Answering a Critique of Earth Day and Environmentalism

Doucet's article, Why on Earth... Are We So Worried about the Planet?  is an attempted take down of environmentalism and care for our earth in the name of unfettered capitalism.  As I read it, I was reminded of a remarkably similar piece the science fiction author Michael Crichton had given to the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco before his death. 

Both attacks on environmentalism mixed bad science, bad logic, and bad history, with ad hominem attacks on unnamed "environmentalists."  Both argue that "Environmentalism" refers to a new anti-human religion, without naming names, and without giving definitions. This has become a major 'conservative' and 'libertarian' critique of environmentalists extending from the looniest of the 'Christian' Right to equally dogmatic advocates of laissez faire.

I want to explore just one aspect of this charge today - the charge that "environmentalism" is a  "secular religion.  (I've explored Crichton's absurdities in great detail and will share them with anyone who send me their email.  It's too long for a blog post.)

Doucet claims

At their worst,  environmentalists do not merely lack confidence in our ability to solve our problems and fail to analyze costs and benefits. At the most extreme, they are positively against technological progress. They are not just against the pollution caused by cars; they are against cars. They not only favor energy-saving light bulbs; they favor turning out the lights. They do not merely criticize the ills that accompany our civilization; they criticize civilization itself.

If pressed he could probably find one who fits his description.  I know I can.  My major nominee would be Derrick Jensen, who has written some valuable stuff marred by his dislike of post hunting and gathering societies.  But Doucet and those like him  are wrong about nearly all of others.  He hides his sloppy thinking by arguing that ALL environmentalists lie on a continuum that leads to a dismissal of civilization and human well-being. 

This arbitrary map assumes first that human flourishing and environmental health are at odds.  It also assumes that all of us are 'environmentalists' because of a deep seated dislike of humanity.  

Here is a list of MAJOR environmental thinkers who certainly do not fit this fantasy: Henry David Thoreau, John Muir, Aldo Leopold, Holmes Rolston, J. Baird Callicott, Gary Snyder, Paul Hawken, Amory Lovins, David Brower, Arne Naess, Sigurd Olson, Jane Goodall, Murray Bookchin, Joanna Macy, Adolph Murie, Edward O. Wilson, Peter Barnes, and a host of others.  They often do not agree with one another, but they will all agree that this attack on environmentalism is at best embarrassingly ignorant.
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Doucet adds

As people in developed nations have slowly abandoned Christianity and other traditional faiths, the void left by their absence has been too much for some to bear. God has been replaced by Mother Nature, and a mythical past in which we lived in harmony with Her has taken on Eden-like proportions. Most importantly, man is still fallen, and apocalypse still looms.

Crichton agrees, arguing "I think we all need to get rid of the religion of environmentalism"  and replace it with "hard science."  Doucet echoes this attitude.  In doing so both  demonstrate they do not understand science. 

Science cannot solve the most important environmental problems because they are also questions of values.  Science cannot tell us what is important.  How much of a certain sort of pollution is acceptable cannot be answered "objectively."  It is a value call.  How much global warming is acceptable is not a scientific question.  Science can help us take better care of Yellowstone - but it is we who need to decide what counts as "better care."  Nor can science tell us whether we should have a national park system, whether it is too large, too small, or just right.  It cannot tell us whether or not to drill at the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge.  It cannot tell us whether to preserve endangered species.  It cannot tell us if it is ever justifiable to frustrate certain human desires in order to protect the well being of non-humans.  These are questions of ethics and morality

I think the best rebuttal to such simplistic thinking as Doucet, Crichton, and so many like them comes from Aldo Leopold, perhaps the most important American environmental thinker of the 20th century.  In his Sand County Almanac Leopold discusses our feelings of regret when the last passenger pigeon died.

He notes "For one species to mourn the death of another is a new thing under the sun. . . . we who have lost our pigeons, mourn the loss. Had the funeral been ours, the pigeons would hardly have mourned us. In this fact, rather than in Mr. DuPont's nylons or Mr. Vannevar Bush's bombs, lies objective evidence of our superiority over the beasts."

We have the capacity to care, and care deeply, for beings who are of no utility to us.  This capacity to love and care rests at the core of what it is to be human.  This capacity is what underlies our celebration of Earth Day.  That we also despair of human short sightedness and greed is in no way anti-human.

Emphasizing love and care is a central task of religion in the best sense.

Environmentalism is not a religion, but it is the natural position of ANY religion that either sees the divine in the world, as we Pagans and some Christians and others do, or as the loving creation of a Deity whom they profess to honor, as other equally genuine Christians and others do.

We Pagans who honor Nature as the expression and manifestation of divinity usually come to a strong environmental conclusion.   The Greek Orthodox position is in keeping with a strong environmentalist perspective.  Buddhists have developed a strong environmental ethic. More liberal Western Christian and Jewish traditions have as well.  When I organized an interfaith tree planting in Berkeley many years ago, the only people who did not show up were Fundamentalists and I think some conservative Muslims equally uninterested in Interfaith (I bet they sing a different song now.)

But we can go farther.  The dominant Western secular mindset does not recognize any way of relating to other than human beings except through power.  It's model of knowledge does not encompass what makes us most uniquely human.  It is through spiritual traditions recognizing our relations with the more than human world that most often teach us respect, humility, and responsibility extends beyond the purely human.  

Perhaps with a little more respect, humility, and sense of responsibility, Doucet, Crichton and others like them would have been able to actually say something insightful about Earth Day and environmentalism.