From: Fred Pearce, Yale
Environment360 on ENN.com
On issues ranging from
genetically modified crops to nuclear power, environmentalists are increasingly
refusing to listen to scientific arguments that challenge standard green
positions. This approach risks weakening the environmental movement and
empowering climate contrarians.
From Rachel Carson's
Silent Spring to James Hansen's modern-day tales of climate apocalypse,
environmentalists have long looked to good science and good scientists and
embraced their findings.
Often we have had to run hard to keep up with the
crescendo of warnings coming out of academia about the perils facing the world.
A generation ago, biologist Paul Ehrlich's The Population Bomb and systems
analysts Dennis and Donella Meadows' The Limits to Growth shocked us with their
stark visions of where the world was headed.
No wide-eyed greenie had predicted
the opening of an ozone hole before the pipe-smoking boffins of the British
Antarctic Survey spotted it when looking skyward back in 1985. On issues
ranging from ocean acidification and tipping points in the Arctic to the
dangers of nanotechnology, the scientists have always gotten there first — and
the environmentalists have followed.
And yet, recently, the
environment movement seems to have been turning up on the wrong side of the
scientific argument. We have been making claims that simply do not stand up. We
are accused of being anti-science — and not without reason. A few, even close
friends, have begun to compare this casual contempt for science with the
tactics of climate contrarians.
That should hurt.
Three current issues
suggest that the risks of myopic adherence to ideology over rational debate are
real: genetically modified (GM) crops, nuclear power, and shale gas
development. The conventional green position is that we should be opposed to
all three. Yet the voices of those with genuine environmental credentials, but
who take a different view, are being drowned out by sometimes abusive and
irrational argument.
Read more at Yale
Environment360.
