[Mb-civic] Environmentalism and the apocalypse - Cathy Young - Boston Globe Op-Ed

[William Swiggard]

  Environmentalism and the apocalypse

By Cathy Young  |  April 17, 2006  |  The Boston Globe

THE MOST contentious recent battle between creationists and evolutionary 
biologists is not the debate about the newly discovered ''missing link" 
between fish and land animals. Rather, it is a bizarre incident that 
involves predictions of doomsday and charges of encouraging terrorism. 
At bottom, this conflict is not about religion versus science but about 
the clash of two religions.

It started early in March when Eric Pianka, an ecologist at the 
University of Texas who was named Texas Distinguished Scientist of 2006, 
gave a speech at a meeting of the Texas Academy of Sciences, filled with 
dire warnings about the fate of humanity and the earth. About a month 
later, Forrest M. Mims III, chairman of the Environmental Science 
Section of the Texas Academy of Science, posted an article about the 
event in a Web magazine called The Citizen Scientist. He asserted that 
Pianka advocated the death of more than 5 billion people from a virus 
for the cause of saving the planet -- to enthusiastic applause from the 
audience.

Mims's allegation, picked up by a local Texas newspaper, The Seguin 
Gazette-Enterprise, caused quite a stir on the Internet and a flood of 
angry e-mails to the Texas Academy of Sciences and the University of 
Texas. Meanwhile, William Dembski, a philosophy professor at the 
Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and a leading champion of 
intelligent design, proudly announced that he had alerted the Department 
of Homeland Security to a possible Pianka plot to infect people with a 
deadly virus.

Meanwhile, many scientists, academics, and liberal bloggers have rallied 
to the defense of Pianka, who, they say, was not advocating apocalypse 
but simply delivering a warning about the disastrous consequences of 
humanity's profligate ways. They see him as a victim of a smear by 
creationists (Mims is also an intelligent design proponent) who want to 
portray mainstream science as evil and by right-wingers who want to 
portray liberal academics as loony extremists.

But while Pianka's critics may be seriously biased and lacking in 
credibility, this does not quite get Pianka himself off the hook. No, 
there is no reason to believe that he advocated actively bringing about 
an epidemic that would kill billions of people. Rather, he asserts that 
because of overpopulation, we are on the brink of a major epidemic that 
will wipe out 80 to 90 percent of humanity. And he seems to regard this 
as a good thing.

Texas Lutheran University senior and biology major Brenna McConnell, who 
was present at Pianka's speech, corroborated this on her (now-deleted) 
blog, where she expressed agreement with Pianka: ''He's a radical 
thinker, that one! I mean, he's basically advocating for the death of 
all but 10 percent of the current population! And at the risk of 
sounding just as radical, I think he's right."

And here is an excerpt from another recent Pianka speech, the transcript 
of which was made public by the Seguin Gazette-Enterprise:

''I think that right now has got to be just about the most interesting 
time ever and you get to see it, and, hopefully, a few are gonna live 
through it. . . . Things are gonna get better after the collapse because 
we won't be able to decimate the earth so much. And, I actually think 
the world will be much better when there's only 10 or 20 percent of us 
left."

It would be tempting to dismiss Pianka as an isolated crank. 
Unfortunately, an apocalyptic, human-hating mentality is a strain that 
has long been present in environmentalism. In 1989, David Graber, a 
research biologist with the National Park Service, wrote in the Los 
Angeles Times:

''We have become a plague upon ourselves and upon the earth. . . . Until 
such time as Homo sapiens should decide to rejoin nature, some of us can 
only hope for the right virus to come along."

Most Americans are environmentalists in the sense that they like clean 
air, clean water, and the preservation of wilderness areas. But for 
many, environmentalism has become a secular religion with its own 
fanatics. Some speak of nature's wrath in transparently religious terms. 
Vanity Fair essayist James Wolcott has rhapsodized on his website about 
the destructive power of hurricanes as payback for ''the havoc mankind 
has wreaked upon nature," concluding, ''The gods are not pleased."

It's quite true that mistrust of science is all too common in American 
society, and the flames of this hostility are fanned by the religious 
right. But we should also beware of zealots in scientific garb who can 
only give ammunition to the enemies of science and reason.

Cathy Young is a contributing editor at Reason magazine.

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2006/04/17/environmentalism_and_the_apocalypse/
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