The environmental movement is being openly attacked by numerous conservative forces in this country. You have to ask yourself if you're doing something right when people marshal themselves against you in a loud and somewhat orchestrated fashion.
It is instructive to parse out the arguments and vitriol. They are bizarre at times but also vivid reflections of how environmentalists appear. I have read numerous anti-environmental essays where half-way through I realize the author is really mostly concerned with wilderness conservationists. I've also read pieces that talk about environmentalists as obstructionists and anti-business because of regulations they are trying to ram through state or federal government. Of course, one man's regulations are another man's opportunities. If, for instance, we passed a law that shut down all coal-fired power plants in the country over the next, say, ten years that didn't meet stringent emissions control requirements, you would be creating opportunities for wind, gas, hydro, energy efficiency companies, etc.
The argument I find the most interesting against environmentalists is that "greenies" treat the environment as if it were sacred. "Environmentalists have an almost religious fervor about their cause." This subject merits a book I would imagine. We know from anthropology that all human cultures seek to define their relationship to nature in a number of different ways. Some cultures are more connected than others. Historically, our own culture--American culture--has gone through a number of permutations on the man-nature scale. In our early history life was brutal and hard. Puritan values openly sought to conquer the world we lived in, seeing nature almost as an enemy, impure and dangerous. Over time, however, as industrialization got underway, our ethos changed to what is called a pastoral vision where nature was seen as a wondrous and beautiful thing--God's creation. Our greatest thinkers and writers--Whitman, Thoreau, Emerson--evolved a way of thought that yielded an almost heroic connection between man and nature, a connection that literally defined what it meant to be American. "Oh beautiful, for spacious skies; for amber waves of grain..."
In the past century or so, however, things have changed dramatically. The emphasis on materialism, wealth, and the fruits of labor has swung the pendulum back toward seeing man and nature as separate. The emphasis now is not on nature as impure or dangerous, but as objective and, simply, there for the taking. The criticism of environmentalists for being "almost religious" is a function of the fact that some of us still maintain vestiges of the old pastoral vision. Certainly, Beat and Hippie cultures of the mid-twentieth century maintained this vision. The rise of the environmental movement in the seventies and eighties carried this idea forward. Indeed, if environmentalists aren't religious per se, we are at least spiritual about our beliefs. Being an environmentalist is a value judgement. We give importance to nature in how we draw out the future of man on the earth. The criticism of environment as religion is based on the idea that, somehow, non-environmentalists are more rational and objective. But that is poppycock. Reason exists in mathematics, logic, and, to a certain extent, science. But, for the most part, all people proceed through the world with value systems--or dis-value systems. Free marketeers and anti-environmentalist "Christians" do not have a lock on reason. They simply don't value Nature much--if at all.
So, it seems to me, we live at a time where both the pastoral and the man vs. nature visions of our future co-exist. These are two very separate ways of looking at the world. It is not clear whether we are in the midst of a major cutlural upheaval or if the sturm und drang is a function of the volume of ideas that media and information technology continues to turn up. Most certainly, anti-environmentalists are in power right now. Most certainly, even with a progressive electorate, the pastoral ethic must dance carefully. Controlling and managing the onslaught of business and industry--and governments themselves--is never easy.
In his essay Why Tribe, the poet, Gary Snyder, points out that there has been an undercurrent of rebels and maverick thinkers for all of human history. Poets, philosophers, artists, and many scientists have seen the connection of man to Nature and the cosmos and sought to move culture in that direction simply because it seemed like that was a Truth worth fighting for. But the battle goes on. And I dare say, it will for all time.
It is instructive to parse out the arguments and vitriol. They are bizarre at times but also vivid reflections of how environmentalists appear. I have read numerous anti-environmental essays where half-way through I realize the author is really mostly concerned with wilderness conservationists. I've also read pieces that talk about environmentalists as obstructionists and anti-business because of regulations they are trying to ram through state or federal government. Of course, one man's regulations are another man's opportunities. If, for instance, we passed a law that shut down all coal-fired power plants in the country over the next, say, ten years that didn't meet stringent emissions control requirements, you would be creating opportunities for wind, gas, hydro, energy efficiency companies, etc.
The argument I find the most interesting against environmentalists is that "greenies" treat the environment as if it were sacred. "Environmentalists have an almost religious fervor about their cause." This subject merits a book I would imagine. We know from anthropology that all human cultures seek to define their relationship to nature in a number of different ways. Some cultures are more connected than others. Historically, our own culture--American culture--has gone through a number of permutations on the man-nature scale. In our early history life was brutal and hard. Puritan values openly sought to conquer the world we lived in, seeing nature almost as an enemy, impure and dangerous. Over time, however, as industrialization got underway, our ethos changed to what is called a pastoral vision where nature was seen as a wondrous and beautiful thing--God's creation. Our greatest thinkers and writers--Whitman, Thoreau, Emerson--evolved a way of thought that yielded an almost heroic connection between man and nature, a connection that literally defined what it meant to be American. "Oh beautiful, for spacious skies; for amber waves of grain..."
In the past century or so, however, things have changed dramatically. The emphasis on materialism, wealth, and the fruits of labor has swung the pendulum back toward seeing man and nature as separate. The emphasis now is not on nature as impure or dangerous, but as objective and, simply, there for the taking. The criticism of environmentalists for being "almost religious" is a function of the fact that some of us still maintain vestiges of the old pastoral vision. Certainly, Beat and Hippie cultures of the mid-twentieth century maintained this vision. The rise of the environmental movement in the seventies and eighties carried this idea forward. Indeed, if environmentalists aren't religious per se, we are at least spiritual about our beliefs. Being an environmentalist is a value judgement. We give importance to nature in how we draw out the future of man on the earth. The criticism of environment as religion is based on the idea that, somehow, non-environmentalists are more rational and objective. But that is poppycock. Reason exists in mathematics, logic, and, to a certain extent, science. But, for the most part, all people proceed through the world with value systems--or dis-value systems. Free marketeers and anti-environmentalist "Christians" do not have a lock on reason. They simply don't value Nature much--if at all.
So, it seems to me, we live at a time where both the pastoral and the man vs. nature visions of our future co-exist. These are two very separate ways of looking at the world. It is not clear whether we are in the midst of a major cutlural upheaval or if the sturm und drang is a function of the volume of ideas that media and information technology continues to turn up. Most certainly, anti-environmentalists are in power right now. Most certainly, even with a progressive electorate, the pastoral ethic must dance carefully. Controlling and managing the onslaught of business and industry--and governments themselves--is never easy.
In his essay Why Tribe, the poet, Gary Snyder, points out that there has been an undercurrent of rebels and maverick thinkers for all of human history. Poets, philosophers, artists, and many scientists have seen the connection of man to Nature and the cosmos and sought to move culture in that direction simply because it seemed like that was a Truth worth fighting for. But the battle goes on. And I dare say, it will for all time.
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