Radicalism only hurts the environmental cause

In his landmark book, "The Population Bomb," Paul Ehrilich predicted that by the mid-'90s, the problems of overpopulation and pollution would be so bad that the United States would be in a dystopia of famine and disease. He was wrong. And yet, Dr. Ehrilich is still trotted out onto talk shows and discussion panels, spewing the same theories with the same result. Why? Because he's still preaching the sermon the choir wants to hear.

Recently, radical members of the Earth Liberation Front have begun a campaign of burning down new houses to prevent "sprawl" from destroying the Earth. (Of course, they disregard the fact that burning the houses causes a significant amount of air pollution.) However, their actions have not been decryed by environmental leaders. Why? Because they're preaching the same sermon; just playing a different song.

The strains of extremism and radicalism within the environmental movement are growing-to the detriment of environmental causes. These strains are beginning to associate environmentalism exclusively with left-wing politics, they are exhibiting an increasingly technophobic bent, and they continue to predict catastrophe faster than Chicken Little. All of these things are hurting the environmental cause.

Increasingly, the environmental movement is being subjugated to the left-wing, particularly Green Party, politics. For example, many environmentalists are also vegetarian, and some are militant to the point where they will say that you can't be an environmentalist without being a vegetarian (or vegan).

Being a part of an environmental email or news list often means that one receives emails asking one to sign a petition to defeat John Ashcroft's nomination for Attorney General, or to support a living wage, or to protest the incarceration of Mumia. It's not that these causes in particular are wrong or right, or that these views are inappropriate for environmentalists to hold. However, they alienate potential allies from the ranks of conservatives. Honestly, is there any contradiction in being a fundamentalist Christian Republican environmentalist? Not necessarily. But the environmental movement shoots itself in the foot by embracing one particular set of politics to the exclusion of others.

Another major problem with the radical strains of environmentalism is their increasing technophobic bent. More and more, radical environmentalists have become hysterical about technology. Particularly irrational is the radical green opposition to nuclear power. One would think that nuclear power would be an environmentalist's dream. They provide a large energy output for small amounts of fuel, so that the environment isn't devastated mining for them. They only emit steam as their emissions, and modern plants are virtually incapable of meltdown while at the same time reusing its wastes as fuel, producing infinitestimal amounts of waste.

However, most radical greens in California are decrying nuclear power, instead stating that wind power is the solution for the state's current electricity woes. However, in order to produce the amount of energy that the state currently needs, over 4000 square miles of wind plants would have to be built, which would cause an enormous amount of environmental devastation. Similar anti-technological strains are seen in radical environmentalists reactions to genetic engineering, chemical manufacturers, and others. By being increasingly anti-technology, radical environmentalists shut the door on potential solutions to environmental problems, leaving only a puritan desire to lower standards of living and to conserve resources rather than learning how to use them more efficiently.

Yet another way that radical environmentalist's harm their cause is through hysterical doomsday predictions. As mentioned earlier, despite small to non-existent data, population theoristsin the 1970's predicted the 21st century would be a dystopic, miserable nightmare. Their conclusions did not come true. Similarly, political groups have been manipulating data to overstate the harms of environmental threats. For example, the recent U.N. report on global warming predicts disaster within a few decades. However, the way the report was generated was that scientists made predictions using data, and their conclusions were exaggerated by the politicians on the council. The changes made to the scientific conclusions greatly overstate the problem of global warming. This is not to say that global warming does not exist, or that it is not a problem, but it is important to realize that it will probably not be the disaster that the U.N. predicts. And a couple of decades down the road, when things don't go the way the report says, people will just chalk it up to "those crazy environmentalists." If the environmental movement continually overstates harms and potential dangers, then it appears to the mainstream public that it is crying wolf-running around like a headless chicken little, blind to reality. If this keeps up, environmentalists will talk and no one will listen. And when a very real, immediate environmental threat does creep up-no one will be paying attention, and the problem will get worse.

This is not intended to be an indictment of environmentalism. The great majority of environmentalists are reasonable people who are truly want to see a better world. But if environmentalists keep allowing the radical extremes, such as Earth First! and the ELF have their say, then ultimately the movement will be marginalized and belittled. It is important that environmentalists break out of the insular stereotypes and cross ideological and political boundaries to determine real, practical solutions for real environmental problems.