PoliticalChic
Diamond Member
...ecology is.
1. "When the environmentalism movement began searching fro its identity in the 1970s, its members often called themselves ecologists. The public went along....reports wrote about the 'ecology movement.' Professional ecologists- that is, working scientists- did not protest....they should have. Being able to distinguish ecologists from environmentalists is as important as knowing the difference between surgeons and witch doctors.
2. Ecology is a science. It produces knowledge. Environmentalism is a political and religious movement. It produces judgment and laws."
These are the words of Professor Wallace Kaufman, from his book, "No Turning Back," p. 92. He knows whereof he speaks, as the former president of several environmental groups, and a long time activist.
3. "Most environmentalists have college degrees and think of themselves as sophisticated....Like all true believers, however, they have assumptions that limit their ability to absorb new ideas, assumptions that define their friends and enemies and by which they know what is right and wrong. Those assumptions...are the principles that the environmental movement wants written into law and regulation:
a. Nature is good
b. Altering or destroying any part of nature is bad.
c. Nature has a balance that humans always disrupt
d. The more power humans get, the more damage they do to nature.
These are the beliefs of a religion...not one of science.
4. Environmentalists are almost always political liberals who have little sympathy for Christian fundamentalists....Yet environmental faith is quite rigid, and its story, biblical.....[matching] the story of the Garden of Eden....Innocent pre-industrial, pre-scientific cultures show what we could have been, while civilized cultures show how low we have fallen. In Eden and in the environmental story, the harmony of nature and its ability to nurture human kind are destroyed by ambition, greed, and sin. These sins are inflicted on nature and native peoples almost exclusively by white males."
Kaufman, Op. Cit. chapter seven.
One can see why these ideas are de rigueur in university today.
Professor Kaufman makes quite a powerful witness. He endorses exactly what many of us have said about the political and religious nature of the environmental movement.
1. "When the environmentalism movement began searching fro its identity in the 1970s, its members often called themselves ecologists. The public went along....reports wrote about the 'ecology movement.' Professional ecologists- that is, working scientists- did not protest....they should have. Being able to distinguish ecologists from environmentalists is as important as knowing the difference between surgeons and witch doctors.
2. Ecology is a science. It produces knowledge. Environmentalism is a political and religious movement. It produces judgment and laws."
These are the words of Professor Wallace Kaufman, from his book, "No Turning Back," p. 92. He knows whereof he speaks, as the former president of several environmental groups, and a long time activist.
3. "Most environmentalists have college degrees and think of themselves as sophisticated....Like all true believers, however, they have assumptions that limit their ability to absorb new ideas, assumptions that define their friends and enemies and by which they know what is right and wrong. Those assumptions...are the principles that the environmental movement wants written into law and regulation:
a. Nature is good
b. Altering or destroying any part of nature is bad.
c. Nature has a balance that humans always disrupt
d. The more power humans get, the more damage they do to nature.
These are the beliefs of a religion...not one of science.
4. Environmentalists are almost always political liberals who have little sympathy for Christian fundamentalists....Yet environmental faith is quite rigid, and its story, biblical.....[matching] the story of the Garden of Eden....Innocent pre-industrial, pre-scientific cultures show what we could have been, while civilized cultures show how low we have fallen. In Eden and in the environmental story, the harmony of nature and its ability to nurture human kind are destroyed by ambition, greed, and sin. These sins are inflicted on nature and native peoples almost exclusively by white males."
Kaufman, Op. Cit. chapter seven.
One can see why these ideas are de rigueur in university today.
Professor Kaufman makes quite a powerful witness. He endorses exactly what many of us have said about the political and religious nature of the environmental movement.