It is a rare thing to find in our cynical times something that we can look at as purely good without the taint of some hidden agenda or selfish motive. In the political realm only one cause still maintains an aura of innocence about it and that is environmentalism. The thinking goes that nothing could possible be a nobler cause than to save the planet and none of the pettiness and prejudices that mark our regular lives could affect it. If only we knew how wrong we were.
My revelation came from reading Hardin, a biologist turned amateur libertarian philosopher, wrote a couple of very famous essays on the scarcity of resources and what should be done in the face of it. Hardin's arguments, like any libertarians, were deeply, deeply flawed and it took only a cursory reading to being finding holes. However beyond just finding logical and practical flaws in his reasoning there were other things that were troubling. Underneath Hardin's arguments were certain assumptions about worth and responsibility that paint a very disturbing picture of the world.
In classic libertarian fashion he asserts that we have no moral responsibility to others and that we should only concern ourselves with our own affairs. When assigned to a global scale it means that rich developed countries owe nothing to their poorer neighbors and that to provide aid would do more harm than good. This ignores the rather complex history many of these countries have with each other and the fact that much of the wealth of the richer is built on the backs of their poorer brethren. The sheer amount of racism and historical revisionism implicit in these arguments is downright shocking and what became even more startling is the more I thought about it the more I realized this was not the only argument to suffer from these flaws present in environmentalism.
If environmentalism can be said to have a fatal flaw it is that it is flush with lofty ideas and short on practical policies. For me, no group illustrates this flaw and the problems that stem from it more simply than the organic food movement, which loves to drape itself in the aura of environmental goodness. The chief concern of the movement is ridding the world of GMOs and introducing organic food as a staple of every persons diet. While there is certainly some merit in keeping the human diet more natural there are certain complications with such a goal. The major issue with this is that organic food does not produce as much food as GMOs do because a fair amount is lost due to diseases, climate, pests, and other factors. In a small community or even a single city this would not present so much of an issue but for a planet that is predicted to have over 9 billion human upon it by mid century, food production is a vitally important question and every wasted amount poses a problem. I will not deny that there are valid concerns to GMOs and that they must be addressed but an entirely organic future is just not feasible unless one wants to condemn untold millions to hunger. Supporters of organic food seam reluctant to deal with these questions in any meaningful way and I believe it is because they remain blinded by their own sense of righteousness and the assumptions and privileges they live their lives around.
At the risk of seeming like I am singling out one group for persecution, I bear no ill will towards advocates of organic food, they are simply the easiest group demonstrate my case. This dark heart of privilege, prejudice, and idealistic thinking runs throughout the environmental movement and its various causes to varying degrees from the animal rights movement all the way to calls for pollution control. It is a sad if not surprising fact to learn that even such a noble cause as saving the planet should fall prey to the prejudices and pettiness that the rest of human affairs suffer from. We would do well to remember that any plan to save the world is never going to be simple and that any solution we propose is carefully analyses to ensure that it does not suffer from some inborn bias weather intentional or not. Perhaps then we can actually save the world.
