Environmentalism

"While the farmer holds the title to the land, actually, it belongs to all the people because civilization itself rests upon the soil."

"And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth."

"We are already experiencing huge cost externalities from population hypergrowth and profligate fossil fuel use in the form of environmental devastation. Of the earth’s estimated 10 million species, 300,000 have vanished in the past fifty years. Each year, 3,000 to 30,000 species become extinct, an all-time high for the last 65 million years. Within one hundred years, between one-third and two-thirds of all birds, animals, plants, and other species will be lost. Nearly 25 percent of the 4,630 known mammal species are now threatened with extinction, along with 34 percent of fish, 25 percent of amphibians, 20 percent of reptiles, and 11 percent of birds. Even more, species are having population declines. Environmental scientists speak of an “omega point” at which the vast interconnected networks of Earth’s ecologies are so weakened that human existence is no longer possible."

"The Industrial Revolution still cannot be considered an unqualified success, for all the comfort and convenience enjoyed by a minority of people in the world. Where we stand now is the brink of unprecedented damage to the ecology of the only habitable planet in the only universe we know of, and I refer not just to climate change—which may or may not be caused by human activity —but to all the other insults and injuries we’ve done to the biosphere. While industrialism led to the formation of a prosperous middle class, it also plunged millions of people into the grimmest kind of regimented quasislavery in conditions that were arguably no improvement over their grandparents’ lives as agricultural peasants (or their distant ancestors as hunter-gatherers)."

"In the Machine Age nations and corporations were thought to have little or no responsibility either to their environments or to other organizations and individuals within them. Nations and corporations were considered to be virtually self-contained and autonomous. The natural environment was believed to be capable of absorbing any amount of use by man and of recovering fully. It was considered to be an unlimited source of every kind of resource. Ownership of property was equated to a license to do with it whatever one wanted. Developed nations and corporations colonialized and exploited underdeveloped societies and their physical environments. They were considered to be entitled to whatever they could get away with in the outside world. Laissez-faire was the dominant philosophy in both national and corporate affairs. That some should suffer the consequences was considered to be "natural" because struggle and conflict were assumed to be necessary for survival. Only the fit survived. Fitness was conceived both in terms of ability to adapt to changing natural conditions and ability to compete in society (a euphemism for "fight"). Progress was believed to be the product of the struggle for survival. Its cost had to be paid by the weak. In short, nations, corporations, and individuals gave little thought to their natural or social environments and those who occupied them. As the Machine Age began to end so did these attitudes for a number of reasons. Men began to suspect that the supply of natural resources was not unlimited and even began to fear that some might run out in their lifetimes. The quality of the environment, man-made and natural, began to deteriorate visibly, and the rate of deterioration seemed to exceed the recuperative capabilities of either society or Nature. Those in the environment who were exploited and left in a disadvantaged state began to organize themselves into effective protest groups and brought moral and physical pressure to bear on those responsible for their state. The health and welfare of environment and environmental systems were forced into the consciousness of nations and corporations by pressure groups formed around a variety of issues including ecology, racial equality, consumerism, and underdevelopment. Disadvantaged countries and the disadvantaged within both developed and underdeveloped countries began to press for a more equitable distribution of wealth."