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Method To Madness: Deep Ecology A Philosophy Spawns Movements That Would Subvert Rights Set Forth In The United States Constitution By Perry Hicks Part VI in a Series “We've got to ride the global warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, we will be doing the right thing -- in terms of economic socialism and environmental policy." Timothy Wirth, former U.S. Senator (D-Colorado) Before we can understand the significance of the various waypoints along the road to Kyoto, we must come to understand the difference between conservationism and environmentalism. Once that is known, we will understand that global warming is a detour on the road to real ecological harmony. This detour is intended to take us on a whole new path, to a whole new place, with absolutely no chance for return. Heretofore we have explored some of the inconsistencies in select environmental arguments: It is preferable to burn forests than partially harvest them; the claim that America is losing its forests when the evidence is to the contrary; that fossil fuel (particularly oil) is bad for the environment when it has actually freed us from burning wood (and hence has saved countless trees); that CO2 is the cause of global warming when neither the climatological record, nor the data purported to support CO2’s implication in climate change, has been particularly consistent. Sometimes ecological rhetoric seems to be lines spoken from the theatre of the absurd. However, there is a method to the “Looney Left’s” madness if we just take the time to discover what it is they really want. If we do so, we will see that ecological concerns are only a small part of the equation. Conservationism vs. Environmentalism Most Americans think that environmental concerns are based on science, but this is only partly true. The balance of environmentalism is actually based on emotion and spiritual philosophy. Conservation/environmental historians often trace the origin of the movement’s genesis to the romantics of the early 19th century and the transcendentalists that followed them. The romantics had three attributes important to modern environmentalism: an appreciation for nature that their forbearers of the Enlightenment did not have; high valuation of strong, even irrational, emotion; and equally strong political beliefs. Idealization was an important emotional component and the romantics looked not back on rational antiquity for inspiration, as those of the Enlightenment did, but on gothic mythology; Robin Hood and King Arthur’s Round Table, for example. The transcendentalists were more complex. Their roots went back to New England Unitarianism and can be considered an American response to European romanticism. As Edgar Allen Poe noted, America had no lost “grandeur, gloom, and glory” to idealize. Transcendentalism was essentially a protest of the then cultural state of America. The movement’s founders, one of whom was Ralph Waldo Emerson, desired to go beyond, or “transcend”, the art, literature, and philosophy of the time. Emerson is credited with launching transcendentalism with the publication of Nature in 1836. The mechanism, by which Emerson and company would do all of this transcending was intuition. According to Arthur Paul Patterson, founder of Canada’s Watershed Community, Emerson, himself, identified a transcendentalist as “someone who refuses to be tyrannized by the blatancy of the facts. They find the source of spiritual certainty in the subtle intuition of the beyond.” Hear the tinkling of the wind chimes? Transcendentalism was a movement embodying such small numbers that it could never be recognized as an organized religion. Eventually, it transcended Unitarian Christianity altogether and though it remained spiritual by nature, transcendentalism is recognized today as “only” an important philosophy. It should be noted that romanticism rejected Puritan notions of sexual morality. Partly for this loosening of morals and the emergence of industrialization and technology, the early 19th century is credited as being the birth of the modern age. Equally important was the transcendental sense of social justice. Transcendentalists were involved in both the women’s rights and abolitionist movements. Another transcendentalist, and a student of Emerson’s, Henry David Thoreau, is credited by some as being the first environmentalist. Much of his writings were great expressions of appreciation for nature: A Natural History of Massachusetts (1842), Ktaadn and the Maine Woods (1848), and Walden (1854) are just some of his literary works. If the coming conservationists used rational facts and figures to save forests, meadows, rivers, lakes, ponds, and wildlife, they also used emotion to sell reform to the voting public. Politics and politicians were necessary to these ends, but the spiritual side gave the movement an element of purity. Conservationism wasn’t just wrapped in the American Flag; it was veritably robed in wholesome goodness. No one can identify the point in time when conservationism made the change to environmentalism. There is no line of demarcation. The change came at different times to different organizations (or individuals). For example, whereas the Sierra Club was founded in part to make the Sierra Madre “accessible”, and had worked for several decades to this end, by the 1940s, it was recognized that this accessibility was actually an endangerment to the Sierras. Subsequently, after some debate, “accessible” was dropped from the club’s mission statement in favor of “preservation”. By the early 1950s, the Sierra Club was no longer building trails through the mountains but was, instead, opposing the construction of wilderness roads. Deep Ecology By the late 1960s, most of the old conservationist philosophy had become obsolete. The automobile enabled great numbers of visitors to engage the great outdoors. The threat of nuclear war had further galvanized a core of disaffected left wing intellectuals against both America’s political institutions and her growing reliance on technology. A combination of Civil Rights and the Vietnam War swelled the ranks with a huge number of equally disaffected young people. This general opposition to traditional authority spread world wide. The need to replace conservationism resulted in a call to philosophers to develop a new set of ecologically sensitive ethics. A debate ensued and by 1973, a Norwegian by the name of Arne Naess developed a philosophy he called “Deep Ecology”. It is important to note that this call for a new philosophy is a telling one: The new environmentalists were, in essence, proclaiming that they were here to stay. Philosophy is too often dismissed as intangible musings by a few absent minded egg heads. However, philosophy is far more than that. A successful one may take 150 years to work its way through generations of egg heads until it wins over a sufficient number of influential philosophers and so impact society. Hence, a cogent philosophy can be very powerful. Take notice of Kant, Kierkegaard, Locke, Marx, and Nietzsche, just to name a few. Deep Ecology is credited with giving voice to the notion of ecocentrism (ecologically centered value system) as opposed by anthropocentrism (human centered value system). Although Deep Ecology has evolved somewhat since Naess formulized it, and some of the changes may not be universally recognized, the major attributes of the movement, in my view, are: · Nature is idealized as opposed to humanity. · Humans are not part of nature. · All living things have equal rights (i.e. man has no special rights or worth). · Mankind’s impact on the environment must be minimal (meet only vital needs). · Recognition of “ecofeminism” (ecological damage has been caused exclusively by paternalistic societies). · Global environmental destruction is the logical result of the 18th century Enlightenment. · Ecological “necessity” must take precedence over human needs, particularly economic ones. · Human activity is overwhelming the natural world. · Human activity must be reduced (perhaps to only 1/10 of what it is now). · Human population must be drastically reduced. · Disregarding Deep Ecology will result in global environmental calamity. · Employing a new set of ethics is needed since both capitalism and communism are equally responsible for the exploitation of natural resources. · Cultural changes must come by “peaceful means” but there is a call for individual direct or indirect action. While some of the above points are patently offensive, or even ludicrous, some are sensible; the world’s burgeoning population is becoming a problem; human activity is beginning to overwhelm some parts of the natural world. However, population growth is not happening in the industrialized west, it is happening in the third world. Thus, suppressing industrialization could actually result in a continuation, or even worsening of the population explosion. (Note: Western population growth is largely due to immigration.) Further Analysis In light of the above, the scatter-brained inconsistencies in the environmental argument resolve into perfect unity: · It is preferable for forests to burn rather than have wood supplied for human use. · Sources of cheap energy supports robust economic (read human) activity so all forms of cheap energy must be suppressed. · Efficient western farming methods must be discredited. Ignore concerns about global famine because the population must be drastically reduced, anyway. (Note that starving African populations have been told not to eat American bio-engineered “frankenfoods.”) · Prosperous but gullible western democracies must be made to feel guilty about their “obscene” levels of consumption. (Note efforts to dumb down public school curriculums and the extensive efforts to discredit home schooling.) · Impoverished third world countries must be made to look like victims of the voracious western appetite for raw materials and cheap manufactured goods- even though their poverty is largely due to governmental corruption and/or civil infighting. · All means of extracting natural resources must be made so expensive that inefficient and otherwise unnecessary recycling becomes economically viable. · All forms of efficient power generation must be curtailed for the same reason; make all human activity so expensive that economics dictate a reduction. To this end, a world economic depression would be “good”. · Global pollution must be blamed on the western democracies, particularly the United States. Ignore western successes in reducing long recognized pollution and find a new pollutant that would be very expensive or, preferably, impossible to clean up (CO2). · Cripple industrialized economies while leaving third world economies unencumbered. To this end, global governance with law enforcement and taxation powers must come into being. · Individual means of transportation (i.e. cars and trucks) must be eliminated. · Western standards of living must be drastically reduced; subsistence level is preferred. · Individual property rights must be substantively impaired if not curtailed. · All means of information dissemination must be controlled. · Dissenters must be demonized so that the general public will take no heed of them. · Potential resistance, particularly by force, must be neutralized (gun control). As you can see, achieving any of these points would be very radical and the sum total fit hand in glove with communist objectives. Hence, it is no wonder that Mikhail Gorbachev formed Green Cross International. Indeed, deep ecological philosophy has spawned many “green” parties (including some violent movements), all socialist, through its call for direct action. However, as Deep Ecology has recognized no distinction between the environmental threats of capitalistic democracy over communism, do not think that communists would tolerate it, if the fruits of Deep Ecology were realized, for long. Implementation of Deep Ecology would result in massive civil unrest and possibly the collapse of western democracy. You can be sure that once capitalism is crushed, a triumphant communism would eradicate environmentalism. Also note that the United States Constitution would not allow for the implementation of Deep Ecology. There are simply too many individual and property rights barring the way. For this reason, the U.S. Constitution must be subverted, possibly by the U.S. signing an international treaty (Kyoto) or acquiescence to global governance. What would such a new world order look like? Is there a plan, based on Deep Ecology, which could bring into being this brave new world? The answer is “yes”. In Part 7, we will examine The Wildlands Project. Part III - Just What Temperature Should The Planet Be? Environmentalists Seek So Much Authority Over Our Everyday Lives, Fears Are Rising That The Real Agenda Is All About Power And Control - By Perry Hicks Part V - Starting On The Road To Kyoto - The Radical Left Takes Up Global Warming As A Club To Beat Down The Industrialized Nations - By Perry Hicks Perry Hicks is a former Mississippi Coast resident and was a correspondent for the old Gulfport Star Journal. He has appeared on Fox News Channel’s “The O’Reilly Factor.” Perry has also hosted his own radio talk show on the auto industry with a mix of politics, and is a former Ford Motor Company technical trainer. He currently works as an Associate Professor of Automotive Technology at J. Sargeant Reynolds Community College in Richmond, VA. Contact the Author: royalenfieldcrusader@hotmail.com |
