Things People Don't Understand: Environmentalism

Republicans don't understand environmentalism. Democrats don't understand environmentalism. Environmentalists don't understand environmentalism. Some scientists do understand environmentalism.

So what the hell is environmentalism?


According to Republicans: Groups of people, most likely dirty looking hippies that would rather live in the woods than support any kind of progress mankind has made in the past few thousand years. Consider environmentalists to be douchebags, and often call it a "religion" just to piss them off.


According to Democrats: Environmentalists will vote for democrats, so democrats better make sure they keep their interests in mind. Its a movment that democrats have been told that they should put importance on, but only when all other needs are met (economy, taxes, health care, education, etc).


According to Environmentalists: Environmentalism is the only thing that matters, because the earth and everything in it are precious and unique. As the only species capable of recognizing the devastating effects of environmental destruction, it is our duty to maintain the earth's delicate balance at any cost.

None of them are wrong so to speak, but if you talk to the average Republican, Democrat or Environmentalist, they have very strong feelings towards environmentalism without having any real clue what is going on.

Here's what is going on, for a long time human technology has been advancing without any consideration for the environment. Sounds evil but it isn't. During the industrial revolution the science just wasn't there to understand what all the soot going into the air was doing, and how much contaiminents the earth and water systems could support. After some bugs, animals and fish started to die out, there was finally some kind of indication that what humans were doing, was having an effect on the sustainability of the environment to support certain life.

That to me, is what environmentalism is. An attempt to maintain the environment in a way that can support certain life (the most important being us).

Cause here's the thing, the earth doesn't need saving. We can't kill the earth. Even our most powerful bombs could just make a little hole on its surface and blow some dust into the air. The earth was around long before life even existed (sorry to all the theists out there).

And lets say that we pollute to the point where we can't breathe anymore, and we all die before we can make enough babies to keep the human race from dying out. There's lots of animals that can survive much tougher conditions than our paltry lungs can. In fact, many species will do much better because with the humans gone, animals will get the chance to fill the niche we have left post dying out.

Mass extinctions have happened in the past, and new groups of animals always boom after them, and this will be no different (unless you don't believe in evolution... in which case stay tuned for future posts).

This of course leads up to my pet peeve with environmentalists. They talk about saving the earth... but the earth is going to be fine, its ourselves we need to be concerned about. Humans will die, cancer rates are through the roof, climate is destabilizing, and the air we breathe is chock full of pollutants that are lower our life expectancies and our quality of life. I think that we end up polarizing the issue when the debate appears to be about progress vs. nature. Cause it isn't, it should be about benefiting humans.

Benefiting humans includes biodiversity in nature (the air we breathe, the potential to study life in as many forms as possible to benefit our own) so its not like I'm saying kill the pandas to build condos. But people should educate themselves on the issues figuring out benefits for man and keeping the earth in a stable state we can habitate for at least a few more generations.

Republicans should give a shit about the environment because there is no human progress without humans. Democrats should give a shit about the environment for the same reason. And environmentalists should give a shit about humans, because without humans, there's nobody to hang out and play hackie sack with.

This rant went on longer than it was supposed to. Ultimately it can all be summed up as this:

Keep earth habitable or we die... not the earth, us.