Environmental Colonialism

As I mentioned last night, I bought a copy of The Independent Review and have been reading through it in between football games and spending time with the kids. Today I read through an excellent article by Robert H. Nelson that discusses how the environmentalist movement in Africa has taken on the attributes of being neo-colonialist.

He starts by examining the traits of the environmentalist movement which have brought us to this point. I have always been annoyed with the dismissal of fact in favor of fiction that the environmentalists are so good at, but I had never put my finger on exactly what it was that made me so uncomfortable with the environmentalist movement.

Mr. Nelson points it out very succinctly as the Messianic qualities of the environmentalist message:

For many of its followers today, environmentalism has been a substitute for fading mainline Christian and progressive faiths-its religious quality obvious to any close observer of its workings. Its language is often overtly religious: "saving" the earth from rape and pillage; building "cathedrals" in the wilderness; creating a new "Noah's Ark" with laws such as the Endangered Species Act; pursuing a new "calling" to preserve the remaining wild areas; and taking steps to protect what is left of the "Creation" on earth. At the heart of the environmental message is a story of the fall of mankind from a previous, happier, and more natural and innocent time-a secular vision of the biblical fall from the Garden of Eden.

It is this quality, the false religion, that bugs me more than anything else. Zealots, manipulators and charlatans create new religions to advance their goals. An honest person with an honest agenda doesn't need to hide behind a facade of false morality.

But the environmentalists have raised their cause to the level of being their religion, complete with vicious, unrelenting, and uncompromising attacks on any heretical thought that is counter to their ultimate purpose.

The fundamentalism of the environmentalists rivals that of the Iranian clerics. They have shown a willingness to silence their critics by any means necessary. They have taken to terrorism using the "righteousness" of their cause as their Machiavellian justification for the evil and deadly means. And most importantly, they have shown a complete and utter disregard for anyone who might be harmed or disadvantaged by the environmentalists’ actions.

The worst shame here is that the prosaic goals of environmentalism: cleaner air, protecting rare plants or animals, and acting as a counterbalance to unchecked expansion are all worthwhile causes and goals in and of themselves. If they were sought after in a reasoned and responsible manner it would be virtually impossible, except for the most cold-hearted person, to rationally object. But instead of the reasoned and responsible route, the goals have been hijacked and are now used, much like children by the Messianic For-The-Children cult (another group that annoys me to no end), to force people to accept otherwise unreasonable positions.

There is no justification for allowing people - human beings - to die because of a "need" to protect some particular species or landscape. Yet that is exactly what the environmentalists have been doing in Africa for years. They pursue policies that allow the tsetse fly to flourish while denying the native Africans the ability or right to use the land to provide for themselves. So the Africans starve as the environmentalists tell them that they cannot produce food in fertile and traditional areas. The environmentalists are issuing their edicts about what is permissible and what is not from their ivory towers without a care, concern, or shred of knowledge about what their actions are actually doing to the people - or to their beloved environment.

The neo-colonialist actions of the environmentalists are proving to be nearly as deadly to humans and as damaging to the environment as the hated colonialist actions were. And like their imperialist predecessors, they have no clue. They take the opinion that they, and they alone, are the sole arbiters of right and wrong when it comes to the environment.

And like their colonialist predecessors, they are wrong. In time they will be as hated as the British, French, and other colonial powers were. In time, the Africans will throw off the fundamentalist environmentalist yoke just like they did the colonialist yoke.

Hopefully it won't require as many dead before the Africans can have back their land again this time.