Environmental Extremists

(Hat tip: John Ray)

A PDF authored by Robert Brinsmead.

Bob Brinsmead is a fourth generation member of an Australian farming family. In his tertiary education he majored in theology and later served for many years as the editor-in-chief of Verdict, an international journal of theology and philosophy. He was a co-founder of two para-medical organizations (International Health Institute and the First Australian Institute of Total Health) that did health education work in third world environments and health-risk assessment programs in Australia and North America.

In 1971 the Sierra Club published a book by Barry Commoner (The Closing Circle) proclaiming that “the third law of ecology” is, “Nature knows best.”

There is nothing wrong in saying, Nature knows best in the right context. Doctors sometimes say it to reassure a patient. Horticulturists like me often say it when working with plants. We’ve all heard advertisers say it to flog everything from butter to the latest natural face cream. My charming neighbour says it when he regales me about the benefits of Echinacea and olive leaf extract for all kinds of ailments.

But there is everything wrong in saying, as the Sierra Club does, that it a law that nature know best, meaning that nature knows best under all circumstances. That is a dangerous, unscientific fanaticism. I hope my neighbour opts for something better than Echinacea and olive leaf extract if one of his kids gets meningococcal. As my mentor in philosophy used to say, “Extreme views have this advantage: they are remarkably consistent.” And I would add, “And seductively simple.”

And

The environmental movement began as a protest against Western culture’s alienation from nature. This alienation was said to have its roots in the Judeo-Christian heritage that sets man apart as a special creation above the natural kingdom (see Genesis 1:28, 29). Environmentalism advanced the antithesis that puts an all-wise Mother Nature on a pedestal above the human race. The natural is lauded and, to quote an old one-liner, “only man is vile.” There is a very pervasive anti-human bias in environmentalism, and it is expressed in a bias against human technology, economic growth and human prosperity. Global warming theory is popular because it is just another big stick to beat up on human activity. Human activity cops the blame for everything from the disappearing green tree frogs to almost any natural disaster. It is as if Augustine’s old doctrine of original has come back to haunt us again. It was a doctrine that said every single calamity on the earth, including the disaster of death itself, was all man’s fault – or was it woman’s fault? Anyhow, in this present orgie of human blaming, eagerly supported by media sensationalism, the alienation of man from nature has become worse than what it was before environmentalism tried to correct it.

If human intelligence evolved through the same natural process that produced a fox’s cunning and a beaver’s dexterity, then all human intelligence is natural and all human technology is natural. I am not saying it is necessarily good, but it’s undeniably as natural as the technology of a bee hive, the weaving of a spider’s web or the navigational equipment of migratory birds.

In human consciousness nature has finally become conscious of itself. “We may think of ourselves,” says the great mythologist Joseph Campbell, “as the functioning ears and eyes and mind of this earth.” Heretofore nature could only act in a random order of hit and miss. As such, nature has often been wasteful and prone to structural flaws, as the ABC science reporter, Robyn Williams, has made all too clear in his recent satire, Unintelligent Design. But now Mother Nature has acquired in this human mind what Julian Simon has called “the ultimate resource,” and a power that the brilliant Princeton physicist, Freeman Dyson, has described as being “infinite in all directions.”

“Nature has structural flaws and physical limitations” writes Greg Easterbrook (A Moment on the Earth) “Genus Homo may be able to change that. People may be here because nature needs us – perhaps needs us desperately…There is no reason in principle why nature ought to oppose the arrival of the high-speed analytical powers of the mind. Nature may have been dreaming of these very powers for 3.8 billion years.” (pp.668-669). This is why the late physicist Heinz Pagel could write in Dreams of Reason that it is high time that we discard “the radical distinction between mind and nature.” This includes, of course, the distinction between natural and man-made.

I come back to the original question, Does nature know best? With her newly acquired thinking powers, I would have to say that potentially and ultimately the answer may be “Yes”.