By Eric Jurado
FOR one of those rare times in Philippine history, the government ordered the temporary closing of an island—for environmental reasons.
Last month, Boracay, an island famous for its white sand beaches and for being one of the world’s top destinations for relaxation, was closed to tourists for “rehabilitation.” Its crime? The continuous rise of tourists and businesses “aggravated the environmental degradation and is destroying the ecological balance of the island.”
Last month was also Earth Month, and it is worth noting this event, for it illuminates the essential meaning of environmentalism. The closing of Boracay is the implementation of environmentalism’s fundamental, though often unrecognized, tenet: That man ought to be sacrificed for the sake of nature.
The common view of environmentalism is that its goal is the betterment of mankind—that it wants to purify our air and clean up our parks so that we can live healthier and happier lives. But that is a very superficial interpretation. When environmentalists are faced with a conflict between the “interests” of nature and those of man, it is man who is invariably sacrificed. If there is a choice between electric power for human beings and swimming lanes for salmon, it is always the fish that are given priority. If there is a choice between cutting down trees for human use and leaving them untouched for the spotted owl, it is always the bird’s home that is saved and human habitation that goes unbuilt. Why?
Because the requirements of human life are not the standard by which environmentalists make their judgments. Their goal is to maintain nature in its virginal state—despite the demonstrable harm this inflicts upon people. They want to preserve wildernesses, to enshrine wetlands, to tear down dams and levees—to prevent the man-made “intrusions” upon nature.
In the case of Boracay, for instance, they want to protect the island not because it is a source of enjoyment, or relaxation, of any other human value. Rather, they regard the “welfare” of the island as an end in itself—for the sake of which man must forgo the benefits of the island.
Environmentalists often declare their philosophy openly. For example, David Graber, an environmentalist with the US National Parks Service, described himself as among those who “value wilderness for its own sake, not for what value it confers upon mankind…We are not interested in the utility of a particular species, of free-flowing rivers, or ecosystem to mankind. They have intrinsic value, more value—to me—than another human body, or a billion of them.”
David Foreman, founder of the organization Earth First, bluntly stresses the environmental irrelevance of human beings: “Wilderness has a right to exist for its own sake, and for the sake of the diversity of the life forms it shelters; we shouldn’t have to justify the existence of a wilderness area by saying: ‘Well, it protects the watershed, and it’s a nice place to backpack and hunt, and it’s pretty.’”
The environmentalist goal, in other words, is to protect nature, not for man, but from man.
But this means that man must suffer so that nature remains pristine. Human beings survive by reshaping nature to fulfill their needs. Every single step taken to advance beyond the cave—every rock fashioned into a tool, every square foot of barren earth made into productive cropland, every drop of crude petroleum transformed into fuel for cars and planes—constitutes an improvement in human life, achieved by altering our natural environment. The environmentalists’ demand that nature be protected against human “encroachments” means, therefore, that man must be sacrificed in order to preserve nature. If “wilderness has a right to exist for its own sake”—then man does not.
Litter-free streets or pollution-free air—or any provable benefit to man—are not what environmentalists seek. Their aim is to eliminate the benefits of the man-made in order to preserve—unchanged—nature’s animals, plants, and dirt.
Earth Month is an appropriate occasion for challenging the environmentalists’ philosophy. It can be the occasion for recognizing the Earth as a value—not in and of itself, but only insofar as it is continually reshaped by man to serve his ends.