Thursday, December 18, 2003

Environmentalism as religion

Really interesting speech by Michael Crichton on environmentalism. Here's a flavor of it:
Increasingly it seems facts aren't necessary, because the tenets of environmentalism are all about belief. It's about whether you are going to be a sinner, or saved. Whether you are going to be one of the people on the side of salvation, or on the side of doom. Whether you are going to be one of us, or one of them.
Or
I can tell you that DDT is not a carcinogen and did not cause birds to die and should never have been banned. I can tell you that the people who banned it knew that it wasn't carcinogenic and banned it anyway. I can tell you that the DDT ban has caused the deaths of tens of millions of poor people, mostly children, whose deaths are directly attributable to a callous, technologically advanced western society that promoted the new cause of environmentalism by pushing a fantasy about a pesticide, and thus irrevocably harmed the third world. Banning DDT is one of the most disgraceful episodes in the twentieth century history of America. We knew better, and we did it anyway, and we let people around the world die and didn't give a damn.
I don't know too much about Crichton. I know he's written some books that have sold well and does some stuff for television, etc. I don't know how he knows these things about DDT (and the rest of his revelations), but if he's right then environmentalists have a lot to think about. Their actions are not risk free (which I think many of them assume).

{Found through The Corner.}