Question Earthority!

Take any environmental concern — pollution, global warming, whatever — and underlying it you’ll find the notion of “environmental equilibrium.” Simply stated, this is the idea that there’s some sort of “natural balance” toward which the overall environment is geared. Or, to put a finer point on it, the idea that the various components of an ecological system will, absent intervention by man, work together such that the system will remain in a perpetually viable state.

But what if this just isn’t the case?

Over the course of the last half century, the environmental movement has operated on the premise that human activity constitutes an anomalous, damaging force counterposed against another, self-sustaining (in the absence of said damage) force — “nature.” The focus of “sustainability” movements has been on human activity as the threat. Reduce or eliminate that activity, and all will be well. But will it?

Case in point: Venus. We have no reason to believe that that planet ever hosted life at all, let alone intelligent life. Yet its atmospheric conditions are often cited as a cautionary tale versus a human-produced “runaway greenhouse effect” on Earth.

What if the observed phenomenon of global warming is just a natural “next step” in the evolution of the planet — not substantially caused by human activity, and not subject to “natural correction” in the absence of such activity?

It seems to me that there’s a dangerous assumption buried deep in the deepest “deep ecology” holdings of many environmentalists: An assumption that life — not just human life, but the animal and human life environmentalists have postured themselves in defense of — is the natural and final ecological state. I don’t see any particular reason to believe that’s true. Maybe the lifeless hell of Venus is the naturally occurring “environmental equilibrium” toward which Earth now moves.

If that’s the case, then “deep ecologists” may want to re-assess their priorities: Let nature take its course, or posture themselves on the side of life … including human life, the only form possibly competent to fight nature on behalf of life itself?