Recent discussions over recent weeks has me thinking that there may be value in making clear a matter upon which there would seem to be some confusion.
So, for the record: Yes, I am an environmentalist.
[1] As an environmentalist, though, I am distinguished from the mainstream variety of self-identified environmentalists in two important ways.
First, I make the rather important distinction between misanthropic and (what, for lack of a better word, I'll call) philanthropic approaches: that is, anti-human and pro-human, respectively.
The overwhelming majority of mainstream, self-identified environmentalists take a distinctly anti-human approach to the topic.
Admittedly, only a small number are explicitly misanthropic: make overt statements on the desirability of some kind of plague to wipeout great portions of humanity to cure the earth of its human cancer.
However unaware, though, a great majority of mainstream environmentalists are implicitly misanthropic, as the policies they promote would mean the death of billions of people and reduction to grinding poverty and misery of the majority of those who were left.
The reason they are unaware of their implicit misanthropy is explained by the second thing that distinguished me from them: knowing a little economics.
The study of economics reveals that in life there is no free lunch.
Everything is paid for in some way.
All benefits have costs.
Equally as true and important though is that costs have benefits.
And failing to look at the big picture of both costs and benefits leaves even the best-intentioned novice with a distorted picture of reality.
Mainstream environmentalists cherry-pick the costs in complete oblivion to the benefits.
How then can one presume to have anything to say about the big picture? Yet, they make such pronouncements all the time.
Whether its "corporations," capitalism, industrialism, consumerism, whatever the euphemism employed, the majority are implicitly or explicitly passing a verdict on the current state of human civilization.
They do so, though, at best, in wilful ignorance and, at worst, in utter hypocrisy.
In light of these distinctions, then, I would suggest a useful characterization of our differences to be that between environmental Chicken Littles and environmental realists.
The realists are the ones who look at the whole picture rather than cherry picking data points for the purpose of bemoaning ever looming catastrophe.
It's worth mentioning that there is a third potential category, which might be called environmental Panglosses.
These would be those who never acknowledge any environmental problem, for whom everything is always the best of all possible worlds.
The environmental Pangloss, while obviously the opposite, is in fact merely the mirror image of the environmental Chicken Little.
While the Chicken Little refuses to see environmental benefits, the Pangloss refuses to see environmental costs.
Each in their own way is equally unrealistic in their environmentalism.
Let's take a case in point: at least since the publication of Rachel Carson's seminal book, Silent Spring, the Chicken Little environmentalists have been decrying the ever rising cancer rates among humans.
In her case, the cause of this was attributed to the rise of chemicals in the food chain.
There are a host of other culprits routinely cited, including air and water pollution, electromagnetic waves, poor diet, poor lighting, and the heightened stress of modern life.
In all of this concern over cancer, though, one small detail is always overlooked.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but the rise of cancer rates - which is to say, the rising tendency of humans to die of cancer - is one of the greatest achievements of human civilization.
It is something that in the first instance should be heralded and celebrated, not lamented.
What did he say? As bizarre and ridiculous as this claim sounds to the Chicken Little environmentalists, it is a straight forward matter for the realist.
The main - not the only, but the main - cause of increasing cancer rates is the extraordinary expansion of the human life span during the 2.
5 centuries which have seen the growth of (unprecedented, though incomplete, free market) industrial capitalism.
Cancer is primarily a cause of death for the aged; the older you get, the greater the likelihood of getting cancer.
By way of illustration, check out these two documents.
The table is from the Center for Disease Control and the graph is from Cancer Research UK.
The first covers a period of ten years, 1999 to 2009, the second 2007-2009.
What is clearly true, though, in both countries, over both time frames, is that the number of people dying from cancer who are over 50 years old is pushing 45 times more than those under 30 years of age.
Not 45 percent, but 45 times! Cancer is a disease of old age.
During most of human history the average life expectancy hovered in the general area of 30 years old.
It actually appears to have dropped following the agricultural revolution, but continues fluctuating around 30 for the next 10,000 years.
In the early modern era in Britain (birth place of industrial capitalism), it starts to creep up into the high 30s.
Today, of course, after 250 years or so of dreaded industrial capitalism, the world average is over 67.
And in wealthier countries like the US and UK it is considerably higher than that.
The fact is that the rise of cancer death rates is primarily a function of humans living far, far longer.
And, of course, the lengthened life expectancy is a function of us being far, far healthier.
Before (unprecedented, though incomplete, free market) industrial capitalism, most people were undernourished and exposed to unhygienic conditions most of the time.
Death from a host of infections, rarely fatal in the industrial capitalist world, today, such as tuberculosis, diphtheria, typhoid, scarlet fever, small pox, polio, dysentery, cholera and so on, were common place.
So, if industrial capitalism is so terrible, as the Chicken Little environmentalists are always claiming, how is it that the human organism thrives so well in the environment? What the Chicken Little environmentalists either don't understand, or hypocritically ignore, is that all those chemicals, monocultures, pollutants and so forth, which they cherry pick to decry the sinfulness of modern civilization are themselves the bi-products of houses built with revolutionary insulating technology; central heating and air conditioning; indoor plumbing, with running hot water and flush toilets (and water treatment plants); germicide cleaners and surfaces such as linoleum, marble, stainless steel and Vitreous enamel, which make the cleaners so effective at reducing bacterial infections in our kitchens and bathrooms; electricity, along with refrigerators and stoves, greatly reducing the danger of food contamination; the almost universal availability of fresh nuts, fruits and vegetables all year round (to say nothing of easily available, mass produced and distributed vitamin and mineral supplements); commercial gyms; a cornucopia of inexpensive personal hygiene products; and an astounding range of health care services (though, depending where one lives, certain ones are better supplied than others).
None of that - which only scratches the surface - existed in 1750 when the average human life expectancy was less than half what it is today.
Presuming to make a statement about industrial capitalist civilization, not taking account of the benefits in addition to the costs, is at best methodologically bankrupt and at worst intellectually dishonest.
If humanity rolled back the industrial revolution to remedy the costs, we would also lose the benefits.
We would again be a sickly species often lurking at the edge of death and all too often dying in infancy.
This is why I call the Chicken Little environmentalists misanthropic.
Whether consciously or not their agenda is far too often anti-human.
The environmental realist, the only environmentalist I ever take seriously, starts off by saying, the industrial revolution and (unprecedented, though incomplete, free market) capitalism is the greatest thing to ever happen to the human species.
Hands down! No debate...
Long pause (wait for it)...
But, we can do better.
I'm told by those I trust that the evidence is good that young people are contracting cancer at greater rates.
And, certainly many elderly are dying unnecessarily from preventable cancers.
We have already made progress in combating some kinds of cancer in recent decades.
There's no reason we couldn't and shouldn't make more progress: both in better treatment and finding less toxic industrial processes.
To say that we have achieved the greatest success of human civilization; that no human who ever lived prior to a few centuries ago could ever have dreamed of our prosperity and well being; is no invitation to rest on our laurels.
We can do better! It was the attitude that we can do better that got us to where we are today.
Improvement of the human condition, though, doesn't stop today.
If there are people dying of cancer that can be spared it, human ingenuity can - and given the right economic incentives - will be applied to find remedies.
Likewise with creating a cleaner biosphere, making still more nutritious and delicious produce available, solving land erosion problems, and so on.
The key difference though between the misanthropic Chicken Little environmentalist and the realist is that we know the solutions do not lie in rolling back the achievements of (unprecedented, though incomplete, free market) industrial capitalism but in fact still more (ideally, actually free market) industrial capitalism.
We will never achieve a world without costs - the fairy tale land of the naive and disingenuous.
What we can, should and - with free market incentives - will do, though, is identify the most burdensome of those costs and try to remedy them.
That's the agenda for realist environmentalism.
Let us hope that it triumphs over the trendy misanthropy that contaminates mainstream environmentalism, today.
NOTE [1] Though, let's be clear that I'm using here the conventional nomenclature, which in this case is a slightly moronic term.
Much like another stupid but popular term, homophobia (which means fear of same), popular culture has glommed onto this odd wording.
Environ means that which surrounds or envelopes and the suffix ist denotes one who promotes or advocates.
So an environmentalist is one who promotes or advocates what surrounds? So one living in Manhattan would promote skyscrapers, automobiles and whatever level of air pollution happens to be around?
So, for the record: Yes, I am an environmentalist.
[1] As an environmentalist, though, I am distinguished from the mainstream variety of self-identified environmentalists in two important ways.
First, I make the rather important distinction between misanthropic and (what, for lack of a better word, I'll call) philanthropic approaches: that is, anti-human and pro-human, respectively.
The overwhelming majority of mainstream, self-identified environmentalists take a distinctly anti-human approach to the topic.
Admittedly, only a small number are explicitly misanthropic: make overt statements on the desirability of some kind of plague to wipeout great portions of humanity to cure the earth of its human cancer.
However unaware, though, a great majority of mainstream environmentalists are implicitly misanthropic, as the policies they promote would mean the death of billions of people and reduction to grinding poverty and misery of the majority of those who were left.
The reason they are unaware of their implicit misanthropy is explained by the second thing that distinguished me from them: knowing a little economics.
The study of economics reveals that in life there is no free lunch.
Everything is paid for in some way.
All benefits have costs.
Equally as true and important though is that costs have benefits.
And failing to look at the big picture of both costs and benefits leaves even the best-intentioned novice with a distorted picture of reality.
Mainstream environmentalists cherry-pick the costs in complete oblivion to the benefits.
How then can one presume to have anything to say about the big picture? Yet, they make such pronouncements all the time.
Whether its "corporations," capitalism, industrialism, consumerism, whatever the euphemism employed, the majority are implicitly or explicitly passing a verdict on the current state of human civilization.
They do so, though, at best, in wilful ignorance and, at worst, in utter hypocrisy.
In light of these distinctions, then, I would suggest a useful characterization of our differences to be that between environmental Chicken Littles and environmental realists.
The realists are the ones who look at the whole picture rather than cherry picking data points for the purpose of bemoaning ever looming catastrophe.
It's worth mentioning that there is a third potential category, which might be called environmental Panglosses.
These would be those who never acknowledge any environmental problem, for whom everything is always the best of all possible worlds.
The environmental Pangloss, while obviously the opposite, is in fact merely the mirror image of the environmental Chicken Little.
While the Chicken Little refuses to see environmental benefits, the Pangloss refuses to see environmental costs.
Each in their own way is equally unrealistic in their environmentalism.
Let's take a case in point: at least since the publication of Rachel Carson's seminal book, Silent Spring, the Chicken Little environmentalists have been decrying the ever rising cancer rates among humans.
In her case, the cause of this was attributed to the rise of chemicals in the food chain.
There are a host of other culprits routinely cited, including air and water pollution, electromagnetic waves, poor diet, poor lighting, and the heightened stress of modern life.
In all of this concern over cancer, though, one small detail is always overlooked.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but the rise of cancer rates - which is to say, the rising tendency of humans to die of cancer - is one of the greatest achievements of human civilization.
It is something that in the first instance should be heralded and celebrated, not lamented.
What did he say? As bizarre and ridiculous as this claim sounds to the Chicken Little environmentalists, it is a straight forward matter for the realist.
The main - not the only, but the main - cause of increasing cancer rates is the extraordinary expansion of the human life span during the 2.
5 centuries which have seen the growth of (unprecedented, though incomplete, free market) industrial capitalism.
Cancer is primarily a cause of death for the aged; the older you get, the greater the likelihood of getting cancer.
By way of illustration, check out these two documents.
The table is from the Center for Disease Control and the graph is from Cancer Research UK.
The first covers a period of ten years, 1999 to 2009, the second 2007-2009.
What is clearly true, though, in both countries, over both time frames, is that the number of people dying from cancer who are over 50 years old is pushing 45 times more than those under 30 years of age.
Not 45 percent, but 45 times! Cancer is a disease of old age.
During most of human history the average life expectancy hovered in the general area of 30 years old.
It actually appears to have dropped following the agricultural revolution, but continues fluctuating around 30 for the next 10,000 years.
In the early modern era in Britain (birth place of industrial capitalism), it starts to creep up into the high 30s.
Today, of course, after 250 years or so of dreaded industrial capitalism, the world average is over 67.
And in wealthier countries like the US and UK it is considerably higher than that.
The fact is that the rise of cancer death rates is primarily a function of humans living far, far longer.
And, of course, the lengthened life expectancy is a function of us being far, far healthier.
Before (unprecedented, though incomplete, free market) industrial capitalism, most people were undernourished and exposed to unhygienic conditions most of the time.
Death from a host of infections, rarely fatal in the industrial capitalist world, today, such as tuberculosis, diphtheria, typhoid, scarlet fever, small pox, polio, dysentery, cholera and so on, were common place.
So, if industrial capitalism is so terrible, as the Chicken Little environmentalists are always claiming, how is it that the human organism thrives so well in the environment? What the Chicken Little environmentalists either don't understand, or hypocritically ignore, is that all those chemicals, monocultures, pollutants and so forth, which they cherry pick to decry the sinfulness of modern civilization are themselves the bi-products of houses built with revolutionary insulating technology; central heating and air conditioning; indoor plumbing, with running hot water and flush toilets (and water treatment plants); germicide cleaners and surfaces such as linoleum, marble, stainless steel and Vitreous enamel, which make the cleaners so effective at reducing bacterial infections in our kitchens and bathrooms; electricity, along with refrigerators and stoves, greatly reducing the danger of food contamination; the almost universal availability of fresh nuts, fruits and vegetables all year round (to say nothing of easily available, mass produced and distributed vitamin and mineral supplements); commercial gyms; a cornucopia of inexpensive personal hygiene products; and an astounding range of health care services (though, depending where one lives, certain ones are better supplied than others).
None of that - which only scratches the surface - existed in 1750 when the average human life expectancy was less than half what it is today.
Presuming to make a statement about industrial capitalist civilization, not taking account of the benefits in addition to the costs, is at best methodologically bankrupt and at worst intellectually dishonest.
If humanity rolled back the industrial revolution to remedy the costs, we would also lose the benefits.
We would again be a sickly species often lurking at the edge of death and all too often dying in infancy.
This is why I call the Chicken Little environmentalists misanthropic.
Whether consciously or not their agenda is far too often anti-human.
The environmental realist, the only environmentalist I ever take seriously, starts off by saying, the industrial revolution and (unprecedented, though incomplete, free market) capitalism is the greatest thing to ever happen to the human species.
Hands down! No debate...
Long pause (wait for it)...
But, we can do better.
I'm told by those I trust that the evidence is good that young people are contracting cancer at greater rates.
And, certainly many elderly are dying unnecessarily from preventable cancers.
We have already made progress in combating some kinds of cancer in recent decades.
There's no reason we couldn't and shouldn't make more progress: both in better treatment and finding less toxic industrial processes.
To say that we have achieved the greatest success of human civilization; that no human who ever lived prior to a few centuries ago could ever have dreamed of our prosperity and well being; is no invitation to rest on our laurels.
We can do better! It was the attitude that we can do better that got us to where we are today.
Improvement of the human condition, though, doesn't stop today.
If there are people dying of cancer that can be spared it, human ingenuity can - and given the right economic incentives - will be applied to find remedies.
Likewise with creating a cleaner biosphere, making still more nutritious and delicious produce available, solving land erosion problems, and so on.
The key difference though between the misanthropic Chicken Little environmentalist and the realist is that we know the solutions do not lie in rolling back the achievements of (unprecedented, though incomplete, free market) industrial capitalism but in fact still more (ideally, actually free market) industrial capitalism.
We will never achieve a world without costs - the fairy tale land of the naive and disingenuous.
What we can, should and - with free market incentives - will do, though, is identify the most burdensome of those costs and try to remedy them.
That's the agenda for realist environmentalism.
Let us hope that it triumphs over the trendy misanthropy that contaminates mainstream environmentalism, today.
NOTE [1] Though, let's be clear that I'm using here the conventional nomenclature, which in this case is a slightly moronic term.
Much like another stupid but popular term, homophobia (which means fear of same), popular culture has glommed onto this odd wording.
Environ means that which surrounds or envelopes and the suffix ist denotes one who promotes or advocates.
So an environmentalist is one who promotes or advocates what surrounds? So one living in Manhattan would promote skyscrapers, automobiles and whatever level of air pollution happens to be around?
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