Stewards of Creation
In re a recent entry posted here, we are asked: “Why are hippies and atheists and gay surfer artists more serious about the stewardship of Creation than the religious right?”
That is a very good question. Indeed, a damn fine question, and one which should trouble the conscience of any man who calls himself a Christian.
It is unfortunately only a question I can answer for myself, speaking for myself. The short answer is that a person can be a conservationist (which I am) without being an environmentalist (which I am not).
The state does not act outside its bounds by passing laws to preserve certain beasts for game or decoration, or preserve forests and fields in a wild state for the use and delight of future generations. Antipollution laws are much the same as laws about sewage or burning trash, and are justified if they meet minimum standards of fairness and nuetrality.
The long answer requires that we list the notorious frauds of the last few decades.
- DDT — Rachel Carson penned a famous book telling us DDT caused bird eggs to have thin shells. As it turned out, the chemical is not dangerous, but banning the chemical has led to countless deaths in Africa, since no other effective way was found to fight pestilential insects.
- Alar.
- Global Cooling.
- Overpopulation. This one is particularly noticeable to me, a SF fan, since all the scientifiction of my youth starred worlds crammed with overpopulated hordes. At the moment, in real life, we are suffering from underpopulation: birth rates in Russia, Spain, and Japan, for example, are below replacement rates.
- Shortages of Tin, Iron, Zinc, Coal, Oil, etc.–Julian Simon made a famous wager with enviro-scaremonger Paul Erlich about the decrease of certain unreplaceable natural resources. Simon won the bet.
- SST threat to ozone layer.
- Three Mile Island. The most famous disaster in history where no one died and no one got sick.
- Cellphones or powerlines causing cancer. A fraud.
- Irradiated foods. This method of preserving food, from all evidence, would have improved food safety, but it was scared off the market.
- Mercury in swordfish and tuna.
- Cyclamates banned for causing bladder cancer.
- Red dye #2.
- Pesticides aldrin and dieldrin, suspended in 1974. Chlordane and heptachlor. All banned in the 1970s because of belief that they cause tumors in mouse livers.
- Acid rain.
- Agent Orange (dioxin).
- Asbestos in schools and other buildings.
- Ethyl dibromide (EDB).
- Ozone hole. No connection found between thinner ozone layer and skin cancer.
- Nuclear Winter.
Need I to go on? The tactics and tone, the hysteria, the zelotry, used in all these public scares was the same as we now see behind the global warming ideology.
Why, one need look no further than the comment which sparked this thread: a fine fellow tells me that his backyard dryness proves that humans caused global warming; in the same breath he tells me he does not know or care what causes global warming, or even whether global warming exists or not, since the proposed remedy would be good for the environment.
There is no mention of the cost versus the outcome anticipated.
A textbook example of illogic could not be written: the argument is that A causes B and also that it does does not matter in the least whether A causes B or not. “Your honor, the defendant clearly committed the crime of which he is accused! But if he did not, the court should convict him anyway. I am sure he is guilty of something!”
Sorry, but I am a lawyer. To win a lawsuit against a party for negligence (which is basically what is being alleged here) one must prove 1. duty 2. breech of that duty 3. causation 4. damages.
The argument in the global warming case turns on cause. If sunspot activity is causing global warming, the case for human industrial activity causing it becomes harder to make. The question then become how much of the warming is caused by industry, and what are reasonable steps that could be taken that will have a noticeable effect? Spending a million dollars to lower the expected temperature by one degree in one hundred years is not the same as spending a billion for the same outcome.
Remedial measures to mitigate the part of the warming caused by human activity become open to the question of whether they will be effective: I notice, for example, that an outrageously expensive ban on chloroflourocarbons in aresol sprays decreased the amount in the atmosphere by some amount below detectable limits, and at the same time Mount Erebus in Antartica errupted, distributing countless tons of the same chemical in the atmosphere. If a case like that is present here, the action being urged upon us has no relation to the anticipated outcome: it is merely ritual behavior.
So, if the question involved here is one of cause and damages (including a sincere scientific question of whether global warming is exist at all outside of computer models) the question of duty, the question of whether the religious Right recognizes that we are stewards of God’s green Earth, is a separate question.
If any environmentalist out there became convinced that the only way to save the Earth was to cut down trees in order to increase the albedo of the planet and reflect more heat out into space, I would listen with grave attention to his argument. That argument, at least, would have indicia of honesty: it would be a statement against interest. Likewise, I would listen with attention if the environmentalist suggested igniting a few atom bombs in forest to produce smoke clouds: surely the nuclear winter would stop the global warming trend?
As it is, the only solutions ever suggested by any environmentalist are those aimed at industry. Whether the problem is global warming or global cooling, two opposite problems, the solution is the same: mug the free market.
Years of lies have raised the threshold of my skepticism above what it would be on other topics. Proof beyond reasonable doubt will be required to convince me. When a boy scout or a hunter tells me he wants to preserve wild areas for hunting or recreation, I do not suffer the same level of skepticism: these groups do not have histories of being carried away by fashionable hysteria.
Does that answer the question? The reason why (speaking for myself) I do not count myself an environmentalist, even though I am a conservationist, is that environmentalism has all the hallmarks of a religious movement, not a scientific study. I do not worship at your altars.
About John C Wright
John C. Wright is a practicing philosopher, a retired attorney, newspaperman, and newspaper editor, and a published author of science fiction. Once a Houyhnhnm, he was expelled from the august ranks of purely rational beings when he fell in love; but retains an honorary title.
February 19, 2007 @ 9:50 am
