Two propagators of the modernist environmental movement who had an enormous influence over a generation of hippies and their progeny are now realizing they may have overstepped and that their youthful ideology may have been irresponsible. James Lovelock, a former NASA scientist who published among other books The Vanishing Face of Gaia, and ecologist Dr. Patrick Moore, a former Greenpeace warrior, first member and president admit that they were alarmists and are currently speaking up calling the green agenda “meaningless green drivel” and “a green fantasy.”

 

What do these guys have to do with exurbia and “free-range humans”?

Since the early 1700s to today there have been socialists, secularists and atheists who  admonished man as an unforgivable creature who if “left to his own devices, […] is wholly incapable of coexistence without formidable government control and regulation.”¹ The uniquely American idea that “all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness” is an affront to them.

John Locke, an English philosopher, was particularly despised by anti-humanists like Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels because of his beliefs that “the necessity of pursuing happiness [is] the foundation of liberty.”² His views on the importance of the right to private property were intolerable to these men.

Locke declared in his work Two Treatises of Government

“that human happiness is directly linked to one’s personal property, and that property included tangible elements, such as land, natural resources, and material good, and , as well, the intangible elements of speech, thought, and beliefs.”³

Why would such thoughts be antagonistic to people like Marx, Engels, and later Edward Goldsmith, founder of The Ecologist? Because atheists are not guided by a supreme power; their alternative to a supreme deity is that certain men must rule over other men. In The World Turned Upside Down, Melanie Phillips explains,

“Whereas the religions of Judaism and Christianity place man at the center of Creation, the religion of ecology seeks to boot man out of Eden.”⁴

“Deep ecology—like its less extreme manifestation, environmentalism—is founded on the premise that the only thing wrong with the planet is the human race. The earth is important and has value; mankind merely corrupts and destroys it.”⁵

These anti-humans of yesterday and today place the value of man at the same level as all creatures including inanimate objects. Thus all creatures, alive or inert, have equal rights and deserve equal justice. They also proselytize that the human masses are incapable of managing earth’s natural resources and that all resources (including man himself) belongs to the collective.

In Chapter 1 of Eco-Tyranny, author Brian Sussman writes, “Marx was incapable of envisioning prosperity in a positive light, and his followers are beset with that same problem today, in fact, in Das Kapital, Marx sounds like a modern-day environmental activist:

“All progress in capitalistic agriculture is a progress in the art, not only of robbing the laborer, but of robbing the soil; all progress in increasing the fertility of the soil for a given time, is a progress towards ruining the lasting sources of that fertility. The more a country starts its development on the foundation of modern industry, like the United States, for example, the more rapid is this process of destruction.”” ~Karl Marx⁶

In one of the sections of Chapter 1 called Marx Goes Green, Sussman ends his thoughts with this statement.

“Today’s followers of Marx have not changed. They continue to perceive capitalism as unjust, the use of natural resources for profit immoral, and the human population something that must be controlled.”⁷

The current trend of sustainable development is directly related to the anti-humanist notion that man—whose main distinguishing characteristic from all other creatures is reason—does not have the capability to manage his property which includes his thoughts, beliefs, speech, and his land, natural resources and material goods.  Only through a centralized government with the power to regulate the masses will the earth survive man’s occupation.

When influential socialists, environmentalists and eco-scientists like Marx, Engels, Goldsmith, Ehrlich, Lovelock, Moore and many others cast their beliefs into the pond of human ideology, the ripple effect is significant. The consequences are felt throughout our culture and have a direct effect on us. Unbelievably, living on and off of the land we own, has been declared unsustainable and we are now subjected to governance by man rather than by our Divine Creator—God.

A change of heart by these gurus could do us all a lot of good.

Below is a synopsis of each man’s journey.

James Lovelock’s Change of Heart

In 1995, James Lovelock introduced the world to Gaia—mother earth. His ‘Gaia hypothesis’ is that the entire earth and all her properties are interconnected as a single living organism that has the ability to regulate, provide, repair and restore itself if functioning under natural conditions. But because of man’s ‘parasitical nature’, Gaia is doomed to destruction. She has been overwhelmed by overpopulation, pollution, and the destruction of her natural resources and can no longer restore herself.

Note that these are not original thoughts. Early wild beliefs in the flaw of humanity from such authors as Robert Malthus (1766-1834), Justus von Liebig (1803-1873), Karl Marx (1818-1883), and Vladimir Lenin (1870-1924) eventually led to more modern extremists like Rachel Carson, author of Silent Spring and Paul Ehrlich, a former professor at Stanford University. Ehrlich published The Population Bomb in 1968, and in the book declared that the earth was overpopulated and that the people were like a cancer that needed to be eradicated and cut out.

“A cancer is an uncontrolled multiplication of cells; the population explosion is an uncontrolled multiplication of people… We must shift our efforts from treatment of the symptoms to the cutting out of the cancer. The operation will demand many apparently brutal and heartless decisions.” ~Paul Ehrlich⁸

Lovelock also viewed man as a cancer on the earth and his Gaia theory soon gained widespread support when, in 1988, then communist leader of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev invited him to be the featured speaker at the first UN Global Committee of Parliamentarians on Population and Development (a group dedicated to seeing the planet’s population reduced.)⁹ Since, Lovelock has been regarded as the ‘godfather of global warming.’ Thousands of non-governmental organizations and far-reaching globalist enterprises and entities like the United Nations have used this premise to mandate a paradigm shift in how nations develop economically and plan for the future.

Just prior to the first Rio Earth Summit in 1992, Gorbachev, inspired by the Gaia hypothesis, “called for each nation to begin crafting a wish list of items to be included in the official agenda for the twenty-first century—Agenda 21.”¹⁰

Twenty years later, nations gathered again in Brazil for a third United Nations Earth Summit called, Rio+20 with the hopes of entrenching the sustainable development ideals advocated by the original Agenda 21 document into the core social, environmental, and economic structures of all developed and developing nations.

Over time, some of the early proponents of this ‘green’ agenda, like Lovelock, became disenchanted by a movement that was relying heavily on manipulated science and incomplete data. The Guardian interviewed James Lovelock in March 2010 on the topic of climate change. Lovelock stated,

“The great climate science centres around the world are more than well aware how weak their science is. If you talk to them privately they’re scared stiff of the fact that they don’t really know what the clouds and the aerosols are doing. They could be absolutely running the show. We haven’t got the physics worked out yet. One of the chiefs once said to me that he agreed that they should include the biology in their models, but he said they hadn’t got the physics right yet and it would be five years before they do.”

“So why on earth are the politicians spending a fortune of our money when we can least afford it on doing things to prevent events 50 years from now? They’ve employed scientists to tell them what they want to hear. The Germans and the Danes are making a fortune out of renewable energy. I’m puzzled why politicians are not a bit more pragmatic about all this.”

Only two years later, in an interview published by Mail Online on 18 June, 2012, Lovelock now believes that “rising sea levels were not a problem and that wind turbines were ‘useless’.” The article continues,

“The 92-year-old described the modern green movement as a ‘religion’, which used guilt to gain support.”

“Slamming environmentalists, he said: ‘It just so happens that the green religion is now taking over from the Christian religion. I don’t think people have noticed that, but it’s got all the sort of terms that religions use. The greens use guilt. You can’t win people round by saying they are guilty for putting CO2 in the air.’”

“Mr. Lovelock said he was a firm supporter of nuclear power and even voiced his support for fracking – the controversial process of extracting gas from rock deep underground, opposed by the green movement.”

Lovelock still believes that humans are “too stupid to prevent climate change.” Apparently, Mr. Lovelock does not understand that if climate change were ‘prevented’ from happening, Gaia would indeed lose its ability to regulate, provide, repair and restore herself. Rather it is man’s reason and intelligence that will lead to sustainable adaptation in the face of earth’s natural climate cycles.

Dr.  Patrick Moore’s Change of Heart

In 1971, Dr. Patrick Moore, an early antagonist of nuclear power and nuclear testing during the Cold War, joined Greenpeace in an effort to expose abuses in nuclear energy, toxic waste disposal and its alleged destructive effects on the earth and humanity. Early on, he was praised by Greenpeace co-founder Bob Hunter who wrote,

“Moore was quickly accepted into the inner circle on the basis of his scientific background, his reputation [as an environmental activist], and his ability to inject practical, no-nonsense insights into the discussions.”

Moore continued to ascend in the organization and in 1979 became the president of Greenpeace Canada and a member of the board of directors for Greenpeace International. In 1985, while Greenpeace was protesting French nuclear testing at Mururoa Atoll, Moore survived the attack on the Rainbow Warrior when it was bombed and sunk by the French government.

But in the late 80s, Greenpeace and Moore parted ways because of a conflict in ideology. Moore came to understand that it was important to distinguish between “beneficial uses of the technology and the evil uses of the technology.”

As an ecologist and environmentalist, Moore concedes that nuclear energy is a paradox. On the one hand it provides clean energy without any compromising emissions but on the other hand it generates toxic waste that requires safe storage. In an interview by Wired Magazine  in 2007, he explained,

“It became clear to me that there was a logical disconnect. The people who were most concerned about climate change were most opposed to nuclear power. Greenpeace is against fossil fuel, nuclear and hydroelectric power. “

“As a member of the Nuclear Energy Institute, […] we’re bringing people at the municipal and state levels together to help convince the American public that nuclear energy is a key technology for the future and that there should be a resurgence of this technology happening now if we want to reduce fossil fuel emissions.”

Later in the interview Wired Magazine asked “Outside your relationship with Greenpeace, are there environmental groups or thinkers out there that you support?”

Moore’s response was: “People like Stuart Brand, founder of the Whole Earth Catalog, long-time environmentalist and thinker. He’s solidly in favor of nuclear now. Going back to James Lovelock (founder of the Gaia theory), he was the first iconic environmental guy who said nuclear has got to be part of the solution. Jared Diamond. He’s in favor of nuclear energy too.”

In the most recent interview with Patrick Moore, as seen in this MSNBC June video, he states,

“I don’t think it makes much sense to just keep telling people that the world is going to come to an end, that it is all a catastrophe that we’re going to die from a heat wave next month.”

“We’re allowing in particular our energy policy and our technology policies to be determined by people who don’t have a clue and have this so-called green fantasy–using the word green which actually has no technical definition–to make it seem as though we can run the whole planet on wind and solar when this is going to turn out to be a bubble because it is too expensive and it doesn’t work most of the time.”

“We need to focus on energy technologies that actually work like nuclear energy which can replace fossil fuels, like hydroelectric energy, geo thermal or ground source heat pumps that can replace fossil fuels in buildings and at the same time we have to recognize we need to keep using fossil fuels at least until we invent things that don’t need them.”

Though Moore promotes sustainable development on his website, Greenspirit, he recognizes that today’s extreme environmentalists are generally ‘anti-civilization.’  His interests now lie with those who would promote man’s use of common sense, and science and technology to find solutions for our sustainable future rather than band together with activists who fight the status quo with no concrete, cost effective, and realistic alternatives.

Sources:

1. Sussman, B., Eco-Tyranny: how the left’s green agenda will dismantle America, p. 6, 2012
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. Phillips, M., The World Turned Upside Down: the global battle over God, truth and power, p.298, 2010
5. Ibid.
6. Sussman, B., Eco-Tyranny: how the left’s green agenda will dismantle America, pp. 11-12, 2012
7. Ibid.
8. Ibid, p. 22
9. Ibid, p. 99
10. Ibid, p. 100