Have You Been Saved?
On the
Apr. 21, 2006 edition
of
Point of Inquiry,
Lauren Becker has an excellent and non-mushy editorial on environmentalism, “Have You Been Saved?” (the show is
here;
the editorial starts at the 1:50 mark). Go listen to it. The rest of the show has Bill Nye, so it’s all good.
Her main point (echoed later by Nye) is that environmentalism isn’t about Saving The Earth. The Earth is a giant rock that we couldn’t destroy if we tried. The Earth will be around long after we’re all dead.
Environmentalism is about Saving The Humans. About not shitting in your and your children’s dinner plates. The reason to care about what happens to whales or spotted owls isn’t that they’re cute and cuddly, but rather that what’s killing them today is likely to kill us tomorrow, if we don’t do something about it.