In my writing on environmentalism I have tried to be very careful to distinguish between the various factions within the movement. While the policy and direction of the movement is usually set by an elite of environmental thinkers, there are below them a number of groups, not all of which share all of the same beliefs. And while I think that in the long run the most consistent beliefs will win out, and thus the most extreme faction will end up driving the movement, I have to point out that there are many differing groups.

So, to make things clear, and to provide me with an essay to which I can point when I need to make this clear again, let us look at the many different groups which form the environmental movement.

The largest, most diffuse, and least committed or extreme group is made up of the environmentally aware members of the public at large. This group ranges form conservatives with vague "conservationist" tendencies all the way to those who are life members of the World Wildlife Fund. The gorup includes pretty much everyone who has some agreement with the environmentalist movement, but does nothing, or very little, to actively support them.

For the most part this group is motivated by the least ideological motives. They support environmentalism either from a love of nature, or from a desire to prevent man from "fouling his nest". Many share both the naturalist and pragmatic views, some even combining them by arguing that extinction of plants or animals could harm mankind as well. Very few, if any, are driven by a distrust of technology. Some may have developed a distrust of technology due to their environmentalist interests, but in general this is not a wholesale rejection of technology, just a recognition that some technologies may be harmful, along with a resigned acceptance that despite the risks, technology is necessary.

The nest largest group are the non-ideological activists. These are essentially the same people as the preceding group, they simply are a bit more involved. Again, they are, for the most part, motivated by either love of nature or fear of harm from pollution. Ther eis a bit more fear and distrust of technology among this group, and even a few who have begun to wonder if mankind itself is not harmful. However, very few have a comprehensive philosophy. Any common beliefs they have with the more extreme elements more often come from exposure to those more extreme thinkers, not from any independent philosophy.

The next group is the first truly extremist group These are the thinkers who have adopted the full Luddite doctrine. They still seem to believe that man is destroying nature, that man is killing himself through pollution, or both, but from those beliefs they have concluded that technology itself is the threat. It is the philosophy of Jeremy Rifkin's Entropy, the belief that technology is inherently harmful, and that the only possible solution is the adoption of a simple, sustainable lifestyle for mankind.

It is in this group that we also find those often mentioned by conservatives, those who adopt environmentalism to push a Marxist agenda. I do have to disagree slightly with conservatives about this group. Many conservative commentators seem to think that most environmentalists, at least the upper echelons, are just Marxists who adopt environmentalism as a tool to achieve those goals. Doubtless that is true of some, but I think far more common is the opposite evolution, those who are sincere environmentalists, who then develop communist beliefs. As environmentalism requires both extreme austerity and a strong government, it is quite compatible with communism, and as many of those involved in the more extreme environmental movement already have left leaning political beliefs, it only makes sense that those adopting more authoritarian environmental solutions would also move toward more authoritarian political beliefs as well.

But regardless, whether they started out communists and became environmentalists, or the progression went the other way, there certainly is a strong collectivist streak among the Luddite groups of the environmental movement.

Above the Luddites, at the pinnacle of environmental thought, stand the true driving force of the environmental movement, the philosophical foundation of the movement. The thoughts of this group are unusual in that they do not share all of the concerns of those below them. While every lower group combined a love of an abstract "nature" with a pragmatic opposition to "fouling the nest", the high level thinkers of the movement tend to drop all pragmatic concerns, arguing only from a desire to protect an abstract entity called "nature. Of course, given the conclusions they reach from their love of nature, their reluctance to worry about man's future is understandable.

And what are those conclusions? To word it as it was in dozens of science fiction novels, they think that man is a cancer. To the top thinkers of the movement, the desire to protect nature starts and ends with a war on mankind. To their thinking man is an aberration, something that does not fit into nature. An entity which must be reducded in numbers, perhaps killed off completely, and forced to revert to his most primitive state. To do anything less is to leave a cancer which coudl grow back and threaten nature once more.

Of course the lower tiers of the movement do not share these beliefs, many may not even know what their leaders are thinking and writing among themselves. But that is the thinking which drives the movement, and, in the end, that is the logical outcome of valuing an abstract concept of "nature" more highly than man. Once we start arguing that preserving "pristine nature" is valuable, we end up arguing that man should be reduced in numbers and forced into barbarism.

So, though conservative "conservationists" may think they are just trying to keep people from polluting the rivers, in reality, by conceding the value of nature, they are in reality conceding the argument fo those who would see 5/6ths of mankind exterminated. After all, if preserving one river in pristine condition is valuable enough to ignore the rights of the property owners and other human beings, then what argument is there against the logical conclusions reached by those who argue for the end of mankind?

POSTCRIPT

Now, I have mentioned in comments that I agree that we cannot just say "the environment doesn't matter" as it won't sell well. But, as I said above, conceding the "value fo nature itself" argument, we have lost our case as well.

So, what is the answer?

I will have to write about this a bit more, but right now I see two approaches. First, showing the harm government has done in places like the former Soviet Union, or modern China, and point out how GOOD things are today in the US, with forest growth, clean water, clean air and so on. And we need to show that it is wealth, and wealth alone,t hat gave us those things, not the EPA or other government action.

Second, if we still cannot convince people fo the benefits of the free market, we can try to steal the "fouling the nest" argument. We do not want to concede an innate value to nature, but we can use the pragmatic arguments to our advantage, provided we stick to real problems, like toxic waste, and avoid things such as the AGW boondoggle. Of course,w e also need to avoid scare monger tactics, and present the realistic assessments of the risk of waste dumps, so we may not get as much mileage as the left does with their "the sky is falling" approach, but the truth is always harder to sell than lies.

In the end, I think people will one day see through all the environmental lies. Even now many in the center are starting to recognize the hysteria of the environmentalists. But ti will take time. At the moment,t he worst thing we could do is buy into those lies ourselves. Better to be ridiculed now for our skepticism, and then cash in later when the lies of the left are revealed.