Radical environmentalism
Some environmentalists have very extreme political views. In an article in Orion Magazine, Curtis White argues that humanity will not completely solve the world’s environmental problems without first replacing the current, scientific, rationalist and capitalist relationship man has with nature by a more spiritual relationship. This strikes me as politically naive, since science and capitalism are not going to be overthrown anytime soon. In the meantime, those of us living in the world-which-exists would prefer to work with the tools we have, such as the emissions markets White criticizes, to make things better, rather than bemoan the fact we cannot make things perfect.
“In short, there would be nothing inappropriate or undesirable were we to understand our relation to nature in spiritual terms or poetic terms or, with Emerson and Thoreau, in good old American transcendental terms, but there is no broadly shared language in which to do this. So we are forced to resort to what is in fact a lower common denominator: the languages of science and bureaucracy. These languages have broad legitimacy in our culture, a legitimacy they possess largely because of the thoroughness with which they discredited Christian religious discourse in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. But many babies went out with the bath water of Christian dogma and superstition. One of those was morality. Even now, science can’t say why we ought not to harm the environment except to say that we shouldn’t be self-destructive. Another of these lost spiritual children was our very relation as human beings to the mystery of Being as such. As the philosopher G. W. Leibniz famously wondered, “Why is there something rather than nothing?” For St. Thomas Aquinas, this was the fundamental religious question. In the place of a relation to the world that was founded on this mystery, we have a relation that is objective and data driven. We no longer have a forest; we have “board feet.” We no longer have a landscape, a world that is our own; we have “valuable natural resources.” Even avowed Christians have been slow to recall this spiritualized relationship to the world. For example, only recently have American evangelicals begun thinking of the environment in terms of what they call “creation care.” We don’t have to be born again to agree with evangelicals that one of the most powerful arguments missing from the environmentalist’s case is reverence for what simply is. One of the heroes of Goethe’s Faust was a character called Care (Sorge), who showed to Faust the unscrupulousness of his actions and led him to salvation. Environmentalism has made a Faustian pact with quantitative reasoning; science has given it power but it cannot provide deliverance. If environmentalism truly wishes, as it claims, to want to “save” something—the planet, a species, itself—it needs to rediscover a common language of Care.”
And, like many radical environmentalists, White seems to be intent on changing human nature, writing as if we were all living sinful, wicked lives which each of us must change.
“Even when we are trying to aid the environment, we are not willing as individuals to leave the system that we know in our heart of hearts is the cause of our problems. We are even further from knowing how to take the collective risk of leaving this system entirely and ordering our societies differently. We are not ready. Not yet, at least.”
This, too, ain’t gonna happen. And nor should it. The poor of the world deserve to experience the fruits of material wealth and well-being just like the rest of us.
Calvin Jones said:
I agree with some of what you say but not all. It is important to realise the the right to ‘experiance material wealth and well-being just like the rest of us’ is just that, a right, not a physical law of nature. Laws of nature come first and capitalism aimed at infinte economic growth (which currently equates to material throughput of resources) cannot continue for ever. This is the ‘big idea’ of sustainability…we have to overcome this problem and although capitlism may be able to acive this, it is clear that many of the current institutions are not well equiped for the challenge. While, climate change is an issue of immediacy, there are many other areas where pollution i building up, resources being depleted and natural capital is dwindelling…a major reformest agenda is required.
‘Capitalism As If The World Matters’ is the best look at this topic that i have read, highly recomended.
Peter said:
Thanks, Calvin, for your comment. My post was mainly objecting to the revolutionary-political and moral-reform agendas which many environmentalists (including Curtis White, from his article) have. In that view of the world, it seems to me, environmentalism is not considered an end, but is a means to an end: their end is really the overthrow of capitalism and/or the complete remaking of human nature or human spirituality.
The main problem I have with such a viewpoint (apart from the practical infeasibility of these ends) is that attention gets focused on the wrong things: instead of thinking about what we can do here, locally, ourselves, now, to make things better, attention is devoted to some universal utopic millenarian future. White’s rejection of emissions trading markets is a good example of the consequences of this mis-attention. Focusing on long-term redirection of a flooded river when the person right next to you is drowning is something I personally find morally repugnant.
Charlie said:
It seems that while White eagerly and cynically, denounces “…the current, scientific, rationalist and capitalist relationship,” he might actually have some insight into what COULD happen if these current methods do not work and are replaced by fear. With the more recent environmental evaluations, such as that of NASA’s Hansen, which confirm the seemingly euphemistic results of the Kyoto, our current efforts may truly be meek.
Although in his article, he does point out our collective disassociation with the enemy (ourselves), I’m not sure a unified and global recognition could make much of a difference. Maybe it’s just the cynical realist inside, but Chomsky might be correct to infer that no matter how much we try to do good, we will always do harm. His paradox of grace seems to resonate even greater when I see the manipulation of environmentalism towards an ultimate path of material wealth.
The definition of “environmentalism” itself is at stake. I am a complete advocate of adapting the current structure to the pure sense of environmentalism, but we must keep the vision clear. The question is whether we can successfully use the current “scientific, rationalist, and capitalist” methods and accept a truly sustainable cohabitation of this wonderful earth. I agree with White; we are weak and fearful. Unless these scientific, rationalist and capitalistic methods work, then it will be fear that will drive us to take forceful and survival-based actions, ultimately dissolving our choice for any alternate methods.
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[...] Once again a biological argument becomes a moral one. Because they require a change in human nature, moral arguments are not going to win against climate change; nor should they, indeed, as we have argued before. [...]