We are constantly reminded by the media to “save the planet.” In fact, the idea of protecting the environment is now the official religion of academics, and business leaders in the West which has replaced Christianity’s previous goal of saving individual souls. What does the phrase “environmentalist” really refer to? In the end, it is about protecting the planet from us, that is humans and our work.
Furthermore is that the concept for “the planet” turns out to be unintelligible. The usage for “the planet” as a synonym for “the environment,” instead of being used to describe”the Earth being one of the planets of the solar system seems to be a mere generation or two decades old. The word “environment” itself is a modern invention: in 1828, it was the British author Thomas Carlyle, a well-known advocate of democracy invented the term “environment” to translate the German word umgebungin an essay about Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. It was not until 1956, six years prior to my birth–that the English term “environment” was used for the first time in print in reference to an ecosystem. The word “ecosystem” itself was coined just a few years ago in 1935 in the work of British Natural scientist A.G. Tansley.
“Ecology” is a term that “ecology” was invented in 1873 by German science guru Ernst Haeckel, and his research was influenced by his personal environment of 19th-century Romanticism that was characterized by a skepticism towards society and civilisation and a pantheistic reverence for any idealized Nature. German romanticism is the soil of which contemporary environmentalists have sprung up and numerous pseudoscientific components in popular eco-philosophy that are thought to be rational and forward-thinking are in reality the legacy of a wildly reactionary 19th century Romantic tradition.
One is the questionable notion that the internet of life, which states that no species of animal or plant could be extinct and not harm all other species. This is not true, since species have been around for billions of years without necessarily leading to the death of large numbers different species. In some instances, the disappearance of certain kinds of animal or plant life has created opportunities for other species, similar to how the extinctions of dinosaurs enabled mammals to develop into new areas of interest.
The notion that an eco-system that is self-regulating and perturbed by human activity that will automatically return to the “natural” condition if not the human influence was a different absurdity based on a lack of science and accepted as fact of the environmental lobby. Evidence indicates that greenhouse gases in the industrial era have heated the atmosphere of Earth. However, it’s also true that temperatures in the world have fluctuated in a wildly volatile manner over billions of years, especially during the Pleistocene Ice Ages. Human civilization developed during one of the warming “interglacial” spells following repeated expansions of the ice sheet to cover most part of the Northern Hemisphere.
Alongside changes like these however, there are also devastating events which alter climates and eliminate numerous species, such as the comet or asteroid believed to have destroyed the dinosaurs as well as other species of animals and plants on Earth. Contrary to what you believe if you were listening to the green propaganda that if humans went extinct tomorrow, the climate wouldn’t “stabilize” but would continue to change dramatically throughout time, at least until the slow rising of the sun melts the oceans and transforms the Earth into an uninhabited desert within a half-billion years, assuming that the predictions of modern astrophysicists are accurate.
But there’s a major distinction in the environmentalists’ belief system. If an asteroid destroys the dinosaurs, then that’s normal and not criminal. But if a particular species of frog is eradicated due to the fact that officials remove malaria from a lake and then replace it by a public water reservoir that protects many millions from spreading diseases, it is mass murder (of the frogs).).
In accordance with the unique ethics of mainstream environmentalalism the fact that any modification to “the environment” or “the ecosystem” or “the planet” or “nature” is, in essence damaging. Developers who take down trees and construct housing subdivisions are bad since they’re destroying local wildlife and plants. Electricity that is used to power vital air conditioners and hospitals and heaters within buildings are illegal if it’s created by coal, oil or natural gas that releases methane, carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Paved roads? Forget it. Wild animals turn into roadkill.
In other words, every single alteration of nature that humans make is bad in the sense of the most popular definition of environmentalism.
It could be that the word “planet,” as it’s employed by greens does not have any specific meaning at all. It’s not an error. “The planet,” in the dictionary of environmentalalism, is defined in relation to what it’s not”the “Not-Planet.”
The Not-Planet encompasses every human being. According to the environmentalist view, we humans are not an element or a part of “nature” or “the environment” or “the planet.” We are a separate entity from the natural world: an alien destructive force that alters “the planet” from without. According to this definition every city and building as well as other human settlements millions of people rely on to survive are made into alien excrescences that harm “the planet.” The sandy beaches are “the planet” but the when you construct your sand castle, sandy sand that is in the castle turns not-Planet. The sand you have used could be utilized by a crab on the beach to build a burrow. You are a fool!
There are many animals and plants that are part of “the planet,” either. If you’re an environmentalist who is dreaming of the life of Paleolithic hunter-gatherers, the concept of agriculture is a scourge that has replaced “natural” ecosystems with farms and ranches that are populated by modified strains of grain as well as vegetables, fruits and livestock. Wild buffalo are an integral part of “the planet” but a free-range cow living on the ranch or in a feedlot are not. The coyote who lives in a suburban area and is a savage killer of the pet dog can be described as “the planet,” but the pet dog as well as the grieving owner of its pet is an intruder within “the planet.”
As of 2015 George Monbiot lamented in The Guardian that according to weight, 60% of mammals living on Earth include livestock and that, although humans are increasing at 1percent per year while animals are increasing at 2.4 percent. The global average consumption of meat by a single person is 43 kg per year and is fast moving towards levels similar to the U.K. limit of 82kg. The reason for this is Bennett’s Law which states that when people get more prosperous, they consume more fat and protein specifically meat, eggs and milk of animals.
As chimpanzees are our closest human relatives, we are omnivores that love the flavor of meat. Our precursors are thought to have hunted many large herbivores–mastodons, sloths, giant armadillos–to extinction to satisfy their appetites. In my area of central Texas in the early days, indigenous Americans drove buffalo herds off cliffs and killed the dying and wounded animals for barbecues. The practice of raising bovines in feedlots is more efficient and, though it’s brutal in different ways, it’s not any more cruel than ramming them on bluffs and cliffs and breaking bones, then cutting them up with sharpened flants.
Humans aren’t the only animal species which hunts prey or alters its environment to gain advantage. Self-flagellation makes us different from other species but not the fact we alter “the environment.” Is it an act of tragedy when a family builds a dam making a lake which floods the field which drowns other animals, and destroying the trees and plants which grew there? If the answer given by self-described environmentalists is not yes If all animals, except humans are permitted to alter their habitats to benefit their species, at the cost of other species when required, then environmentalists are an unorthodox cult built on misanthropy.
In arguing that environmentalism is a post-Christianand secularist religion of the Euro-American continent, which is hostile to civilization and society–as well as animals and pets! — I do not intend to suggest that all the policies that environmentalists advocate for are wrong. We have it in our self-interest to ban the disposal of toxic substances into watersheds and rivers. It could also be for our own good to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by implementing expensive measures of all kinds. However, there are costs associated with slowing climate change as much as advantages, and rational individuals might prefer a wealthier but cooler world over one that is less affluent but warmer one. Each of these actions benefit mankind, therefore there’s no need to justify these policies on the basis of an idealistic belief system that defines “the planet” or “the environment” in a manner that excludes us and our efforts.
