Ayn Rand died in 1982, so we have no way of knowing what impact new facts and science might have made on her beliefs, but there is a true irony here for those that might search a little while poking fun at her impassioned statements.
It really doesn’t matter if Ayn’s positions would have been changed by modern science or not. What matters is that today’s Earth Day participants are unwittingly sharing one of Ayn’s highest ideals: the ideal of human mastery of nature.
While the endeavor of stopping global warming may seem daunting, this task alone will not be adequate to cure the cause of our recent motivations. Good science supports the belief that our current cycle of warming is being accelerated by our activities; however, even if humans were not participating, the planet would continue its normal pattern of cyclical heating and cooling just as it has for millennia. It would be hard to argue that a global winter would be any less dangerous and damaging to our global ecosystem and worldwide economy than a global summer. The point that we must ultimately arrive at is nothing less than the tantalizing concept that humans must take charge of all undesirable climactic change because any serious climactic change threatens our very survival. The supposition that we may be able to stop global warming and cooling suggests that we humans have the mental acumen and will to stop these natural cycles from ever recurring. Wow!
Imagine that human ingenuity has become so powerful that we can actually control our entire ecosystem and tweak it just right to stay in the balance we experience today. No matter what Ayn might have said about Earth Day 2007, I think she would have been awed and inspired by the human spirit of men and women who dare to believe that they can deterministically change the course of nature as profoundly as we now contemplate. What a true testament to the power of our human mind and the spirit of our freewill!