Is the current environmental movement a religion? Michael Crichton, author of several books including \Jurassic Park"" and ""Andromeda Strain,"" seems to think so. He is a graduate of Harvard Medical School and studied molecular biology at the Salk Institute for Biological Sciences. His books have sold more than 100 million copies around the world and he has also given a series of thought-provoking speeches over the span of the last decade.
His speech to the Commonwealth Club late last year was a stark criticism of the current environmental movement. According to Crichton, ""one of the most powerful religions in the Western World is environmentalism."" Before the corruption of modernity, there was the state of nature, or ""Garden of Eden."" Today, everybody is born an ""energy sinner"" and must accept the holy word of the gospel, or ""sustainability."" Organic food is the ""communion"" and a consumption-free world is the only path to salvation.
Crichton says he believes global warming is a contrived doomsday scenario of the environmental fundamentalists. Much like devout environmentalists, people with deeply religious beliefs cannot be reasoned or argued out of their beliefs. They exist to convert the ""non-believers"" and help save your soul. Fundamentalists scream about the coming apocalypse and do not allow facts to get in the way.
The problem with the global warming scare is its over-reliance on models. In the past, computer models were used in addition to observable evidence to make realistic predictions. Today, computer models create the evidence, but there is no mechanism to check its accuracy. Weather predictions are not accurate for one week, but people are expected to make significant financial sacrifices for predictions of 100 years.
Crichton also says he believes that the model-makers are na??ve. They make assumptions about the future without taking into account technological, sociological or political progress. For example, predictions made 100 years ago, in 1904, would not involve airplanes, television, computers, lasers, plastics or a number of other innovations that have greatly improved everyone's standard of living. Climate change is a complex system with thousands of unknown variables. Asking Americans to invest in a prediction 100 years away is equivalent to asking Americans to invest in a stock whose profitability is 100 years away. Most would undoubtedly view it as a scam.
But a healthy, objective, rational environmental movement is necessary for preserving the Earth for future generations. The current environmental movement needs to be cleansed of its religious certainty and attempt to be more skeptical. Science is a dynamic, uncertain endeavor that needs to be open-minded to different ideas.
One such idea is that some environmental stances have caused significantly more harm than good. For example, anti-pesticide treaties have doomed millions of Africans to having no affordable way of killing malaria-causing mosquitoes. Opposition to fossil fuels and nuclear and hydraulic power plants has also prevented millions more Africans from gaining access to electricity. Nevertheless, environmental organizations insist on a worldwide ban of DDT. They also view solar, wind and ""renewable"" energy as the only viable energy sources.
In America, we can afford to be environmentalists. In Africa, with widespread famine, malaria, AIDS and poverty, saving the mountain lions becomes less important. To tell a Ugandan villager that he may not grow genetically modified foods because of the environmental concerns is unreasonable. To tell a Rwandan mother that we can't spray DDT to kill the malaria-infected mosquitoes is heartbreaking.
The Kyoto Protocol, an environmental treaty the United States refused to sign, had an estimated global price tag of $1 trillion. This is more than the amount of money needed to provide every human being with clean sanitation and drinking water.
An alternative point of view is that promoted by the Collegians For A Constructive Tomorrow, http://www.cfact.org. According to the head of the Madison chapter of this organization, Nick Pongratz, they believe that ""environmental challenges are best addressed through free markets, technology, sound science and a strong affirmation of private property rights.""
To learn more about this new angle of approaching environmentalism, I strongly suggest attending a speech today by Paul Driessen, author of ""Eco-Imperialism: Green Power, Black Death."" This CFACT-sponsored event taking place in Grainger Hall, room 2280, at 7 p.m. C-SPAN will be covering it.
Driessen endorses the controversial position that environmentalism has curtailed the progress of poor people in developing countries. He cites evidence of their stances on pesticides, energy and biotechnology as directly harming the lives of millions. Whether students agree or disagree, they should try considering this different, informed point of view.
Nitin Julka is a senior majoring in computer science and psychology.
