How Green Is Our Valley?

Alexander Volokh from the March 1995 issue

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Paul Ehrlich charged that population growth would lead to famines, plagues, and wars, and advocated "voluntary" birth control programs to be overseen by a Department of Population and Environment, "a powerful government agency" which would, among other things, prohibit TV shows featuring large families. His admiration for Chinese population policies, though, left him open to the charge of being unclear on the concept of ethics. Garrett Hardin developed a more precise
picture of what a low-population world would look like--"a world of more or less separate, more or less antagonistic units called (most generally) tribes," coupled with eugenic policies enforced by some administrative body. Hardin acknowledged the danger of tyranny and exhorted us to be inventive and figure out "who will guard the guardians," but finally dealt with the problem by ignoring it.

The Club of Rome, authors of The Limits to Growth, "the most influential book ever written by a computer," recommended running society according to a "master plan" or "blueprint" that would ensure "organic growth." This would be clearly totalitarian, if we were given any clue on what the plan was or how to implement it.

E.F. Schumacher was clearer about the kind of world we should aim for--"small is beautiful," so we should follow "traditional wisdom" and adopt "intermediate" or "appropriate technology," in which every part would serve a well-defined function. Schumacher was wary of centralized power, though he did admire Mao Tse-Tung. But wouldn't Schumacher's admiration for "traditional wisdom" merely replace the technocratic society with a world of unthinking deference to sages? And if traditional wisdom dictates not only social goals ("small") but also the means to achieve these goals ("intermediate technology"), is this not a recipe for totalitarianism? Schumacher did not say.

Rubin then turns to "deep ecologists" such as Arne Naess and Paul Shepard, self-professed unmakers of civilization who openly scoff at their environmentalist forefathers for being too soft on the modern world. Deep ecology is chiefly against anthropocentrism and in favor of "biocentrism," "ecocentrism," or "biospherical egalitarianism," and therefore thinks little of individual lives, whether human or non-human. It advocates "bioregional organization" (i.e., running human life in accordance with "natural constraints"), a sense of rootedness, and a ritualization of life which includes the recovery or recreation of primal rituals. The overt totalitarianism here barely needs pointing out; what does need pointing out is how undeep it is.

Deep ecologists want to return to the hunter-gatherer lifestyle, but also would like to keep artificial food production and "academic, artistic, skilled or professional" occupations. They want a world of small, isolated communities, explaining that such a world would be less warlike (though this is unlikely without a global policing authority or a universal moral principle--attributes of the despised modern world). They reject rationality and look forward to a new being that might overcome the limitations of logos. As Rubin puts it, "if there were a deep ecology that persisted in asking why and how, it would show the shallowness of those who have appropriated that name."

Finally, Rubin analyzes the major critics of the environmental movement. He is only mildly approving of such writers as Ronald Bailey (Ecoscam) and Michael Fumento (Science Under Siege), who are in the business of systematically debunking the green scares of the week. Rubin charges that they criticize environmentalism without coherently saying what they're for, and that they defend capitalism on economic grounds without understanding the connection between capitalism and liberty. Rubin also discusses Aaron Wildavsky and Mary Douglas who, in Risk and Culture, argue that environmentalists choose risks of concern based on cultural prejudices. He is critical of them too, because they don't say why the environmental cultural prejudice is worse than any other one.

I think Rubin is being harsh on the Baileys, Fumentos, Wildavskys, and Douglases of the world; deflating apocalyptic claims and pointing out cultural bias are valuable things. And anyone who claims that Bailey and Fumento don't understand the importance of liberty must not have read them very closely.

But Rubin's final advice is worth remembering. Environmental popularizers should respect the scientific method in their writings. We should stop talking about the "environment," a word which means everything and nothing, and start talking about individual problems. And we should avoid grandiose, global schemes in favor of smaller-scale, localized solutions.

The strength of The Green Crusade is its studious avoidance of generalizations about the environmental movement. The best argument against people like Peter Marshall is perhaps his own book. But fully understanding why he's wrong requires more than perusing a screed like No Turning Back. The Green Crusade makes it clear that, when talking about utopian movements that hold up one principle--for instance, environmental quality--as the paramount virtue, we shouldn't be asking, "Why are such movements totalitarian?" Instead, we should be asking, "How could they not be?"