MATTHEW WATKINSON • WEB: http://www.fishsnorkel.com • TWITTER: http://twitter.com/fishsnorkel
A BRIEF LOOK AT THE
HISTORY OF ENVIRONMENTALISM Matthew Watkinson
“Sympathy beyond the confines of man, that is, humanity to the lower animals, seems to be one of the latest moral acquisitions.” Charles Darwin
THE BEGINNING To be honest, I have absolutely no idea when the environmental movement began. I suspect that people have been telling other people how to behave, environmentally and otherwise, since the arrival of language and I have absolutely no idea when that was. In fact, having recently read endless self-important ecological reports (endless in content as well as number), I’m currently finding it quite hard to imagine how language didn’t evolve specifically for the purpose, but either way, after 3.5 billion years of uninterrupted survival the ‘stewards’ suddenly decided (at some point) that Life needed managing and that humans needed lecturing. I say suddenly, but what I actually mean is gradually. Well, gradually from a human perspective anyway. If you ignore the geological and cosmic perspectives (that make humans seem as insignificant as they actually are), in favour of the human perspective (that makes humans seem like the most important thing that has ever existed), the global conservation movement only really began to gather international momentum in the 1960’s. Before we review the post 1960’s rise of global environmentalism however, here are some early highlights to set the scene: 676 AD - A religious hermit protects some nice ducks. 1690 AD - Some big flightless pigeons become some dead lifeless pigeons. 1798 AD - A Christian minister realises that populations can’t grow forever. 1859 AD - An agnostic naturalist realises that populations don’t grow forever. 1854 AD - A loner gets all philosophical and decides to live in a shed. 1864 AD - A philologist with a pot-belly gets upset enough to write a book. 1872 AD - A volcano that regularly self-destructs is legally protected from destruction. 1918 AD - Several people develop a spiritual bond with a plant. I’ve had to skip a few minor events of course, but that was, as I’m sure you’ll agree, an informative, enlightening and comprehensive review. For those who would like to explore these milestones in a little more depth, the religious hermit credited with introducing the world’s first conservation law was an English Bishop called Cuthbert of Lindisfarne who lived in a cave on one of the Farne Islands. He was also extremely keen on Eider Ducks. The big flightless pigeons that became extinct in the late seventeenth century were, of course, Dodo’s. They weren’t actually pigeons I must admit, but ‘pigeons’ felt much better than ‘raphiniforms’ so I couldn’t resist. And besides, Dodo’s were related to pigeons so I haven’t strayed too far from the truth. It should also be noted that 1690 is a modern statistical extinction estimate rather than the last time a Dodo was actually sighted. That was in 1662 if 1
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you trust a shipwrecked sailor, or 1674 if you trust an escaped slave, so I should probably say 1660-1690ish. Indeed, given that it’s impossible to prove that something doesn’t exist (like God), it might not actually be extinct after all. I have to admit, I can’t really imagine where a big bird with vestigial wings and a suicidal amount of trust could be hiding, but the probability isn’t zero and the possibility therefore remains. The Christian minister who realised that populations can’t grow forever was the Reverend Thomas Robert Malthus. More particularly, he realised that populations, when unchecked, can grow at geometric rates that exceed those of the resources on which the populations depend and, thus, that there are “strong and constantly operating checks on population from the difficulty of subsistence.” I have emphasised the word ‘can’ in the previous sentence because can grow geometrically and does grow geometrically are very different things. Bjørn Lomborg, an Associate Professor of Statistics1 and author of The Skeptical Environmentalist (2001), seems to think “the evidence does not seem to support the theory” for example, because population rarely grows exponentially. Apart from implying that populations occasionally grow exponentially though (which is kind of the point), It is probably worth pointing out that populations rarely grow exponentially because they are commonly checked by limited resources, which is exactly what Thomas Malthus was trying to say in the first place. Mr Lomborg also believes that recent large gains in resources (such as those delivered by the Green Revolution) also conclusively defeat Thomas Malthus’ principles of population, but I guess that just means that he (an Associate Professor of Statistics remember) can’t tell the difference between temporary and permanent acceleration, which is genuinely hilarious if nothing else. He even willingly accepts that recent population growth “is mainly due to a dramatic fall in the death rate as a result of improved access to food” rather than an increase in birth rates, but still manages to miss the connection between resource limits and population size. Indeed, he then decides that recent large gains in resources mean that all future generations will “live longer and be healthier, they will get more food, a better education, a higher standard of living, more leisure time and far more possibilities – without the global environment being destroyed.” Basically, Bjørn Lomborg thinks the good times can last forever: “We can forget about our fears of imminent breakdown.”
Based on recent advances he can see infinite advances, but unknown limits don’t mean unlimited limits, whether you’re an associate professor of statistics or not, as Thomas Malthus has already pointed out: “…I cannot help again reminding the reader of a distinction, which, it appears to me, ought particularly to be attended to in the present question; I mean, the essential difference there is between an unlimited improvement, and an improvement the limit of which cannot be ascertained.” Thomas Malthus, An Essay on the Principles of Population (1798)
Indeed, Mr Lomborg may believe that there are no maximum crop yields because we haven’t reached a limit yet, but that’s like saying ‘I haven’t died yet so I’m not going to die’, which is clearly nonsense. Julian Simon, the late Professor of Economics at the University of Maryland, agreed with him of course: “The material conditions of life will continue to get better for most people, in most countries,
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Bjorn Lomborg is Associate Professor of Statistics at the University of Aarhus, Denmark.
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most of the time, indefinitely.”
But apart from making me wonder what it takes to become a professor, it also makes me wonder who Thomas Malthus was referring to when he wrote this sentence: “The theory on which the truth of this position depends appears to me so extremely clear that I feel at a loss to conjecture what part of it can be denied.”
Because I know who I was referring to when I wrote that sentence. Enough from Thomas Malthus though, because it’s time to move on to 1859 and the agnostic naturalist who realised that populations don’t grow forever, or Charles Robert Darwin as he is more commonly known. He wasn’t the first to realise this of course, but he was definitely the first to use it to write a book about a theory that would change natural history forever, and that’s got to be worth something. After reading Thomas Malthus’ Essay on the Principle of Population he realised that geometric population growth generated selective competition and thus descent with modification and that led to On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life: “This is the doctrine of Malthus, applied to the whole animal and vegetable kingdoms. As many more individuals of each species are born than can possibly survive; and as, consequently, there is a frequently recurring struggle for existence, it follows that any being, if it vary however slightly in any manner profitable to itself, under the complex and sometime varying conditions of life, will have a better chance of surviving, and thus be naturally selected.”
There are plenty of people who don’t believe that any of this applies to Homo sapiens of course, but there are some Homo sapiens who believe that suffering exists because some people ate an apple, and that a ‘loving’ god is well within his rights to drown almost everything alive, so that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re right. Indeed, they’re not right, but the nonsensical fantasies of the planet’s metaphysical enthusiasts are beyond the scope of this essay. Back to the past then and the philosophical loner who lived in a shed was Henry David Thoreau. Having declared, in 1851, that “in wildness is the preservation of the world” he later spent two years researching self-reliance (and, rather inevitably, spirituality) by living in a cabin near a pond. The result was a book that might have launched conservation, although, as we shall presently see, there are lots of books that might have launched conservation. This particular book was called Walden; or, Life in the Woods and it did contain this, rather topical line: “We have built for this world a family mansion, and for the next a family tomb.”
George Perkins Marsh was the philologist with a pot-belly who, in 1864, got upset enough about “the changes produced by human action in the physical conditions of the globe we inhabit” to write Man and nature; or, Physical geography as modified by human action; which seems to be the next book that may have launched conservation. The protected volcano that regularly self-destructs is the vast magma chamber that lies beneath Yellowstone National Park. It’s not just a volcano however, it’s actually a supervolcano. And it’s not just capable of destroying the world’s first national park either, it’s also capable of destroying any mountains that happen to be above it at the time, as it has already proved on numerous occasions. It’s also more than capable of changing the environmental conditions of the entire planet as well, but the possible impact of a Yellowstone eruption are also beyond the scope of this essay. Right now I will skip leisurely by (pausing only briefly to point out the irony of providing legal protection to animals and plants that live on top of a massive geophysical bomb) and move 3
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swiftly onto the spiritual bond that formed between man and plant in 1918. In particular the one that formed between three prominent conservationists - John C. Merriam, Madison Grant and Henry Fairfield Osborn - and the redwood trees of south-western America. I’m not sure how involved the trees were of course, but that’s beside the point, because Sequoioidiform spirituality doth not an emotional bond make. That requires human spirituality and, in this case, it led to a redwood survival charity (Save The Redwoods League) and one of the world’s first environmental organisations. Not the first, but considering the limitations of actually identifying the first organisation in human history ever to gather voluntary donations in support of some kind of environmental preservation, and the limitations of my mission to illuminate the history of conservation, near enough for the purposes of this essay.
GLOBALISATION On to the 1960’s then and the global emergence of the conservation machine. Of particular importance in this period was the publication, in 1962, of the most recent book to have launched conservation (for the moment at least). To be fair, Silent Spring by Rachel Carson does seem to have reached the largest audience and generated the most action. Having failed to read all of the other books that launched conservation, I can’t actually tell you whether Silent Spring is any better or any worse, but I do know this: it’s a remarkable piece of investigative journalism. It challenged some pretty important people and faced some pretty significant obstacles, but when all was said and done, these people were lying about the environmental impact of their chemicals and Rachel Carson was right. She broadcast the truth and, as I have mentioned previously and will mention again, that’s perfectly acceptable. She does make statements that have since proved false of course, like the suggestion that Life has only acquired “significant power to alter the nature of this world” since man evolved. But she was working with a lot less information than us. For instance, we may know that atmospheric oxygen is a photosynthetic by-product that still represents the greatest act of pollution in the history of Life on Earth, but she quite obviously didn’t. In fact, if she hadn’t used this lack of knowledge to colour the poetic rhetoric surrounding the pollution science I probably wouldn’t have mentioned it all. Unfortunately, however, she did use this lack of knowledge to colour the poetic rhetoric surrounding the pollution science. And, unfortunately, the lack of knowledge that coloured the poetic rhetoric that surrounded the pollution science also coloured the global conservation movement that continues to shout at us all the time; an obtrusive shade of bright ‘green’ in fact. Either way, however, Silent Spring does contain a lot of confused rhetoric. For instance, how is it possible to write the following passages in the same book, never mind adjacent paragraphs? “Can anyone believe it is possible to lay down such a barrage of poisons on the surface of the earth without making it unfit for all life? They should not be called ‘insecticides’, but ‘biocides’.” “…insects, in a triumphant vindication of Darwin’s principle of the survival of the fittest, have evolved super races immune to the particular insecticide used, hence a deadlier one has always to be developed – and then a deadlier one than that…Thus the chemical war is never won…”
Especially when you can find sentences like this elsewhere in the book: “A few false moves on the part of man may result in destruction of soil productivity and the arthropods may well take over.”
I guess she wasn’t sure whether arthropods counted as Life or not, but either way, arthropods do count as life and Rachel Carson had managed to destroy her own argument in the second chapter of her own book. With the same insects that had warranted the chemicals that had inspired the book in the first place. 4
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Unfortunately, however, the damage had already been done. Having been swept along by the empowering rhetoric, and after some good honest (and scientifically justifiable) corporation bashing, the movement turned green and apocalyptic predictions entered mainstream conservation. The Apollo missions didn’t help. Particularly the Apollo 8 mission that orbited the Moon just six years after Silent Spring had first/last/most recently suggested planetary Armageddon. I don’t mean the mission itself of course, because that was a spine-tinglingly breathtaking achievement. What fuelled the fears was the image captured by the Apollo 8 astronauts as they emerged from the far side of the Moon; an image known to this day as ‘Earthrise’:
To be fair, and in my subjective opinion, it’s a beautiful image, but it also made Planet Earth seem quite small and that helped convince people that Life is, in a word, pathetic. It helped them ignore billions of years of unbroken survival so they could base their impressions of Nature on the same optical illusion that allows a small child to cover the entire Moon with one finger. For some reason everybody seems to have forgotten that everything looks quite small if you go far enough away, and I do mean everything. I can cover an elephant with a coin if I go far enough away, but that doesn’t mean I could fit one in my pocket. It’s all relative and yet this one picture was symbolic enough to inspire another jump in environmental pity. As Captain Utopia himself, Al Gore, will now explain: “The image exploded into the consciousness of humankind. In fact, within two years of this picture being taken, the modern environmental movement was born.”
I must admit, I was under the impression that the modern environmental movement had already been born at least three times, but that’s what he said. Based on a photograph taken at a distance of approximately 400,000 km Earth became a fragile sphere of crêpe paper, Life 5
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became a delicate wisp of crystalised nectar and the environmental movement was born again for at least the fourth time. Carl Sagan went much further in 1990 by prompting NASA to use the Voyager 1 space probe to take a picture of Earth from 3.7 billion miles away. I have to admit, I don’t know whether he particularly wanted to know how small it was from that distance, but, rather unsurprisingly, Planet Earth was quite small from that distance:
Here’s Al Gore again to continue the story: “Sagan called it a pale blue dot and noted that everything that has ever happened in all of human history has happened on that tiny pixel.”
Inevitably, he then uses it to start another lecture, but it’s definitely worth pointing out that Carl Sagan’s tiny blue pixel is actually a six billion, trillion tonne chemical ball that I can’t pixelate no matter how hard I try. When you’re not 3.7 billion miles away, it’s just too darn big. It’s also worth pointing out that the Sun could be turned into a pale yellow dot if you took the right camera to the right distance, even though the Sun is actually a two million, billion, trillion tonne thermonuclear fireball that none of us could go anywhere near with or without a camera. The point is the only thing the Human race has ever decided is actually small and fragile because of the perspective generated by great distance is Planet Earth, and it all began with a photograph taken in 1968. Three years later, in 1971, Rene Dubos and Barbara Ward built on the enormous impact of an optical illusion by writing another book that may have launched conservation (although I still think Silent Spring is currently responsible). I have to admit, I haven’t read Only One Earth, but the title does suggest that they had at least one valid point to make.
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1971 was also the year that the international conservation charities Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth arrived, although, given that 1971 is also ten years after 1961, which is when the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) was launched2, and 13 years after 1948, which is when the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN) was launched3, and a full 68 years after Fauna and Flora International (FFI) was launched4, I’m not entirely sure why they felt they were needed at all. How many environmental charities does one planet need for goodness sake? And these five were just the beginning. There are literally thousands of them now and they all seem to share broadly similar objectives. I guess some people just don’t want to work together all that much. What’s even funnier than the divisions created by a common objective are the divided accolades the divisions have created. Friends of the Earth, with a membership of about 2 million people, claims to be the “world’s largest grassroots environmental network” for example, but the only reason they seem to deserve this honour is because nobody else is claiming to be a “grassroots environmental network”. Greenpeace has a million more members for instance, so they’re clearly bigger (Greenpeace just claims to be the “most effective environmental activist group”). Which means that Friends of the Earth can only claim to be a “largest” environmental something by adding the word “grassroots”, or by not using the term “environmental activist group”, neither of which can be described as anything other than spurious. They certainly can’t claim to be the “the world's largest and most respected independent conservation organization” that’s for sure, because the WWF has claimed that one. To be fair, they do qualify their claim by saying that they’re just “one of” the world's largest conservation organizations, but, with 5 million members, they might actually deserve the title. Well, if you ignore the IUCN’s claims about being “the world’s oldest and largest global environmental network” anyway. If you trust the IUCN more than the WWF then the WWF is not the largest global environmental network, although that isn’t actually what they’re claiming is it. They’re claiming to be the largest “independent” conservation organization, which means they might be right after all, because the IUCN isn’t independent (even though it probably is). Even allowing for the subtleties of language I’m really struggling to work out how the IUCN has claimed to be the oldest global environmental network though. Given that Fauna and Flora International started 45 years before them, and proudly announces in its propaganda that it was “the world’s first international conservation organisation”, that seems like a step too far to me. To be fair, they also proudly announce that they were “instrumental in establishing much of today’s global and local conservation infrastructure, including organizations such as the World Wide Fund for Nature, [and the] IUCN”, so maybe the whole thing is as messy and competitive as their conflicting claims suggest. Either way, there are a lot of environmental charities and Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth become international busybodies in 1971.
SUSTAINABILITY ‘Sustainability’ itself turned up just one year later. Well, it turned up again just one year later. I say ‘again’ because the IUCN reckons they thought of it in 1969, as they will now explain: “The idea of sustainability dates back more than 30 years, to the new mandate adopted by IUCN in 1969.” The World Wide Fund for Nature was actually launched as the World Wildlife Fund. The International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources was actually launched as the World Conservation Union. 4 Fauna and Flora International was actually launched as the Fauna Preservation Society. 2
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Which is where things begin to get a bit messy, because the WWF reckons that their World Conservation Strategy (which was actually written by the IUCN) promoted sustainable development “for the first time” in 1980. Indeed, Paul Ehrlich published a book on the connection between human population, resource exploitation and the environment in 1968, which, given that it was called The Population Bomb, must have made reference to limits at some point. And if it didn’t, the 1972 book Limits to Growth probably did. That’s after 1969 though isn’t it, so I guess it doesn’t really count. Maybe it all depends on how you define ‘sustainable’, but that’s a mess I will return to in a separate essay. The Sustainable Development Gateway, that works with the Sustainable Development Communications Network, and comes recommended by the International Institute for Sustainable Development, states that: “Sustainable development is not a new idea. Many cultures over the course of human history have recognized the need for harmony between the environment, society and economy.”
So the safest conclusion is probably not to trust any of them. Incidentally, I have included all these fancy organisations to prove a point, not because I expect you to remember any of them. They’re just here to show you how fragmented everything is (and how pompous people can be). Anyway, regardless of what the preachers think about the origins of sustainability, and regardless of what the preachers think about themselves, and regardless of how many different preachers there are, some other people believe that sustainability really became a mainstream concept at the United Nations (UN) Conference on the Human Environment that took place in Stockholm, Sweden in 1972. A conference which generated the first of many reports that can be summarised in one sentence: ‘We think everybody and everything can live happily ever after.’
They can’t of course, but that’s yet another essay-in-waiting. All I’m prepared to say at this point is something the Reverend Thomas Malthus said more than 200 years ago: “The view which I will give of human life has a melancholy hue; but I feel conscious that I have drawn these dark tints from a conviction that they are really in the picture, and not from a jaundiced eye, or an inherent spleen of disposition.”
(A “spleen of disposition”. Brilliant.) Anyway, in 1972, under the leadership of Mr. Maurice Strong, who went on to launch the Earth Charter in 2000 (not to be confused with the Charter for a Happy Planet or the World Charter for Nature etc. etc.), the Stockholm Conference delegates agreed that: ‘Of all things in the world, people are the most precious.’
Now, if we ignore human parasites and viruses, I doubt there’s a single non-human creature that would agree with that statement (assuming they had the chance and the ability of course), but that’s beside the point isn’t it: the conference was about us, not them, and sustainability was conclusively indentified as the path to eternal human loveliness: “To defend and improve the human environment...the capacity of the earth to produce vital renewable resources must be maintained and, wherever practicable, restored or improved’ and
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‘the non-renewable resources of the earth must be employed in such a way as to guard against the danger of their future exhaustion and to ensure that benefits from such employment are shared by all mankind.”
I have to admit, I can’t see how you can safeguard non-renewable resources without not using them, but “continued employment that guards against future exhaustion” clearly made sense to them at the time. It also helped inspire the following declaration: “Mankind’s whole work and dedication must be towards the ideal of a peaceful, habitable and just planet.”
Or, to put it another way, ‘we think everybody and everything can live happily ever after!’ Actually, considering the importance of sustainability, a comprehensive summary probably needs two sentences: ‘We think everybody and everything can live happily ever after. Be sustainable.’
And most of the reports published since have reached exactly the same conclusion, despite consistent acknowledgement that the situation is worse than it was when the previous report was published. 15 years after the Stockholm Conference for example, the UN’s World Commission on Environment and Development (also known as the Brundtland Commission) produced a report called Our Common Future which, having accepted its own existence as a “clear demonstration of the widespread feeling of frustration and inadequacy in the international community about our own ability to address the vital global issues and deal effectively with them”, promptly decided that: “…people can cooperate to build a future that is more prosperous, more just, and more secure; that a new era of economic growth can be attained, one based on policies that sustain and expand the Earth’s resource base; and that the progress that some have known over the last century can be experienced by all in the years ahead.”
i.e. ‘we still think everybody and everything can live happily ever after. Be sustainable.’ And five years later, in 1992, the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (also known as the Rio Earth Summit) produced Agenda 21 and the following statement: “Humanity stands at a defining moment in history [again]. We are confronted with…the continuing deterioration of the ecosystems on which we depend for our well-being. However, integration of environment and development concerns…will lead to the fulfilment of basic needs, improved living standards for all, better protected and managed ecosystems and a safer, more prosperous future. No nation can achieve this on its own; but together we can - in a global partnership for sustainable development.”
i.e. ‘we also think everybody and everything can live happily ever after. Be sustainable.’ Eight years after that, and twenty eight years after the Stockholm conference first reached the same conclusion, the United Nations Millennium summit produced the United Nations Millennium declaration: “We, heads of State and Government [all 189 of them], have gathered…at the dawn of a new millennium, to reaffirm our faith in the Organisation and its Charter as indispensable foundations of a more peaceful, prosperous and just world…The current unsustainable patterns of production and consumption must be changed in the interests of our future welfare….”
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i.e. ‘we also still think everybody and everything can live happily ever after. Be sustainable.’ Even the Intergalactic Society for the Promotion of Degrowth have joined in (please note, the ‘degrowers’ haven’t formed a group stable enough to warrant a name yet, so I made that one up). Following the first International Conference on Degrowth in 2008 (next one scheduled for 2010, in case you’re interested), they produced a Declaration on Degrowth with the following definition: ‘We define degrowth as a voluntary transition towards a just, participatory, and ecologically sustainable society.’
i.e. ‘we think everybody and everything can live happily ever after. Be sustainable.’ And today, which is a massive 37 years after the Stockholm conference first reached the same conclusion, and a massive 47 years after the publication of Silent Spring, and a super-massive 211 years after Thomas Malthus decided that human ‘perfectibility’ was logically impossible, everybody’s still at it. Especially large/old environmental charities/networks/activists that may, or may not, have grassroots, like the WWF: “WWF's mission is to stop the degradation of our planet's natural environment, and build a future in which humans live in harmony with nature.”
And the IUCN: “Our mission is to influence, encourage and assist societies throughout the world to conserve the integrity and diversity of nature and to ensure that any use of natural resources is equitable and ecologically sustainable.”
And Friends of the Earth: “Our vision is of a peaceful and sustainable world based on societies living in harmony with nature.”
And Greenpeace: “We exist to expose environmental criminals, and to challenge government and corporations when they fail to live up to their mandate to safeguard our environment and our future.”
OK, so Greenpeace is a little bit more aggressive about it, but basically the environmental charities are still peddling the same utopian fantasy. We even have a perfectly ‘happily ever after’ Happy Planet Index. A Happy Planet Index that uses a traffic light system to show that happy people (bright green) with a high life expectancy (bright green) have the worst ecological impact (bright red), and that unhappy people (bright red) with a low life expectancy (bright red) have the best ecological impact (bright green). North America, Europe and Australia are bright green for everything except ecological impact for instance, while Africa is bright red for everything except ecological impact. In the words of the authors themselves, the New Economics Foundation (NEF): “No country successfully achieves the three goals of high life satisfaction, high life expectancy and one-planet living.”
The NEF then asks us to lower our ecological impact, but in light of the clear association they have just presented, why would anybody want to do that?
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Because the NEF believes that it’s possible to lead “long and happy lives without costing the earth” of course; i.e. because they think everybody and everything can live happily ever after. Be sustainable. To be fair, accepting misery is pretty unpleasant, but that’s not my problem. If you want to replace evidence with hope (and your brain can find a way to do it without you realising) that’s entirely up to you (and your brain). For me, it’s the truth that matters, however unpleasant it may be. Having said that, it seems pretty obvious to me that the UN has to believe that everybody and everything can live happily ever after, regardless of evidence and logic. A cross-cultural humanitarian organisation wouldn’t get very far if it didn’t now would it. The environmental charities claim to represent Life on Earth though, and that means they should know better. They should be able to distance themselves from the pursuit of nirvana because, if they truly understood the natural history they claim to represent, they would know that peace, equality and justice aren’t particularly useful in the selective and, thus, specifically prejudiced environment that drives the system. The IUCN disagrees of course: “Justice is of fundamental importance to the planetary future…”
But they clearly don’t understand the fundamental importance of natural selection, which is selective by definition and therefore inherently unjust. The Earth Charter Initiative goes even further, by suggesting that “we are one human family and one Earth community with a common destiny” but honestly, what are they talking about? I think they’re just saying the most pleasant things they can think of, but either way, Charles Darwin’s interpretation of everything’s “common destiny” is not quite as…“common”: “It has truly been said that all nature is at war; the strongest ultimately prevail, the weakest fail.”
A “common destiny” indeed. It’s biological garbage, and the rest aren’t much better. Despite reality, they’re all trapped in their own misguided belief that anything that doesn’t mean utopian equality must mean the end of the world, and it’s very unlikely they will ever change.
“It is the nature of the human species to reject what is true but unpleasant and to embrace what is obviously false but comforting.” H L Mencken
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