Fighting Back Against the Contrarians
Maybe it's the occasional sanctimony of its proponents, maybe it's the hypocrisy of some of its advocates, but there's something about environmentalism that seems to invite contrarians to oppose it.
Take Alex Beam, the definition of contrarian, writing in today's Boston Globe. Beam takes aim at a target that you knew he couldn't resist: the decision by Whole Foods to stop selling lobster because of the brutal way it is generally transported and killed. For Beam, this smacks of political correctness; it's a denial of the fact that humans are predators. He extends his criticism to what he calls the "do no harm" movement—people who use fallen timber to build their houses, or aspire to stage "carbon-free" weddings.
Writes Beam, in an enormous leap of illogic,
Wouldn't it be great if we could just wait for trees to fall down so we could build houses for people? Wouldn't it be great if millions of chickens and cattle could be convinced to sign up for voluntary euthanasia programs so we could eat meat? Wouldn't it be nice if those nasty insurgents who are killing our sons and daughters in Iraq would just come talk to us over some Organic and Fair Trade Certified Monkey King Jasmine Green Tea, always available at you-know-where?
Of course, the desire to minimize the environmental damage one does during one's life has nothing to do with the recognition that there are bad people in the world whom we must, on occasion, kill. Beam knows this...but people who can afford to use fallen timber are rich, easy targets.
On the lobster front, Beam is particularly wrong, I think, both in the specifics and on the general principle. An ex of mine used to be a chef, and she told me horrific tales of how lobsters were treated in restaurants—placed inside the ovens while they were still alive because it was easier and, for some of the cooks, funny. Dropping a live creature, even one pretty low on the pecking order, into a pot of boiling water doesn't exactly soothe the conscience either. If one can minimize the pain of a fellow creature, even one that you're about to eat, why not?
Truth is, there's value in treating the animals we kill for food with respect and decency, and not just because it's easier on them. It's good for us. Killing animals with a minimum of pain increases our respect for the natural world and makes us more deeply appreciate the food we consume. If we value the animals that give their lives to be eaten by humans, then doesn't it become harder to kill a beautiful shark just to set a record? Or fire an explosive spear into a whale's head? Or slaughter a manatee with a powerboat because speed gets you off? And while treating animals humanely doesn't mean that we deny the existence of bad people, might it not carry over into how we treat our peaceful fellow citizens? If you treat animals with respect, aren't you more likely to do the same to people? And isn't the same true regarding disrespect?
Thinking about how we kill lobsters before we eat them may sound trivial. I'd suggest it's a small step in redressing how we think about the relationship between humans and other animals.
Now, on to another contrarian: the science and environmental writer Gregg Easterbrook. For years Easterbrook has campaigned against the existence of global warming. Not long ago, he realized that history was moving on and leaving him behind, so he conceded that he was wrong.
"Based on the data," Easterbrook wrote, "I'm now switching sides on global warming, from skeptic to convert"—as if everyone who was already there was basing their opinion on mumbo-jumbo, while Easterbrook was dutifully busy crunching the numbers.
But he's still cranky about being wrong, as evinced in this piece he's just done for Slate, in which Easterbrook argues that the reason hurricanes are causing greater damage now than in the past is because, thanks to development, there's more stuff for them to wreck.
Well...duh.
This is a point that anyone who's thought about the issue even the tiniest bit recognized long ago. In fact, in an interview in Plenty magazine last February conducted by, um, me, MIT atmospheric scientist Kerry Emanuel spoke of just this truism.
RB: As damaging as they are in the United States, aren't hurricanes far more devastating in places we don't pay much attention to?KE: It depends on what your definition of devastation is. In terms of the monetary loss, it's the United States. In terms of loss of life, hurricanes do far more of that in developing countries—in Central America, Bangladesh, places like that.
Which is to say that Easterbrook misses the point. While we obsess about the tragedy of New Orleans, we overlook the fact that hurricanes are much more lethal in less-developed countries, and worrying about the damage done to buildings, even cities, is to some extent an example of how lucky this nation is. As terrible as New Orleans was, other countries have got it worse...and will continue to do so because, as Emanuel has argued, hurricanes are growing increasingly powerful because of global warming.
I love contrarians—there are those who would say I am one myself—but on the other hand, just because they're contrarian doesn't mean they're right.
