Jonah Goldberg writes a column today that is ostensibly about how liberals want to blame George Bush for hurricane Katrina. His point of departure is theodicy--how do we account for the presence of evil? From there, he jumps into a discussion about the environmentalist mindset that Katrina is nature's wrath for the mistreatment of our environment. The money quote:
It's become something of a cliche to say that environmentalism has become a religion, but that's because there's something so obviously true about it....Within the environmentalist worldview there's "an initial Eden, a paradise, a state of grace and unity with nature, there's a fall from grace into a state of pollution as a result of eating from the tree of knowledge, and as a result of our actions there is a judgment day coming for us all," author Michael Crichton observed in a famous speed on the subject.
Far be it from me to question Michael Crichton's trenchant social commentary or Jonah Goldberg's exegesis of it, but let's consider some points from the quotation:
Is there "an initial Eden, a paradise, a state of grace and unity with nature" in environmentalist thinking? There are probably folks in the environmentalist movement who believe that. There are strains of this thinking in the desire of some folks to move away from large-scale agriculture--indeed, to move away generally from economic and social structures that rely on mass production and consumption and its reliance on fuel consumption to connect global producers to global consumers--and it's interesting to think about whether our societies could make that change. It's unlikely that the change will take place, I grant you, but at some level, some consumers understand that consuming stuff that's locally produced is a good thing because a) it requires fewer resources to get it to the market; and b) there's more accountability for local producers. On the other hand, we also have the Walmartization of America, which is distressingly common and brings with it a whole host of ills. But let me get back to the main point: what about this whole Eden thing?
I doubt, frankly, that the Eden meme has much practical force in the environmental movement. Most reasonable environmentalists recognize that we're actually better off now than we were before the Clean Air Act and its various amendments passed the US Congress, and the Clean Water Act was shepherded through by the Nixon Administration in 1972. Nobody who saw Lake Erie burn in 1969 due to petrochemical pollution can doubt that it's cleaner than it was then--and the same goes for the nation's air and water as a whole (although there are various spots that are undoubtedly worse). Most environmentalists are too practical to argue that we need to return to the times of hunter-gatherer societies.
But there's also a telling elision in Crichton's argument. Note that he says that the Eden gave way to the fallen state of environmental ruin because of pollution. While that's partly true--pollution is one of the most obvious problems with environmental policy--most environmentalists recognize that environmental degradation is a multi-faceted problem. In Oregon, whence I hail, one of the tenets of the environmental movement has been the problem of land use: preserving natural forests and wildlife, protecting farmland from development, and making cities sustainable and livable while dealing with rising population. There has been and always will be tension between these goals--just look at how difficult it is to find housing in Portland, a city whose population exerts a tremendous pressure on its Urban Growth Boundary--to see what I mean. But the point I'm making is that the "fall from grace into pollution" theme is actually only a small part of the environmental movement (and ironically, it's the one that's been most easily co-opted by companies like Shell and Ford, whose advertisements on PBS play up their commitment to environmentally responsible products. I'm sure those Explorer owners are pleased). But contemporary environmentalism addresses not just the issue of pollution, but also the need to protect wildlife and its habitats; the effect of expanding urban boundaries; the problem of natural resource consumption (particularly the problem of water consumption caused by expanding populations); and a host of related problems. Pollution is still a driving force of the environmental movement--it's the issue most likely to get sympathy in a moribund press, after all--but it's far from the only one.
The not-so-very-subtle subtext to Crichton's argument is that environmentalists are focused on the evil of the modern world. That's one reason, I think that he focuses on pollution (whether that's intentional on his part or not, I don't know)--because it underscores most dramatically the different between our modern world and our supposedly untainted past. That's the whole point of the Eden analogy: we live in a world that is irrevocably different from our prior state of grace, and there is absolutely nothing we can do to get back to it. It is fundamentally an indictment of our society, and it is one from which we can never escape.
In point of fact, most environmentalists don't think like that.
To be sure, they will point out the catastrophic repercussions if we continue on a near-sighted, devil-may-care path that blithely dismisses the environmental impact of our economic and social arrangements, or if, like James Watt, we seek to hasten the second coming by consuming our resources as quickly as possible. But if such predictions sound dark, they are by no means prophecy (which is what Goldberg claims). The environmentalist credo is above all a call for action, precisely because it is possible for us to do something about these problems. That is essentially a positive vision that looks toward the future, not a blind obeisance to the past. Adam and Eve didn't have any choice but to live in their fallen state. We, on the other hand, do. There is certainly disagreement about the extent to which we can solve our problems, but most environmentalists will agree that we can at least try to minimize the impact of our past failings.
If you step back for a moment, it should be clear that this is one reason why criticism of the Bush administration (and of the Clinton administration, which was no godsend to environmentalism) is and was so strident: if we just sit on our butts, which is essentially what the present administration says we should do, we can damn well count on having environmental hell to pay. We cannot continue to expand our suburbs ever outward. We cannot solve all transportation problems just by building more roads. We cannot exempt SUVs from higher mileage standards and expect to have less pollution from fossil fuels. And so on. On the other hand, if we really consider the environmental costs of what we do, and we sincerely try to minimize them, we don't have to assume that we'll face environmental disaster. While their predictions on the consequences of irresponsible environmental policies may sound dire, the underlying assumption on the part of environmentalists is that a) we CAN take action to change some of these policies; and b) if we do so, we can improve both the condition of our environment and our quality of life. This really isn't hearkening back to Eden at all--there's no sense that we're perpetually in the dock for our sins. If that were the case, why would environmentalists care about promoting wind and solar power? Why would they try to get people to ride their bicycles to work? Why would they encourage organic food cooperatives? What, if we're already damned by our past actions, would be the point?
And this leads me to the second problem with Crichton's argument.
"[T]here's a fall from grace into a state of pollution as a result of eating from the tree of knowledge, and as a result of our actions there is a judgement day coming for us all...." This plays into a common assumption about environmentalists: that they're retrograde, against progress, suffering from a blinkered, knee-jerk opposition to technology. All of this is pure foolishness.
If you talk about new ways of harnessing natural power (wind, solar, geothermal), if you talk about new ways to clean up existing forms of power (scrubbers for coal-fired electrical plants, for example), if you talk about new ways to reduce power consumption (Energy-star approved appliances, for example), environmentalists are the most ga-ga about technology of any group around. They are not opposed to technology: they are opposed to destructive technology. The fall from grace is not due to eating of the tree of knowledge, it comes from using the fruits of that tree in stupid ways. But arguing that those who question blind technological optimism as blindly opposed to technology per se is a cheap and very effective way to discredit the opponents of unrestrained technology. It's a convenient straw man that says that those who simply argue for a weighing the costs and benefits of technology are a sort of fifth column that seeks to undermine the material benefits of our society for some nefarious, self-hating agenda.
To be sure, I imagine that there are some environmentalists who hate technology, just as there are some fundamentalists who hate technology, just as there are some cross-dresser, just as there are neo-Kantian empiricist Jungians who hate technology. But a critical stance toward particular technological developments--asking questions like, "What will they do for us? What are their drawbacks? What are their costs?" is not the same as a yearning for an irretrievable, technology-free past. There's a passage at the beginning of one chapter of Homage to Catalonia where Orwell talks about the decrepit state of Spanish agriculture. The gist is that while he recognized the evils of the unmoderated industrial economy, he also understood that the Industrial Revolution had real benefits, as well. Basically, that's what thoughtful environmentalists are asking us to do. In many cases, it's the environmentalists who are the loudest in asking us to use technology to ease our environmental problems. They're also asking sensible questions about why we should promote technology that continues to ruin our environment. Unfortunately, neither Crichton nor Goldberg appears willing to distinguish between opposition to technology that continues to erode our ability to sustain and improve our lives, and opposition to technology generally. Whether that's due to sloppy thinking, or just sheer cussedness, I'm not sure (it's probably a mix of both).
Here's why this is important.
If environmentalists are indeed opposed to progress, particularly of the material kind, it's easy to paint them as fuzzy-minded idiots who think we'd all be better off if only we lived five hundred years ago when the world was pure and clean. Particularly in the United States, this gets translated into an argument that environmentalists don't care about the economic well-being of our society, that they'll damn all of our jobs to hell just save one spotted owl. In the case of fuel economy standards, it's taken to mean that the environmentalists will gladly see the entire UAW put out of work if we can improve the mileage on SUVs by five miles per gallon. The problem is, this is complete nonsense. While it's been historically true that environmentalists have sometimes been insensitive to labor's concerns (I'm thinking, for example, of the tension between millworkers and environmentalists in Oregon around the time of the 1979 housing crunch), that is frequently no longer the case. The triumph of conservatives in the United States, at least, has forced labor and the environment into the same bed, and they've begun to reconcile their differences over the last two national election cycles. Perhaps more importantly, concerns about problems like environmental racism in places like Louisiana has forced leaders of both movements to recognize that they are protecting potentially the same audience: a gradually weakening working class.
More significant, though is this: there is no necessary conflict between environmental progress and economic progress. Certainly there are points of tension. But both labor and the environmentalists now recognize that our alternatives need not be framed in terms of unrestrained growth (and environmental disaster) versus environmental purity (and economic ruin). Raising fuel economy standards does not mean that people will stop buying cars and put Detroit out of business. If it costs too much to build them, the federal government could provide incentives to the automakers that would offset the initial costs, until production can be ramped up and produce economies of scale. (Kind of like what's happening now with fuel cell technology, except the incentives need to be for actually developing and marketing more efficient vehicles rather than just building flashy concept models.) In short: it is possible for the government to establish policies that would offset the economic and social costs incurred by making our technology more environmentally sensitive. We don't need to look at the environment versus the economy as a zero-sum game. And that, unfortunately, is the real subtext behind what Crichton and Goldberg are saying. They're trying to to paint environmentalists as fuzzy-minded idiots who think we'd all be better off if only we lived five hundred years ago when the world was pure and clean, even if it means we're all poor. That we should return to a past bedecked with flowers in a blissful Garden of Eden.
But environmentalists aren't saying that. They're arguing that our environmental policies have real impacts and that we must consider those impacts when we determine policy--and more to the point, we can include environmental concerns in an ongoing discussion of our nation's future that includes a whole host of social, economic and political issues. The reason this all surfaces in the context of hurricane Katrina is that Katrina is seen by the environmentalists as a very loud and very nasty wake-up call: we will have to expect such disasters if we continue to blithely re-engineer the coastal landscape and to merrily pump gas into our ever less efficient SUVs. And the reason that so much fury gets directed at the Bush administration is not that it caused the hurricane, but that it has actively tried to hamper the progress--already mortifiyingly slow--on changing our priorities to prevent hurricanes Katrina II, III, ad infinitum from happening. The basic point is simple: we're at a turning point; we don't have a lot of time to address these problems; and the consequences, if we don't, aren't gonna be pretty awful. Those who take offense when the Bush administration is lambasted for contributing to these problems should remember that the administration's track record at anticipating and preventing disasters is not particularly stellar. In short: Bush didn't cause the hurricane, but his calls to inaction over the last four years sure as hell didn't improve our chances of surviving it, and he's given us precious little evidence that anyone in his administration has a plan to do that--or even understands that a plan is needed.
And if Jonah Goldberg can't understand THAT point, only willful misreading can explain it.
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