ENVIRONMENTALISM
What is environmentalism?
Environmentalism is an ecological rationale for behaviour. Einstein was reputed to have defined the environment as "everything that isn't me". This approach scandalizes radical environmentalists because it implies the possibility of separating humanity from the remainder of its ecosystem, an idea they find both unrealistic and abhorrent. But what we should contemplate is the premise this definition implies, namely that "the environment" is an idea, not anything in particular. What Einstein has done (perhaps unintentionally, but brilliantly nevertheless) is to allow us to see that "the environment" is a category, not a fact or a "natural" entity. Given the widespread use of the word, the most accurate way to describe "the environment", is as a reification of an ecological concept. Environmentalists and any one else who uses the concept as if it was real are indulging in what Alfred North Whitehead called "the fallacy of concretization" - they are assuming that since we can name something, that must prove it is a substantive reality. For the people who do subscribe to this fallacy, environmentalism is a modern form of animism, nature worship, in which the planetary ecosphere is personalized as "Mother Earth".
How is environmentalism manifest?
Contrary to the romanticized notion, nature is not benign - storms, hurricanes, tornados, floods, tsunamis, droughts, earthquakes, volcanoes, plagues, and famines, etc. often devastate their environments, usually locally, sometimes over vast areas. Despite this reality, many of those with an environmentalist outlook say they prefer to "let nature take its course". On this planet, the era of "the natural course of events" ended with the agricultural revolution over six thousand years ago. The predominant regime that has been expanding ever since is Human Ecology, in which "environments" are "managed", occasionally passably well, usually very poorly. If we are to do better however, we must form our categories and use our technologies in realistic ways.
Even areas of the planet which remain "relatively" untouched or uninhabited do so only out of human deference. When it suits humanity even the South Pole is colonized. What we need (desperately) is a science of geo-mechanics to operate large of the earth's surface, both beneath and above. Without the managed means to sustain our lives and our culture, humanity could perish just as surely as have other species before us - we have no divine protection against human stupidity if we choose to persist in that stupidity long enough. Anyone interested in re-thinking this dilemma would do well to begin with Amos Hawley and Joseph Tainter.
References
Amos Hawley
HUMAN ECOLOGY: A Theoretical Essay
University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1986
Joseph A. Tainter
THE COLLAPSE OF COMPLEX SOCIETIES
Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1988