/Penguin). He noted that, in the case of Edwards Dam, the environmentalists do not want to protect the salmon because it is a source of food -- or of any other human value. Rather, they regard the "welfare" of salmon as an end in itself -- for the sake of which man must forgo the benefits of the dam.

Schwartz wants Earth Day to be the occasion for challenging the environmentalists' philosophy.

"It should be the occasion for recognizing the Earth as a value -- not in and of itself, but only insofar as it is continually reshaped by man to serve his end," he said.

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