MARINA DEL REY, CA--The pro-capitalist Ayn Rand Institute (ARI) will defend the development of the Playa Vista with a demonstration outside the Santa Monica "town hall" meeting sponsored by environmentalist groups opposed to the development. "Environmentalists claim they want to save the earth for mankind; this is a lie," says Richard Ralston, ARI spokesman. "Environmentalists view man as the enemy because of their belief that nature must be protected, not for man but from man. Environmentalists place frogs and swamps above human welfare. This is immoral."
     The recently released Return of the Primitive: The Anti-Industrial Revolution by Ayn Rand and Peter Schwartz explains and expands this viewpoint. In the special chapter "The Philosophy of Privation" Peter Schwartz argues that the environmentalists want us to return to a state of pre-industrial primitivism. He also argues that:

Every advance made by man-from farming to antibiotics to computers-entailed reshaping nature to serve human values.
 
Mankind will never run out of natural resources -- as long as it has political freedom to engage in production.
 
Rights apply only to human beings, not bugs and weeds.