The 'Ethics' of Environmentalism

The environmental ethic that society finds itself in today, is a misguided one. It is politically driven and based round the concept of the 'balance of nature'. It assumes that the natural environment is some kind of perfect 'garden of eden' that has been pushed out of sink, by humanities progress. This misses the fact that nature has never been 'balanced'. The environment has gone through natural periods of hot and cold, it suffers from earthquakes, tsunamis, hurricanes, volcanic eruptions and all kinds of natural disasters, that adversely affect the environment and the species within that environment.

As just one example of a potentially natural disaster, waiting to happen, is the Super Volcano, 'bubbling away' under Yellowstone National Park in the U.S. State of Wyoming and extending to Montana and Idaho. This natural underground phenomena of nature is considered to be, potentially the most destructive force on the planet.

The last recorded eruption of a Super Volcano, was estimated to be between 71,000 and 75,000 years ago, in Toba, Sumatra. The 'bomb-blastic' energy released from this 'super monster' was the equivalent of approximately 10,000 Mount St. Helens. The force unleashed from an eruption, would be frighteningly devastating and cataclysmic. What is particularly worrying, is that since the 1920's scientists have realized that the ground underneath Yellowstone, is beginning to swell up. The upward force, is like a cork on a bottle and when the surface of Yellowstone gives, it will pop open like a champagne cork bottle top.

These Super Volcanoes erupt with an astonishing 'clockwork' regularity, and they come in cycles, approximated around every 600,000 years. The last know 'super eruption' was approximately 650,000 years ago... Yellowstone has past its 'blow-by' date. In the meantime, the pressure underground keeps building.

What is frightening is what scientists tell us: 'It's not a question of if this Super Volcano erupts, rather, it's a question of when'. It is just a scientific inevitability that sooner or later all that pressure has to escape. It has been estimated, that such an eruption would kill everyone within a thousand kilometer radius. The long term effects would be even more devastating, the ash in the atmosphere would block out the suns rays, creating what is know as a nuclear winter, this would devastate crop production and lead to mass starvation. This effect would span virtually the entire globe.

When you weigh-up, the potential effects of natures destructive forces, against humanities, then humanities by comparison, seem very wimpish. The simple fact is, there is no balance of nature, nature has often become unstable and unbalanced (if it ever was balanced?). This is why approximately 98 percent of species that have ever lived, have gone extinct. Most of those extinctions are natures own doing, and have nothing to do with man.

Now, it may well be true, that mankind is now speeding up the process of extinction of species, through the progress of technology. But the fact is, that if you really want to preserve species, then often the best way to do it, is through technological and business progress. If you do not believe this is so, then look at the game reserves of South Africa, one of the few countries in the World, that has developed a successful business model, based around the preservation of exotic species.

I believe it will not ultimately be environmentalists that save species, it will be technology. Scientists are already collecting and preserving endangered species DNA. Scientists are freezing the DNA and tissue of species for future resurrection.

The environmental ethic for the most part, is not driven by the need to save the environment, it is driven by an ideology, which is anti-business and anti-technology. Environmentalists, simply want to slow down and even halt progress. They would be happiest if we went back to a Dark Age mentality, where technology is lost and forward progress is stultified. Of course I am not talking about the naturalists, who do genuine good work to preserve species and collect real environmental scientific data. I am talking about the political element of the environmental movement, which has become very militant, even to the point of terror tactics.

So, rather than an environmental ethic for a consumer age, what we really need is technological progress, driven forward by business, that asks serious scientific questions on what is best for the environment and how we can best apply what we learn.

One question scientists are already asking: is there a way, through man-made technology, that we can prevent or minimize natural disasters, that are potentially threatening and have the ability to destroy us? ...Well, we may well be a long way of from a technology that could prevent a Super Volcano, but if scientists and technologists cannot do it, then environmentalists surely can't.




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Is DNA Research Good or Bad?

Many individuals who despair at technological advances, seem to live by the credo that, 'ignorance is bliss'. The Green Movement are very adept at this, believing that nature untouched by man is good and the unnatural man-made equals bad. Indeed, they like to espouse bromides like, 'the raping of nature' whenever man-made technology is used to combine natural elements, into new discoveries and technologies.

These anti-technology 'greens' are often very aggressively anti-business too, and can be seen at their gleeful happiest, when putting bricks through McDonald's restaurant windows. The more extreme and radical greens, like to put bombs through the letter boxes of 'animal testing' scientific research labs.

When these 'green' extremists are shouting their diatribe through megaphones atop of soap boxes, listen to their rhetoric. It is almost never, in the positive terminology of 'what can we do to help improve the environment' ...rather, they spit out venomous and hateful slander at business owners and have an almost psychotic desire to pull down technology and drag us all back to living in the forest, in mud huts.

Unlike the 'greens' there are are honest naturalists who do genuine work to help improve the environment, for example, repopulating areas; that are near extinction of a particular species, within those areas (indeed, one example of this, is the repopulation of Britain with the white-tailed sea eagle). These people don't spend their days in zero-sum-games, of 'soap box' ranting and propaganda demonstrating. They actually do something positive.

Then of course there is the religious right, who feel justified in interfering in any advance in technology, that they consider is messing in 'Gods domain'. Such as 'Stem Cell Research' which is now considered by most biologists, to be the 'best game in town' for potentially curing many diseases, that arise because of genetic defects. This research of course, relies on breakthroughs inDNA research.

So to the question, have breakthroughs in DNA research led to more harm than good? - Well I guess that depends on your perspective. If you believe that nature is a perfect Eden, that should be left untouched, and you thus, wish to revert to living 'in harmony with nature', then if you are of this opinion, then for you DNA research, or indeed any technology that goes beyond the realm of nature must be bad.

On the other hand, if like me you realize that our very survival as a species, relies on our ability to 'dig in' to the laws of nature and understand them to the 'ninth-degree'. Then, you realize that 'time waits for no man (or woman)'.

Technological progress that will lead to cures for diseases cannot be held up, by the irrational rantings of 'green' radicals and right wing fundamentalists. What is so very tragic, is that is exactly what is happening. Radical environmental groups like Peta have a lot of political clout and so do many religious organizations, especially in America, where such organizations get charity status tax breaks and turn over millions of dollars.

Because we now live in a Global-World, the next virus, could be a killer pandemic, that spreads not only from village to village, and from town to town, but also from country to country, such a virus could killed not only millions, but potentially billions of people World-Wide. Perhaps the influenza A virus (avian bird flu) or perhaps some other yet unknown virus, just 'waiting' for its killer moment.

The 'Spanish' influenza pandemic of 1918, killed 40 million people. That massive scale loss of life, would be 'peanuts' compared to the scale of life lost, in a pandemic today... daily air travel; would spread such a virus, rapidly across continents and countries and we would be almost powerless to stop it.

The best chance we have at defeating such viruses, is in understanding natural organisms at the level of the DNA. The ultimate defeat of such viruses, will probably come from blocking the viruses from 'locking-on' to their host. The solution will only come from an understanding of genetic codes, we can only do that, if we are willing to overcome our prejudices, against technological progress and unashamedly drive forward.




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Debate on Darwin's Theory of Evolution

It is a favorite argument of Young Earth Creationists in attacking the Theory of Evolution to pronounce - "Charles Darwin renounced his theory on his death bed" ...Even if it were true that Darwin renounced his theory (there is no evidence that he did), what of it and so what?

This pathetically weak and flimsy argument used as an attack on the Theory of Evolution is known as a non sequitur, definitions of which are: 1) An inference or conclusion that does not follow from the premises or evidence; 2) A statement that does not follow logically from what preceded it (definitions: Answers.com).

The reason that it is a non sequitur is because the inference that they use infers that if Darwin renounced his theory on his death bed, then the theory must be incorrect. Thus, the body of overwhelming evidence, in fact tons and tons of the stuff must be wrong because on his death bed Darwin said so.

Anyone with a right mind can see that the Creationists that make this statement, do it illogically ignoring all the preceding evidence from now back to Darwin's day.

The point is that the Darwinian Theory of Evolution would still be correct even if Darwin never lived, it just wouldn't be called Darwinism. It would of needed someone else to come along and discover the mechanism of Natural Selection. But the fact of Natural Selection as the mechanism that directs the evolutionary process in combination with genetic recombination, is a scientific fact and it would remain a scientific fact whether Darwin denied it or not.

Darwin was of course unaware of DNA. Charles Darwin's great discovery was Natural Selection. The awareness of the genetic recombinations which would allow descent with modifications of species through time was a later discovery...a discovery that only strengthened Darwin's theory. Evolution itself was not Darwin's discovery. Evolution had been speculated by many individuals before Darwin, even long before him. What Darwin did was discover the mechanism that would allow evolution to run ...Natural Selection.

This anti-Darwinian argument put forward by Creationists is similar to the more general attack they put forward to attack atheists. They are often heard saying - "Albert Einstein believed in God" ...as if by some magic of the pronouncement atheists must be wrong. This anti-atheism argument is no less flimsy than the anti-Darwinian one.

It should also be noted that Einstein was most definitely not a theist. In terms of believing in a personal God that performed miracles and had a hand in our daily lives: Einstein was most definitely atheistic.

Einstein certainly did use the word God when explaining aspects of the Universe. But his meaning of God was purely as a personification of the laws of nature working in harmony. He never meant God in scriptural context such as a Jewish, Christian or Islamic God.

"It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it." (Albert Einstein, 1954).

Source(s):
Albert Einstein Quote: The Human Side, edited by Helen Dukas and Banesh Hoffman, Princeton University Press

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