Environmentalism is changing. It once was a distinctly humanistic movement, pushing conservation as a way of ensuring prosperity to our posterity, cleanup of pollution, protecting of habitats and endangered species, etc.–all certainly human duties arising from human exceptionalism. But in recent years, environmentalism has been trending toward an explicit anti-humanism that sees “the planet” itself as having the highest value and people– because of our unique ability to impact the environment–as the enemies of the biosphere.
A recent entry in The Sustainable Dwelling Blog illustrates my point. The author improbably analogizes GM’s financial problems to the hard limits that he believes humans must accept to our activities and flourishing. He attacks American Exceptionalism–about which we need not be concerned here–but then turns to his true target; human exceptionalism. From the post:
As GM attempts to pull itself from the ashes of bankruptcy and politicians around the world promise the oxymoron of “sustainable” growth, nearly 7-billion humans are still mostly blind to the reality of ecological limits and harsh retribution of overshoot and collapse. This is the ultimate hubris—the hubris of human exceptionalism.
But this is nonsense. It is precisely human exceptionalism that provides the answers to the problems about which the author worries, it is not the cause. What other species imposes limits on itself to protect the environment or for the benefit of other species? None. What other species has the duty to be environmentally responsible? None. Indeed, if being human isn’t what requires proper ecological behavior, what does?
Of greater concern is the nihilism and pessimism–an acceptance of the premises of deep ecology– that seems to increasingly drive the new environmentalism. It is about reducing our prosperity, limiting our flourishing, and indeed, elevating “the planet” above the well being of human beings. If this anti humanism continues to subsume a healthy environmentalism centered in human exceptionalism, destitute people will remain mired in poverty, living standards will shrink, and human welfare will be generally diminished. Worse, since our behavior and policies tend to be based on our beliefs, this ideology could induce us to turn on ourselves–resulting in untold human suffering.
June 3rd, 2009 | 12:44 pm
This development is not a surprise. It is merely the next stage of a ideological process that sharpens the tools of control used by socialist elites to control the “unenlightened.”
June 3rd, 2009 | 1:26 pm
Kay. Thanks for dropping by. I think there is truth in what you say–much of this is about control. But there is also a self loathing developing beyond that point, that flows directly from eschewing the intrinsic importance of human life.
June 3rd, 2009 | 1:55 pm
The best way I’ve seen it expressed is by Stephen King (the author) – we’re suffering from survivor’s guilt because we’re the dominant species and we feel sympathy, pity, or empathy for animals. Being a cat Mommy, believe me, I feel for the strays in my neighborhood, which is why a portion of my unemployment is going to feeding them. Heh.
But the problem is that we’re accepting too much responsibility and turning ourselves into ogres, or at least we see humanity as a whole as being the “monster,” while we tend to think of our individual selves as somehow better than the majority. The hubris isn’t in human exceptionalism, it’s in one assuming that *one* is exceptional, and the rest of the human race is sub-standard. That’s why people involved in the Church of Euthanasia encourage other people to commit suicide, but haven’t done it themselves. Other people area always the problem, you know.
So in a weird way, this is sort of passing the buck. There are problems, but they’re caused by “other people,” not by “us.” The planet would be better off if there were fewer people, but since “we” are somehow superior to the rest of humanity, it’s the rest of humanity that has to go.
Have you ever noticed this? I’ve never seen a deep ecologist off himself in the name of bettering the planet. It’s very much a “do as I say, not as I do” attitude.
June 3rd, 2009 | 4:05 pm
The environmental movement was founded by the boomers around 1970 to address many of the problems that we had at the time. Paul Erhlich and the Club of Rome were loads of hype, but much of the mainstream movement was a reasoned response to the pollution problems we had at the time, which actually were quite bad. I was somewhat of a “green” when I entered college in the early 80’s.
By the early 80’s, many of the real problems had been solved (Hudson River and Lake Erie being cleaned up, air pollution reduced, etc.) and the original boomer activists entered their 30’s and 40’s, a time when many of them decided to move on in life (careers, families). Thus many of them quit the movement, leaving somewhat of a power-vacuum. The hard left, driven by Reagan-hatred, started moving in during the mid 80’s (while I was in college) and had largely hijacked the environmental movement by the end of the 80’s. This was the reason for their notorious denouncements of the purported cold fusion “breakthrough” in the spring of ‘89.
The “greens” went off the deep end decades ago.
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