On Motives: So, why the great environmentalist outcry? Because you and I both know that environmentalism is first and foremost a business. Just as you can never get a mailing from NARAL that doesn't scream that the sword of Damocles hangs over legal abortion, so too does the green lobby use ridiculous rhetoric, garbled logic, and one-sided research to get between you and your money -- no matter whether the real news is good or bad. Anyway, the news on the environment is good.

Any organization quickly develops beyond its original goals and becomes a self-perpetuation machine, an organism designed for fundraising. (Trust me on this; I've worked in non-profit development.) It's always about a crisis that can only be averted if you Give Now. Note that NPR, following its $200 million endowment from the Kroc estate, one of the biggest philanthropic gifts in history, is not even thinking about dropping the public-funding teat from its ratlike jaws, nor will there even be a brief fundraising holiday for stations. If anything, NPR will announce that this endowment calls for an expanded mandate.