The Environment

1. Evolutionary theory claims that species adapt to their environment; perhaps humans are unique in that they also try to shape their environment so that it adapts to their needs, through the use to technology, tools, science, etc. This leads to a relationship in which we both shape and are shaped by our environment. Humans are unique in another way too, however: We are perhaps the only species that actively works to destroy our environment, by over-foresting, destroying rainforests, and drilling for oil in dangerous places, without proper precautions or cleanup plans in case of leakage.

Part of this has to do with the way we are wired: We tend to pursue immediate gratification over long-term goals. Immediate gratification means profit from environmentally harmful practices, despite the long-term dangers: Ultimately, we need a healthy environment to survive. Oil-profits won't do any good when the health problems caused by a damaged environment set in. And as for rain-forests, well, we need trees to provide us with the oxygen that allows us to breathe. Could there ever be enough trees cut down to severely lessen the amount of available oxygen, to the point where there is not enough for the human population? I hope not. But this is a question that industries should be asking themselves before they take the axe.

Part of the problem is that environmental protection demands that we overcome the way evolution wired us (instant gratification-prone) in order to pursue on of the goals that evolution imbued us with: survival of our species. Perhaps this is part of the reason meaningful environmental reform has proven so difficult to implement.

2. The environment and socialism: The US is an extremely capitalistic society, and offers less social programming than EU countries, which also tend to have more environmentally friendly laws than the US. Coincidence? I don't think so.

The companies that damage the environment tend to be companies that put their workers in danger (think of the recent deaths of West Virginia coal-miners and BP oil-workers), that damage resources in the third world, or resources of lower-class people in the Western world, but leave the resources of the wealthy intact, especially since the wealthy tend to be able to afford to pay for better resources than the masses. (One example of this would be bottled water.) Furthermore, the resources being harvested often deprive local people of livelihoods or homes, such as in the case of fishermen affected by the BP spill, or Brazilian Amerindians deprived of homes and livelihoods when the rainforest is cut down.

This damage is all done for the sake of profit. Who is that profit going to? The shareholders. But the major profit of course, is going to the major shareholders - ie the upper class. Thus, environmental damage is the result of capitalistic values that believe that profit is the altar upon which all other considerations must be sacrificed. These values serve an upper class that for the moment can afford to buy itself a healthy lifestyle despite the health damages it inflicts on others, and, empowered by profit, is too reckless to consider the day when money might not be enough to buy health in an ozone-free, tree-free, wildlife-free, world, full of pesticides, fumes, pollution and fossil fuels.