I have written several times on environmentalism and been quite critical, but I don't think I ever made clear precisely why I think environmentalism is so detrimental to mankind. It is not simply a question of being inconvenienced by environmentalism, or the fact that it makes things more costly, the basic assumptions of environmentalism are in direct opposition to the requirements of human survival.

Starting at the most basic level, man is ill suited to survive in nature. We lack any sort of natural defenses or weapons. Even those animals most similar to us, the apes¹, are much better prepared for the wild than we are. They are better at climbing, possess much greater strength and have more hair to provide protection from both cold and sun. And when we leave the primates, man falls even farther behind, lacking claws, armor, speed, or any of the other traits animals use to survive. Should we try to survive in nature, even were we not to become a snack for the nearest carnivore, we would find competing for food against the better adapted rivals quite difficult².

What man has, the tool that allowed him to come to be the most potent creature on the planet, is his brain. Not just this brain, but the ability to speak which that brain provided. A big brain alone is beneficial, but very limited. Without language every creature is stuck learning everything anew, and knowledge would progress very little. With the ability to speak, man gained two very important powers. First, man could pass along knowledge quickly from one generation to another. Yes, animals do this as well, but it is a slow process of demonstration and mimicry. Man can use language to pass along much knowledge quickly.

And how is that done? Through the second benefit of language, the ability to abstract. Man can take a number of situations and draw from them only the essential features. He can see ten falling stones and conclude "objects tend to fall to the earth". It sounds simple, but it is a huge advantage. Thanks to our ability to abstract from concrete experience, we can pass along in a minute of speech something that an animal would take months of training to discover, if ever. For example "cooked food is safer" is a concept that can be said in a minute or less, but would take hundreds of examples before an animal would grasp, assuming they ever could distinguish cooked from raw. Man's ability to abstract speeds transmission of information dramatically.

But that big brain is of limited benefit when it is used only to assist man in interacting with his environment. When it is used just for making tools, cooperative hunting, passing along knowledge of better methods to gather food, and so on, it does provide man with an advantage, but as the short lifespans and small numbers of modern hunter-gatherer tribes show, it does not provide full benefits until it is turned to another use.

That use is changing the environment to suit man. From building shelters, to planting food, to building dikes, to diverting rivers and reclaiming land from the sea, man constantly changes the world to suit him. That is truly the best use of his brain, not to help him adapt to the world around him, but to change the world around him to suit his ends. Only by doing so can man receive the maximum benefits from his intellect.

Which brings me at last to my point. This is the use which environmentalism opposes. By positing that "nature" has some intrinsic value, the environmentalist movement is in opposition to this use of man's intellect. Man survives and prospers by changing nature into something more suitable. Once we postulate that untouched nature is to be preferred, we find our selves in opposition to mankind's improvement.

Of course many will argue against this saying that environmentalists just want "a balance", but that is simply untrue. Once you say untouched nature is a good in itself, the logical end point is denying man the ability to change anything. Of course, as a practical matter they may argue for a "balance" first, but the end result is the eventual prohibition of all change³. And that will spell the end of human progress.

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1. Whether one believes in evolution or not, the similarities between apes and humans are undeniable. Even if you doubt we are related, they resemble us more closely than any other animal does, from physical structure to social behavior.

2. Many anthropological/historical models seem to bear this out, suggesting that the most primitive hunter-gatherer tribes were limited to belts extremely rich in foodstuffs. In those locations man's competitive disadvantage would be offset by the abundance of food. Only after man had acquired more knowledge enabling him to better control his environment would he have moved from those regions. That is, of course, assuming those models are correct.

3. We see similar incrementalism over and over. As condemnation went from being used for roads and dams to removing inner city "blight" to condemning perfectly good homes for more profitable development. Or smoking prohibitions went from airplanes to businesses to malls to now even restaurants and bars. Those seeking unpopular change never ask for it all at once, they always want a "balance", but from there they proceed, step by step, to the logical end point of their theories.