Old School Environmentalism

I was blown away when a co-worker, a 25-year ICU nurse, likened environmentalism to a religion and my fervent devotion to that of a deeply religious person. The point of this analogy was that although I was passionate, I was incorrect. To me there is a backhanded compliment in there because I view deeply and truly religious people with respect. They are fully committed to something outside of their own ego and self-interest. They are not apathetic or non-participatory. Such people are rare these days. But religion is a set of beliefs, versus facts that can be proven or disproven. Religious beliefs can be either right or wrong in someone’s opinion, and many flatly contradict each other. That my co-worker would make this correlation is evidence that the false debate over global warming portrayed in the media has become very damaging. Environmentalists do what they do because it has been proven time and again that man can destroy the earth as we know it and cause species to become extinct. It’s not an issue of belief- it’s one of fact. If there is a “belief” part, I guess it’s the opinion that things were better before man destroyed them.

I spend a lot of time debating with people whose views are different so I can figure out whether the “differences” are true, and try to bridge the gap. Here, with this co-worker, I feel as if the difference is just a matter of perspective.

First of all, he is an avid listener of Rush Limbaugh. I know, what are you going to do with that? Fortunately, he’s also a person of science. So here’s where I make my case. I tried the bit about toxins and childhood cancer, and he told me he didn’t care (which also blew me away coming from a nurse). But we work in a field where everything is scientifically- based. So he must understand right and wrong in the context of biological laws and imperatives. It’s right to give epinephrine to a heart that’s stopped beating because in practice, it works. You can do all sorts of other things because you believe them to be correct, but what you believe in this case doesn’t matter one bit. There are very specific things that will work in the case of a stopped heart, and unless you do those things (and a whole host of other factors are on your side such as time and the age and health of the heart) the person dies. So there are biological rules that are true, and not negotiable. Same goes for any scientific field- from geology to physics. Just because humans have not settled some questions doesn’t mean the rules aren’t in practice out there.

So let’s take a look at the earth, and life on it, as a whole. There are lots of things we have done to alter the earth and its systems. Some have worked out, most have not. Things like chemicals and deforestation are bad. Chemicals cause ill effects in biological beings such as mutations and cancer. The wholesale destruction of natural places causes extinction of species and changes the system’s ability to regulate itself. Don’t believe me? What do they put in biospheres? Plants and trees, because they keep the atmosphere breathable for humans and other organisms who have adapted to life as it has been on this planet.

The one area where environmentalists have always been right is the overall philosophy that we should do everything with the goal of keeping the earth as it has always been, otherwise known as sustainability. We have no guarantee that changing the earth will work out well for us. We are conducting an experiment with our very life-support system, and what are we going to do if we’re wrong? So let’s try to keep it the way it has been, because we know that works.

Up until now, the debate has been about the convenience of one particular human culture; not about whether or not, fundamentally speaking, the environmentalists are right. Bush 41 chose jobs and economics over saving owls. But he never tried to argue that preserving forests would not halt the extinction of owls. He just set up a false choice between the livelihood of humans and owls. Lately we have been thrust into a “debate” over climate change in one respect- will increased levels of CO2 cause the warming of the earth? And many non-traditional groups without a sustainability background have joined the fray because of the catastrophic possibilities of global warming, so many are stuck on this point.

You and I can do hypothetical battle over this one point with our computer models, or we can look at the entire question holistically: should we do things in a sustainable way or not? We can look at the increased concentration of CO2 lowering the pH of the oceans and realize that screwing with the balance of an active (as opposed to inert) substance in our planet’s system will lead to the extinction of a lot of oceanic life. High levels of CO2 cause an acidotic state in the body, so my co-worker should accept this. We can take that as evidence that man cannot just change aspects of the system without upsetting the balance. We can look at other sulfur and nitrogen compounds that are produced along with the CO2, and find that these compounds do damage living tissue and cause asthma and heart disease. We can decide that leveling mountains to get to coal, and creating a toxic wasteland where once there was beauty and life, is a bad thing. How many paintings of beautiful mountain scenes hang in museums, residences and hotels? How many are there of the barren, scarred earth left by dynamite and gigantic machines? Most of us must agree that preserving these beautiful places is preferable to destroying them. So whether or not you agree with the statement that increased levels of CO2 in the atmosphere will change the earth’s climate, there are plenty of other reasons to change business as usual.

Sustainability. Choosing ways of living, of getting our products and energy that will keep the earth the way it always has been rather than some new way that will be less beautiful and viable than before. The great thing about the ingenuity of people is that some have found ways to make things without using or releasing bad chemicals, or without gobbling up resources at a breakneck pace. We can reduce our energy usage as far as possible, and choose clean sources for the rest. That’s got to be better. Let’s do things that way.