Confessions of a recovering environmentalist

[The2ndWheel]

http://www.energybulletin.net/node/53830

"I became an “environmentalist” because of a strong emotional reaction to wild places and the other-than-human world: to beech trees and hedgerows and pounding waterfalls, to songbirds and sunsets, to the flying fish in the Java Sea and the canopy of the rainforest at dusk when the gibbons come to the waterside to feed. From that reaction came a feeling, which became a series of thoughts: that such things are precious for their own sake, that they are food for the human soul and that they need people to speak for them to, and defend them from, other people, because they cannot speak our language and we have forgotten how to speak theirs. And because we are killing them to feed ourselves and we know it and we care about it, sometimes, but we do it anyway because we are hungry, or we have persuaded ourselves that we are.

But these are not, I think, very common views today. Today’s environmentalism is as much a victim of the contemporary cult of utility as every other aspect of our lives, from science to education. We are not environmentalists now because we have an emotional reaction to the wild world. In this country, most of us wouldn’t even know where to find it. We are environmentalists now in order to promote something called “sustainability”. What does this curious, plastic word mean? It does not mean defending the non-human world from the ever-expanding empire of Homo sapiens sapiens, though some of its adherents like to pretend it does, even to themselves. It means sustaining human civilisation at the comfort level which the world’s rich people - us - feel is their right, without destroying the “natural capital” or the “resource base” which is needed to do so.

It is, in other words, an entirely human-centred piece of politicking, disguised as concern for “the planet”. In a very short time - just over a decade - this worldview has become all-pervasive. It is voiced by the president of the USA and the president of Anglo-Dutch Shell and many people in-between. The success of environmentalism has been total - at the price of its soul.

Let me offer up just one example of how this pact has worked. If “sustainability” is about anything, it is about carbon. Carbon and climate change. To listen to most environmentalists today, you would think that these were the only things in the word worth talking about. The business of “sustainability” is the business of preventing carbon-emissions. Carbon-emissions threaten a potentially massive downgrading of our prospects for material advancement as a species. They threaten to unacceptably erode our resource-base and put at risk our vital hoards of natural capital. If we cannot sort this out quickly, we are going to end up darning our socks again and growing our own carrots and holidaying in Weston-super-Mare and other such unthinkable things. All of the horrors our grandparents left behind will return like deathless legends. Carbon-emissions must be “tackled” like a drunk with a broken bottle: quickly, and with maximum force."

[ixion]

1. The author is way off the mark on his definition of sustainability

Sustainability is NOT a plastic word, and it is not at all limited to carbon, and it IS something we need to be very concerned about, because what we have now is not even in the sustainable ballpark.

A poor article, IMO.

[caraher]

2. I agree

I think there's a strain of environmentalism that looks down on everyone less "pure" than themselves. But that's at best tactically foolish; far better to let those who are NOT quite so attuned to our place in the grand scheme of things to at least recognize that self-interest as a species alone indicates we must change our ways, than to shun initiatives that spring from somehow less pure motives in the name of a holier-than-thou attitude.

[Uncle Joe]

3. I agree on all counts, ixion. n/t

[supernova]

4. I agree with your thinking also

"Sustainability" as I understand it, is about learning how we can make/use resources that have no or little impact on the environment. We simply reuse what we have and where we can't reuse, we use that which we can replace.

You aren't going to make less people and let the wilderness take over again. The choices for achieving that are quite unpalatable to think about. But we can learn to exist within the ecosystem we have a lot better.

[yellowcanine]

5. Yes this is a very pinched view of sustainability. Focus is on the wrong question. The truth is,

humans need food, clothing and shelter. The question is not whether we get those things, it is whether we will get them in a sustainable way or in an unsustainable way.