The Religion of Environmentalism (and Internationalism)
Instapundit linked the text of an amazing speech recently given by Michael Crichton on the dangers behind allowing environmental policy to be governed by the fundamentalist religious beliefs of environmentalism. The speech is rather long, and not very amenable to blockquotes, but here are a few choice nuggets:
Today, one of the most powerful religions in the Western World is environmentalism. Environmentalism seems to be the religion of choice for urban atheists. Why do I say it's a religion? Well, just look at the beliefs. If you look carefully, you see that environmentalism is in fact a perfect 21st century remapping of traditional Judeo-Christian beliefs and myths.There's an initial Eden, a paradise, a state of grace and unity with nature, there's a fall from grace into a state of pollution as a result of eating from the tree of knowledge, and as a result of our actions there is a judgment day coming for us all. We are all energy sinners, doomed to die, unless we seek salvation, which is now called sustainability. Sustainability is salvation in the church of the environment. Just as organic food is its communion, that pesticide-free wafer that the right people with the right beliefs, imbibe.
Eden, the fall of man, the loss of grace, the coming doomsday---these are deeply held mythic structures. They are profoundly conservative beliefs. They may even be hard-wired in the brain, for all I know. I certainly don't want to talk anybody out of them, as I don't want to talk anybody out of a belief that Jesus Christ is the son of God who rose from the dead. But the reason I don't want to talk anybody out of these beliefs is that I know that I can't talk anybody out of them. These are not facts that can be argued. These are issues of faith.
And so it is, sadly, with environmentalism. Increasingly it seems facts aren't necessary, because the tenets of environmentalism are all about belief. It's about whether you are going to be a sinner, or saved. Whether you are going to be one of the people on the side of salvation, or on the side of doom. Whether you are going to be one of us, or one of them.
After a long and convincing explanation of why the ideal state of nature espoused by environmentalists never actually existed, he then lists the reasons why we need to take environmentalism outside the realm of religion:
First, we need an environmental movement, and such a movement is not very effective if it is conducted as a religion. We know from history that religions tend to kill people, and environmentalism has already killed somewhere between 10-30 million people since the 1970s. It's not a good record. Environmentalism needs to be absolutely based in objective and verifiable science, it needs to be rational, and it needs to be flexible. And it needs to be apolitical....The second reason to abandon environmental religion is more pressing. Religions think they know it all, but the unhappy truth of the environment is that we are dealing with incredibly complex, evolving systems, and we usually are not certain how best to proceed. Those who are certain are demonstrating their personality type, or their belief system, not the state of their knowledge. . . . We need to be trying various methods of accomplishing things. We need to be open-minded about assessing results of our efforts, and we need to be flexible about balancing needs. Religions are good at none of these things.
Read the whole thing.
In a way, Crichton also aptly describes the internationalist beliefs espoused by so many Westerners on the Left, these days. It is a religious faith in the notion that somehow, through sufficient processes and international cooperation, all of the world's problems can be solved. It takes no account of the verifiable fact, noted in the David Brooks column linked below, that there are irreconcilable cultural and political conflicts with other nations and/or their leaders. It takes no account of the fact that the U.N. has been a miserable failure at just about everything it has attempted to solve, from the Koreas, to Cyprus, to the refugee camps of the Middle East, to the massacre of Srebrenica and the U.N.'s miserable failure to prevent genocidal wars from breaking out in Europe, Africa and elsewhere, not to mention the U.N.'s unwillingness to enforce a multitude of resolutions that it passed on the issue of Saddam Hussein's compliance with the terms of the suspension of hostilities at the end of Gulf War I.
In other words, there is no verifiable justification for any Western person to honestly believe that the U.N. is competent to promote the interests of freedom, justice and democracy in the world. Yet people continue to believe.
I feel like Crichton really nailed what many people were thinking for a long time but had yet to string together.
He should maybe apply some of these principles to help him overcome his irrational fear of biotech disasters. Or maybe he just likes to dream the stuff up and knows it'll be a good story.
Posted by: Glenn Halpern | December 17, 2003 at 12:58 AM