December 27, 2013

Environmentalism as Fundamentalism

By Dan Dagget
Most environmentalists I know consider themselves non-religious, even anti-religious. A few subscribe to "new" religious denominations such as Unitarianism, which I have heard described as "church for atheists with children." None, as far as I know, would take kindly to being described as practitioners of fundamentalist, Bible-thumping, "ol' time religion". The irony, here, is that contemporary environmentalism and fundamentalist religion have so much in common. Take the most basic assumption of contemporary environmentalist doctrine. Individual environmentalists and environmental organizations, alike hold that the one and only way to solve the problems they address is to "protect" the environment. Who they would protect it from, of course, is us, based on the further assumption that everything that goes wrong with the environment -- desertification, species extinction, invasion by non-native plants, etc. -- is the result of human misuse or overuse or just plain use of "nature" or...(Read Full Article)