It is not often that I turn a comment into a complete post, but this comment from Willis Eschenbach on the Trust and Mistrust article today, merits such a promotion. – Anthony
Which death is more troubling? (images: from NOAA, upper, Wikimedia, lower)
Willis Eschenbach
I am surprised at the visceral nature of the rejection of the term “environmentalist”. I had not realized it had gotten that bad. I don’t think I’d want to be one of those if that’s how people feel.
It also appears that the new preferred term is “conservationist”. But as I said, I don’t make those fine distinctions, so I’m not sure how that differs from the “e-word”.
So let me modify my statement, and say that I am a conservamentalist. I would define that as someone who thinks long and hard about the effect of our actions on the tangled web of life that surrounds us.
I was fishing herring in the Bering Sea one season. I heard on the radio that the annual killing of the Canadian Arctic fur seals had begun, along with the obligatory protests that seem to be required these days.
We’d caught about fifty tonnes of herring that day, killing on the order of a million living beings. I remember thinking how if some creature has big soft baby eyes, it gets lots of sympathy. But if a creature is slimy and has cold fish-eyes, its death doesn’t matter. People hated the seal killers for killing a few dozen creatures, while I killed millions of creatures and was ignored.
If I had to pick one word to describe my position on the ecological webs that surround us, it would be “realist”. Life eats life to live. I am not a man who eats the meat and blames the butcher.
I’ve worked a good deal as a builder. I build with wood. I cut down trees to make room for the building I live in. I grew up in the forest, my step-daddy was a timber feller, the royalty of the logging fraternity. I’ve worked killing trees on an industrial scale.
And I’ll also fight like crazy to see the logging done right. with proper roads and proper setbacks, and proper slope limits, and reforestation. I’ve seen what bad logging practices look like and do.
So for me, a conservamentalist is someone who has thought hard about and balanced the needs for wood and cleared land, balanced those needs with the way that wood is harvested. I grew up in the middle of hundreds of square miles of virgin forest. I have a deep and abiding admiration for that raw wildness. And yet, I cut down trees. I just want to see things done carefully and with forethought, see them done properly with respect for the consequences. I don’t elevate some mythical “Nature” above humans, and I don’t forget nature either.
I was a sport salmon fishing guide a couple years ago, on the Kenai River in Alaska, as I described here. Kenai River king salmon are magnificent beings, fifty pounds or more of powerful, glittering, awe-inspiring fish. When one of my clients caught a salmon, I always thanked the fish in a loud voice for giving up its life for us. Life eats life, beings die so that I can live, and I can’t ignore that. I don’t let it keep me from fishing salmon, but I won’t pretend that I am not killing a splendiferous entity. Some of my clients understood.
Heck, I apologize to trees when I cut them down. Yeah, I know it looks dumb, a grown man talking to trees. But it doesn’t stop me from cutting them down by the scores if need be, I’m a realist. Life eats life. Me, I don’t take killing anything lightly, be it redwood or herring or salmon. Someday, I’ll be chopped down in the same way.
So I’m forming the Conservamentalist Party, our motto will be,“Conservamentalists unite! You have nothing to lose but your minds”.
Now, back to the climate…
The same sort of soppy illogical thinking is behind emotive Global Warming?. Look go eat some meat and get some protein into your diet and you may start thinking clearer.
I’m a science-based environmentalist with socialist and vegan leanings.
That is why climate change pisses me off. It distracts from humanity’s real problems.
There is a bit of a difference though. The Seals weren’t being harvisted for food during the seal fur trade heyday and the fish aren’t being killed for their skins. Many prople are also against killing Sharks for their Fins and discarding the rest. Something similar was done in the 1800’s as Buffalo were killed for their skins and the corpses being left on the prarie to rot in the sun.
Is is shameful to discard any animal for the sake of harvesting their skin. Use it all or don’t use any.
Good for you, Willis!
Environmentalism lost its soul as soon as it began to adopt the motto, “The ends justify the means.” This never has been true and never will be true.
At the risk of sounding maudlin, I’d say what is most needed is Love. If you Love the land, and Love your fellow man, you simply do not resort to the deeds people with weak understanding resort to, out of greed and sheer self-interest.
I am pretty disgusted with what fellows like Hansen and Mann have done to both science and environmentalism.
When they wanted to control you in your community they called themselves communists.
When they wanted to control you in your society they called themselves socialists.
When they wanted to control you in your environment they called themselves environmentalists.
What comes next?
“…a grown man talking to trees.”
That’s fine, so long as you don’t hug them.
Just kidding, I agree with everything you’ve written.
Enviromental activist or active enviromentalist, there is a big difference.
“Balanced needs” is the right phrase.
Good one, sir.
Want a COMMON SENSE approach? The great George Carlin:
George Carlin – Saving the PlanetCargado por GodIsTruth. – Las últimas noticias en video.
I myself tended to be a conservationist before the word changed meaning back in the 1970s and at thT time had a thought about the difference in philosophies:
The old school conservationist was oriented to preventing waste
The new school conservationist was oriented to keeping things the same
My Dad was a logger/high climber most of his life also, and died in the forest. I spent a lot of time in the woods and have the same reverence that Willis feels. Well stated position sir.
I don’t mean to nitpick Willis, but do you mean harp seals? The “seals” in your picture are Northern fur seals, which are more like sea lions, that breed in the summer in US and Russian territory.
Arctic harp seal pups are the species hunted on the east coast of Canada that draw lots of protest. The zoologist in me needs this clarified, although I realize it is hardly the point of your post.
Susan
REPLY: I chose the photo based on Willis text. I’ll leave it to him to clarify if he meant a different seal or not. -Anthony
“Conservamentalists unite! You have nothing to lose but your minds”
You just said it all buddy!, that’s like a well and newly concocted pacifist declaring war.
O My!, I pledge to God: “Help me from the GOOD GUYS that I’ll take care of the bad guys”
This is also like being a “progressivetalist”, a cheating leftist or a pseudo-marxist! or like a tea bagger drinking coffee. Wow!
So obviously, Lesley Nelson and Philadelphia Electric Company were ahead of their time when they ran an ad in the Philadelphia area back in the 80’s where Nelson was reduced to exclaiming … “… but these envionmentalists“
The natives in North America always had a sustainable way of life and thanked every animal and the Earth for giving what they used or eat. They are the first Conservamentalists.
Conservamentalism is not a religion but a way of life.
“I don’t elevate some mythical “Nature” above humans”
Are you arguing that all self-described environmentalists or conservationists ARE doing this?
In fact, what exactly is the point of this post? Besides the obvious recanting of your exploits in the fishing and timber industries?
Your blog entry [snip] and merely regurgitates material from an undergraduate environmental ethics course. Congratulations on only being 40 years behind the environmentalist movement.
Nice post, WIllis.
vboring (12:39:31) :
I’m a science-based environmentalist with socialist and vegan leanings.
That is why climate change pisses me off. It distracts from humanity’s real problems.
Just for balance, I’m a science based conservative and carnivore.
But I’m with you 100 pct. at pissed off over the way AGW has sucked all the air away from dealing with real problems.
Willis:
Your comment is a keeper.
However,
“Life eats life….Someday, I’ll be chopped down in the same way.”, conjured up, “Tuesday is soylent green day”. ;>)
Bryan:
“Is is shameful to discard any animal for the sake of harvesting their skin. Use it all or don’t use any.”
I’m sorry, but there is some illogic in your statement. Mind you, I used to “feel” the same way until I became a hunter at age 42.
My reasoning: Nothing is wasted in nature. Protein is a valuable commodity in every ecosystem I can think of, so there are always life forms that will eat the “leftovers”.
I am a hunter of the boreal forests of central Ontario, Canada. Mostly, I hunt deer, moose, and the occasional turkey. When we do a field dressing on a deer, and leave the majority of the internal organs on the forest floor, are we guilty of something in your way of thinking?
When I pass by a previous day’s “gut pile”, there is rarely anything left. the bears, coyotes, wolves, crows, hawks, etc. make short work of the leftovers. Scavengers don’t let much go uneaten. Bacteria take care of the rest.
So, I would say that whether sealers take the seal carcass for meat or leave it for other creatures to consume, the animal is just as dead either way. And nothing goes to waste.
And for the record, like Willis, I too say a prayer for the animal I harvest. In not too many years, we will all join in on nature’s protein recycling system.
“Environmentalist”
The word was demonized by the right wing scream team. They focus on the more obscure or radical types of environmentalists, and smear everyone else by comparison. Environmentalists cannot be countenanced because their faith that industry protects them is challenged by accusations of impiety, creating pollution and such. Environmentalists in this regard are the skeptics, the right wing scream team the believers.
The right wing scream team likes the debunking process of the global warming interests, but they are speechless when then financial interests behind global warming are exposed, the same interests they trust with reverence. So they reflexively imagine hippies or tree huggers or such for AGW.
I agree with every word written here.
I am not a vegetarian because I don’t just love mammals. I also love leccuce and carrots, and they are living beings too.
It’s a fact of life that we kill each other to live.
And since we are spilling our loony innards here, I think Man’s greatest tragedy is that we are the only single species genus on the planet (as far as I know). Our cousins died out Neanderthals etc. Therefore we are peculiarly alone. I think there is a deepseated psychological need expressed by our desire to know whether there is other intelligent life in the universe.
Because as human beings we are very lonely. There is just us.
Maybe this is why we seesaw wildly between thinking we are too important and thinking ourselves too little important.
Willis: We here at Retread Resources are with you on that. Lets do it right and hopefully for the right reasons.
I see a difference between killing a seal for its fur and killing fish so that we can have a supply of healthy food. The seal fur can be easily be substituted with synthetic garments, the fish not so easily.
I’m willing to have living things killed for my benefit so long as it is done as humanly as possible, used efficiently and there is not a non-living substitute available.
Regards
Michael
The conservation movement died by the end of the first earth Day in 1970. There had been 3 competing environmental visions- the century old conservation and preservation movements and the growing ecosocialist movement of the 60s led by Marcuse, Bookchin and Commoner. A columnist for Berkeley’s underground paper The Rat said it best “revolutionaries must begin to think in ecological terms,” and that “an attack against environmental destruction is an attack on the structures of control and the mechanisms of power within a society.”
Sen Nelson’s goal for Earth Day set the stage for environment ideological control:
“I was satisfied that if we could tap into the environmental concerns of the general public and infuse the student anti-war energy into the environmental cause, we could generate a demonstration that would force this issue onto the political agenda. It was a big gamble, but worth a try.”-
There would as a result of Earth Days’ success no longer be a need for a conservation science. The environment was now to be decided in the political arena where democratized science fits quite well. The philosophy of the anti war movement would control by days end- It was Commoner’s vision that the root cause of pollution was excess economic growth fostered by cheap energy.’ A vision that said all efforts must be directed at the root cause rather than fixing existing environmental problems.This was the culture infused into EPA and controls till this day.
The focus of environment was also to shift as a result of the Earth day victory away from the traditional views of wilderness and wildlife enhancement as quoted by environmentalist Mark Dowie:
“The central concern of the new movement is human health. Its adherents consider wilderness preservation and environmental aesthetics worthy but overemphasized values. They are often derided by anti toxic activists as bourgeois obsessions. People are drawn to grass roots environmental politics because they fear for their lives and those of their children”
The new movement only needed political skills and the ability to instill fear. It is difficult to amass a movement if you require the followers to spend hours in some science lab. Kafka was correct The flood of the revolution evaporates and leaves behind only the slime of a new bureaucracy.