“The end is nigh” has been cried from street corners for eons. The apocalypse is always just around that corner and people tend to believe this. Optimistic predictions are invariably greeted with disbelief while doom and gloom forecasts makes the news. We are a strange species: having developed the ability to consider the future, we tend to see the dark side even though we would obviously hope for a happy ending.
Of course there are some aspects of the future we can predict accurately: the tides, sunrise, our next birthday, and the movement of theplanets. But most future events and circumstances cannot be predicted with certainty. There are simply too many variables, including the chaotic variable of chance. That’s why people bet on horse races and boxing matches. That’s why the weather report is wrong nearly as often as it is right, especially when it is for more than four or five days in the future. This kind of prediction is more like a wager; your odds of winning are better the more you know the horses, the boxers, and the meteorological conditions. But you will never get it right consistently.
The take-home message here is predictions are not the same as facts. We are constantly bombarded with predictions of future climate change, sea-level rise, floods, droughts, hurricanes, mass exodus of climate refugees, mass species extinction, and the end of civilization. These predictions are based largely on computer models, very complex computer models that purport to tell us what the climate (average weather) will be like in 50 or 100 years from now. The problem is that as complex as they are, the computer models are nowhere near as complex as the earth’s climate system and all the variables involved, some of which we don’t even understand. Frankly I wouldn’t give two bits for these computer-based predictions. I give the modelers A for effort, but I would bet on the stock exchange or the outcome of the World Series long before I would bet on climate change.
As a first-year science major at the University of British Columbia I was lucky enough to enroll in a course offered by the English faculty, aimed at teaching critical thinking to science students. We took a copy of Time magazine and deconstructed it from cover to cover. The lesson I remember best is, never believe an article that has the words may or might in the first sentence. If you see a sentence with may in it, read it again but add or may not as in, “Chemical X may or may not cause cancer.”
So whenever a statement is made by a politician, an activist, a journalist, or by me that purports to be a fact, take a closer look. Is it really a proven fact? Or is it a correlation masquerading as a causal relationship? Is it a proven causal relationship, such as “Light from the sun makes plants grow?” Or is it just a prediction of something to which we don’t know the answer? Adopting this analytical approach will give you the power of critical thinking and make you a much more sensible environmentalist.
Philosophy, Religion, Politics, Dogma, Propaganda, and Science
You might think only a fool would attempt to discuss all the above terms in a few pages. I will leave you to be the judge.
Literally translated from Greek, philosophy means the love of knowledge and wisdom. In the strictest sense, then, there is no place for dishonesty or misinformation in one’s philosophy of life. It is the pure expression of truth. But in the realm of ideas and opinions there are many shades of gray between black and white. The use of loaded words, their inflection and context, and the confusion of belief with proven fact create a minefield that is difficult to navigate. Add large doses of self-righteousness, fanaticism, and a willingness to use force and you have the turmoil of history as individuals, tribes, and nations come into conflict over control of people and resources. Leaders of all sides claim to speak for god or gods, higher principles of human nature, and superior genetic makeup as a justification for the raw furtherance of their interests.
Religion is largely based on beliefs that cannot be proven in the scientific sense. To justify these beliefs adherents often describe them as “self-evident,” as if anyone could see it if only they would open their eyes. I grew up in a family of agnostics and my village had no church. My mother and father were very well read and kept up with current affairs. The views of my parents and my grandparents reflected a healthy mix of socialism and capitalism. This led to lively debate around the kitchen table and in the living room. I was fortunate to be exposed to a wide range of philosophies and political orientations at an early age. I rejected religion as superstition and embraced empiricism and science. At age eight I was writing illustrated essays about the planets and their orbital peculiarities.
The only exception to my secular family was my father’s mother, Bernadette. She was a French-Canadian Catholic, who came from northern Ontario. She had converted to Christian Science after a traumatic childhood and had spent a lot of time pondering the mysteries of the spiritual side of life. I spent time with her in my early years and she explained to me the distinction between the world of the flesh and the world of the spirit. She found great comfort in the belief that there was a place with no pain. Although I retained my agnostic views, her influence gave me a feeling of something deeper. Perhaps it was okay to simply accept that the universe is in many ways unfathomable, that we are all very small in the contemplation of infinite space and time.
In my view, politics is the debate about what should happen next, and who’s to blame for what happened before. There is always politics in religion but some cultures have decided, with mixed results, that there should be no religion in politics. The separation of church and state was apparently an English invention but soon spread to surrounding lands. But the Taliban and other sorts of radical Islam have not taken to this notion and thus has emerged one of the great divides in the world today. The rights of women, men, and children; the future of democracy; perhaps the prospect of peace in this world, all seem hinged on this divergence in philosophy and religion.
Politics largely adheres to left and right principles. The political left is primarily concerned with the needs of society as a whole, the common good, and the equality of individuals. The political right champions the rights of the individual, freedom, and private enterprise. On the far left lies communism, in which the state controls virtually everything, including industry, the media, and property. Modern socialism is center-left, allowing a large degree of individual freedom and private property but tending toward central control over redistribution of income, railroads, electrical generation, health care, and many other industries. Capitalism, on the right-center, favors private enterprise as the most efficient system to deliver goods and services and looks to individual competition as the driver of innovation and progress. On the far right, fascism is in many ways similar to communism. Both are forms of dictatorship. Communism concentrates power in a committee, and fascism puts it in the hands of a single fanatic. Some wags say communism and fascism meet behind your back, a metaphor that points to how you can stretch your left and right arms back until they touch, so that you can’t see how they may be plotting against you. Anarchism is the opposite of both communism and fascism in that it supports individual rights in nearly all aspects of political life. It is a bit fanciful in that it does not really recognize a role for government. Libertarianism is a more realistic form of anarchism in so far as it accepts sufficient central government to ensure peace and security but otherwise champions the free will of the individual.
I strongly believe that environmentalists should be centrist in their approach to politics. It is a great shame that the political left managed to hijack much of the environmental movement as it gained strength in the 1980s, casting the political right as “anti-environmental.” Clearly there are examples of good environmental policies from both left and right perspectives. The left tends to support a regulatory approach while the right generally supports market-based policies. Both these approaches have merit and a combination of the two can often prove more effective than either approach alone. The task of a sensible environmentalist is to maintain a centrist position, taking the best ideas from both the right and left sides of the political spe
ctrum. Let partisans on the left and right debate the issues from their perspectives: environmentalists must work to remain independent of party politics. Of course we all have our political orientations and that is natural. And politics is about much more than the environment. But we should try hard to prevent socialist or capitalist ideology from determining our positions on the environmental issues of the day. Common sense and pragmatism should prevail.
Dogma takes us into the world of frozen thought. For some reason many people stop learning at an early age. They believe they already know all that can be known, or at least all they want to know. Blind obedience, black and white interpretation, and zero tolerance of other people’s ideas, even other people’s honestly held opinions, even when those opinions are based on the best available information, these are the hallmarks of dogma. This is fertile ground for all manner of totalitarian regimes, despots and snake-oil salesmen. They often make a profit and gain power from the intolerance they embrace. And they would never admit they are dogmatic, which clearly means they are in denial.
Propaganda relies on loaded language and lies and perverts the truth. It serves dogma, racism, sexism, and ignorance of science. Hitler’s infamous campaign against the Jews was based on associating them with negative words like dirty. Mugabe’s dictatorship in Zimbabwe was fueled by the ridiculous assertion that England was trying to reassert its imperial power. Chinese authorities continue to deny the atrocity of Tiananmen Square and the autonomy of Tibet. One of the principal tools of the propagandist is the association of negative or positive words with the subject of the deception. Greenpeace calls chlorine “the devil’s element,” PVC “the poison plastic,” and nuclear energy “evil.” Genetically modified foods are “Frankenfoods,” “killer tomatoes,” and “terminator seeds.” Propaganda, along with the promotion of hate and violence, represents the dark sideof communications.
Science is neither religion nor politics. But both misuse it with great abandon, and sometimes to great effect. Science has been with us since the earliest people discovered fire, stone tools, agriculture, bronze and steel. They didn’t call it science then but it was the accumulation of knowledge that could be passed down through generations. Much of this knowledge took the form of advances in technology. The Chinese, the Egyptians, and the Mayans independently discovered truths about the universe. Then Copernicus discovered the earth was not the center of the universe and Galileo, to his peril, learned the sun did not revolve around the earth. Darwin completed the picture by proclaiming that humans were not the center of life and that they had descended from the apes. The horror of this revelation haunts creationists and fundamentalists to this day.
Science employs the empirical method to test hypotheses. A hypothesis is a statement that can be tested, such as “All dogs are brown.” A sample of dogs is taken and it turns out they are not all brown. The hypothesis is disproved. Another hypothesis is “If I drop a rock from a height, it will fall to the ground.” After thousands of replications the statement proves true in every case. The hypothesis is proved and soon becomes a theory, and ultimately a law, in this case a law of physics. A law is something that has never been disproved.
Science is not all powerful; it has its weaknesses. One of these is that you cannot prove a negative. For example, you can’t prove UFOs do not exist. You could prove they do exist if you documented them sufficiently to be beyond doubt, like bringing one to the town square and displaying it for all to see. But in the absence of proving they do exist you can’t prove they don’t. This leads to a serious problem in the discussion over the safety of various chemicals, foods, and practices. Activists will commonly challenge government agencies and industry manufacturers to prove a certain chemical or product is not harmful. To most people this seems like a reasonable request. But it is impossible to accomplish through the scientific method. It is possible to prove a certain chemical is harmful and it is possible to prove a certain chemical is beneficial, but it is not possible to prove it is not harmful. That’s because even if you do a million tests, and still see no evidence of harm, it is still possible you missed something or the test was not designed well enough.
Some problems in science are difficult to solve because there are too many variables and it is therefore not possible to determine a cause-effect relationship. Climate change is a classic example. So many variables affect the climate: the earth’s wobbles, the sun’s cycles, the many different greenhouse gases, human alteration of the environment, and other variables we may not even be aware of. This makes it nearly impossible to “prove” which of the variables has the largest impact. And then there is the fact that we have only one planet earth. It is impossible to do a statistical analysis with a sample of one.
The real strength of science is that it is based on two things: observable facts that can be repeated, and logic. There is no need for one-off miracles, mystics, or magic. And yet science is regularly abused by all manner of cunning politicians, zealous activists, proselytizers, and downright fakers. Our only defense against this abuse lies in our ability to think critically and to ask the right questions.
My main reason for the above discussion is to set the stage for a conversation about what environment and environmentalist really mean in today’s language. Clearly the word environment simply refers to all things in our surroundings, but does it include us? This is an important question because if our goal is to “save the environment” it is essential to know if we, the humans, are included in the saving. Activists too often portray the situation as if the task is to save the environment from us, as if we were its enemy. I believe this is a self-defeating proposition. If we are the enemy, we might as well commit mass suicide. Some support this approach, unfortunately they aren’t volunteering to go first. They tend to see themselves as the chosen ones, who are more enlightened than the teeming masses that are destroying the earth.
We are part of the environment and must therefore take responsibility for the task of harmonizing our existence with the other species on this planet. That doesn’t mean we have to take a back seat or feel badly about the fact we eat other living things. That is our nature as much as it is the nature of every animal on earth. It is in our own self-interest to care about the totality of the environment, to learn to be good stewards of the planet, nurturing at the same time as consuming. This is our great challenge as we enter an age of unprecedented population levels and technological ability. A certain amount of humility should temper our dominant position in the food chain as we strive for a sustainable existence.
The term environmentalism came into popular usage in the 1960s, inconjunction with the prospect of nuclear holocaust and the societal revolution against war. Before then, someone who cared about nature was called either a naturalist or a conservationist, the latter implying an agenda to protect nature.
It is important to note the word environmentalism ends with ism, just like communism, socialism, capitalism, fascism, and anarchism. These words describe belief systems based on an adherence to a set of basic principles. Some people become “true believers” in one or another of these isms. They tend to become rigid in their beliefs and often resent other people who question them. Some people remain open minded and recognize that some of these isms have both positive and negative elements, often depending upon particular circumstances.
We have all experienced the peril of talking about politics and religion around the dinner table. They are on the one hand the most interesting of subjects and on the other the most difficult to discuss without conflict. Politics and religion lie at the root of most wars and civil strife. Yet they both speak to the very essence of our philosophies and our codes of conduct in daily life.
Throughout history there has been a competition between religious (spiritual) leaders and nonreligious (secular) leaders. In much of the world this has resulted in a formal separation of church and state, while in other countries religious leaders are the political leaders and in still others the political leaders have effecti
vely eliminated the religious leaders.
The environmental movement has unfortunately become a hybrid in this regard. It is partly a political movement that aims to influence public policy, but it is also partly a religious movement in that many of its policies are based on beliefs rather than scientific facts. In addition the environmental movement seeks to gain support from religious leaders and individuals by appealing to their spiritual values. Environmentalism is to a large extent a populist movement that challenges established authority and appeals to the disenchanted, social revolutionaries, and idealists. “Pop environmentalism,” like popular culture in general, tends to be shallow and sensational, moving from fad to fad. The pop environmentalists are generally self-assured, even smug in the belief they know the truth.
A classic example of pop environmentalism is the zero-tolerance position against the use of genetic modification to improve our food crops and medicines. There is absolutely no scientific basis for such a position yet it has taken root in many otherwise “sophisticated” countries with high standards of living and a well-educated public, such as Germany, Britain, Austria, France, and New Zealand. Every major academy of science has endorsed the use of genetic enhancement as a way to improve nutrition and yield and to reduce the negative environmental impacts of agriculture. Nothing has been identified in the makeup of these improved crops that has the potential for negative effects. For more than 10 years now, we have had the knowledge to eliminate malnutrition in the world, especially in the rice-eating cultures where nutrient deficiencies affect tens of millions of people. But groups like Greenpeace and the World Wildlife Fund have blocked these advances by promoting fear in the public and by supporting regulations that stifle research, development, and adoption of genetically modified crops. They are effectively condemning millions to suffering and death for the sake of a superstition. Surely this can’t seriously be called environmentalism.
Confessions of a Greenpeace Dropout: The Making of a Sensible Environmentalist Page 4