Environmentalism is the new religion of the left, say some conservatives. Nah, we're talking myth, not religion:
At the turn of the twentieth century, President Theodore Roosevelt became embroiled in a public controversy over how some writers and naturalists described the natural world in overly anthropomorphic and sentimental terms. In a 1907 article attacking Jack London, among other writers, Roosevelt popularized the moniker “nature fakers,” those writers whom Roosevelt called “an object of derision to every scientist worthy of the name, to every real lover of the wilderness, to every faunal naturalist, to every true hunter or nature lover. But it is evident that [the nature faker] completely deceives many good people who are wholly ignorant of wild life.”
The “nature” the sentimentalists described was not the real nature, but one conjured from old myths and imaginative projections of human ideals onto an inhuman natural world. Unfortunately, a century later “nature fakers” are still promoting their sentimental myths about nature, only now with serious repercussions for our national interests and security.
These days “nature fakery” lives on in school curricula and popular culture, from Earth Day celebrations to Disney cartoons like Pocahontas. Only now this myth is renamed “environmentalism” and disguised with a patina of scientific authority. Worse yet, this allegedly scientific information provides the basis for government policies that impact our economic productivity and national security.
[. . .]
Much of the rhetoric that characterizes environmental arguments indulges two powerful myths in particular, the Noble Savage and the Golden Age. Since the dawn of civilization, these ancient stories have spoken to humanity’s anxieties about living in the complex human world of language, law, culture, cities, trade, and technology.
The Noble Savage is that inhabitant of a simpler world whose life harmonizes with his natural surroundings. He does not need government or law, for he has no private property, and hence no desire for wealth or status, nor for their byproducts, crime and war. His existence is peaceful, free from conflict and strife. He takes from nature only what he needs, and needs only what he takes.
[. . .]
The myth of the Golden Age, which the West has inherited from Ancient Greece, is another idealization of the lost simplicity of living in a complex society. This myth imagines a time before cities and technology, when humans lived intimately with a benevolent nature that provided for their needs and for lives of leisure, health, and happiness, free as they were from the unnatural desires and appetites created by civilization. With no private property, gold, or other wealth, greed and status-hunger did not exist. There was, consequently, no reason for social strife, slavery, war, trade, and crime, not to mention the law, courts, governments, prisons, and all the other trappings of a civilization whose degeneracy corrupts people and thus requires these oppressive controls.
The Golden Age is either before we came along to screw things up with our technology and the horrible choices we have the freedom to make, or just around the corner when Those Who Know Better have control and can dismantle our technology and take away our choices.
I've been a lifelong fan of science fiction, and a persistent theme of that genre, ever since "Frankenstine," which many argue was the first SF novel, has been that we are in danger of pushing our technology beyond our moral capacity to deal with the consequences. So I guess we could also say the environmental alarmists are just living a science fiction novel.
