"But I love all — I love all people!", the old man exclaimed, throwing his hands up in the air. The entire room burst out laughing. This one scene, televised, sums up the essence of "good intentions". The very stuff the road to hell is paved with.

Yes, Erich Mielke, Stasi Chief, feared by 17 million people, was not a good person; he had started his political career as a communist in 1930s Germany by murdering a policeman, and it was rather downhill from then on. But he deeply believed that he was doing good by doing what he considered necessary. But what good is all the conviction, all the faith in the world, if it has no grounding in reality?

"Lack of contact with reality" is what East Germans called this very common psychological state of mind. Politicians are very vulnerable to this professional disease, as are film and rock stars. But teachers, professors, and overly political people can suffer from the same psychological disability.

Erich Mielke died, like most communist tyrants, of old age, at 92. His victims usually died young, quickly, shot in the back on his orders, as they tried to flee the socialist paradise workcamp, or they died young but slowly, of artifically induced cancer, one of the Stasi's favourite methods of destroying dissents.

Erich Mielke had 60 servants in his home, an indoor pool, a movie theatre, and a trophy room, and a 15,000 acre hunting preserve with a hunting villa. He ordered the shooting of anybody who tried to flee the country.

I cannot help thinking of Mielke whenever I hear environmentalists or "social justice warriors" talk about their issues, and about how the "science is settled". Their fierceness, combined with cluelessness about how the world works, is scary. Some of them propose locking up and murdering those who deny "Climate change", "Global warming", "Climate disruption", "Climate cooling", or whatever the current term is.

It's never about actually helping anybody; it's always about lobbying, forcing, raising taxes, increasing bureaucracy. We all know who rising costs for anything are passed on, right? If, let's say, a bank is forced to pay a penalty, who is going to pay that in the end? The bank? Or its customers? What kind of victory is that? If you force a bodega to use "environmentally correct" packaging at a higher cost, who do you think is going to pay for that? The scruffy food preparation business with the ridiculous profit margin? If the planet friendly stuff was cheaper and better, nobody would have to be forced to use it.

So wouldn't it be smarter to invent more efficient, cheaper, environmentally friendly food packaging, instead of forcing business owners to make suicidal decisions? Free people, in a free market, do more to protect the environment than all the idealistic do-gooders of the world will. Go and invent things that make people's lives better. Help them lift themselves out of poverty, and they will stop abusing animals, and start caring for their gardens. Teaching children to solve economic problems would help the planet much more than teaching them to indulge themselves by throwing temper tantrums against the police or by lobbying politicians.

I've been around long enough to see attempts to "save the planet" backfire again and again, on a staggering scale. The EU has outlawed incandescent light bulbs for 500 million people. These people still need light bulbs, and are now forced to buy energy efficient, extremely toxic, Mercury-ladden ugly lights that put the people at risk who produce them, the people who use them, and the people who recyle our garbage. What a great success for the environment and the do-gooders.

I could throw examples of this ecofascism at you all day long. Mandated insulation of residental buildings is now trapping moisture, promoting growth of fungii, and as a result respiratory infections, and allergies are on the rise, and decreasing the value of the affected real estate. Moist buildings in a cold country like Germany are as much of a folly as the window tax in a dark country was — resulting in a rise in rickets. Windmills kill migrating birds, and destroy property value and human health by creating interference.

Hormonal contraceptives end up in the ground water, and endanger amphibians, but I just can't see any environmentalists get interested in this topic. Bio fuels are doing much more damage than good. And then there is my personal pet peeve, recycled bottles turned into labels sewn into clothes in such a way that you either suffer extreme skin irritation, or risk destroying the garment by trying to remove the label. This great victory for recycling taught me to avoid companies that claim to recycle plastic bottles. Dumping aid on Africa is keeping an entire continent poor, because how can any African farmer compete with the free stuff from the North? Donate your used clothing, and get a budding African fashion designer out of work!

Here is another scene that stuck with me; from the movie Little Man Tate. The little boy, smart as he might be, is developing stomach ulcers from all the worrying about the hole in the ozone layer, and the rain forests, and at one point, he is hiding under the kitchen table. This scene hit me because I'd suffered a similar artifically induced trauma when I was a child. Whether it's environmental horror scenarios, or war propaganda, such irresponsible fear mongering always results in destruction of trust in other people, and damage to a child's personality by making them rebellious. Children are very much designed to believe almost everything they are being told by authority figures; their survival depends on their ability to trust their parents and teachers. It's quite callous, bordering on child abuse, to throw children's books at them with titles like "The Last Polar Bear" while the polar bear population has never been higher.

So, whatever happened to the ozone layer that was all the rage 25 years ago? We're only slowly learning that eating fat and protein will keep you lean, while eating carbs will make you fat, something we could have learnt 30 years ago. Hopefully soon, people will figure out that you are much more likely to develop cancer from all the stuff that is in sun screen rather than from exposure to the sun itself. A paradigm shift like the one about protein versus carbs should make us all a bit more cautious, when it comes to our own convictions. The depth of your love, the intensity of your faith, your ideological dedication means nothing. Al Gore's actions speak louder than his words, as do the stock options Michael Moore holds. Are you and your family protected by security protocol because you are an important politican? Then all your talk about disarming law-obiding citizens is pretty hypocritical, don't you think?

I used to be one of those idealistic people, and I can only hope I did not do too much damage. My brother, an engineer, once explained to me why solar energy was not the great savior I wanted it to be. Oh, I was so much in love with the idea of free solar energy as the great solution to everything! But his calm presentation of facts did much more than just destroy one of my favourite illusions. He showed me how much I dislike having my ecologically correct ideas destroyed by facts. Likewise, damn did I hate it when my cousin pointed out that Michael Moore was a rich man who held stocks, making money on Wall Street! I've since learned to avoid being too invested in any cause — anything that turns out be not true or not real will cost you more than it is worth. Don't defend lies and delusions.

Henry James said, the greatest discovery of our time is that people can change their lives by changing their mind. So maybe do not get too invested in a cause to be able to question yourself. Doubting your goodness is good for the planet.

A good practical exersize is "reading rags", a habit that prevented me from getting too sucked up in my own fire, by reading newspapers random people left behind in trains, especially "those rags" I would never have bought myself, and exposing myself to ideas that probably don't come naturally to me.

Do you actually do good in the world, or are you merely very, very convinced of your own good intentions?