Environmentalism as a Religion

[drscott]

One of my hobbyhorses, well-explained by Michael Crichton.

The growth of organizations that live parasitically on fear and ignorance is a big part of the problem. Thus we have a "GMO Free Zone" movement growing in California. Junk science is becoming a larger problem as interest groups use their funding of friendly "scientists" to have biased research done.

Comments

[cowboygreg.livejournal.com]

Indeed. He's absolutely correct in pointing out how "junk science" and the Luddite-for-political-convenience bunch use fear of the unknown to reap influence and funding. Just look at the hatchet job they did on Bjorn Lomborg when he had the audacity to back up his assertion that the environmentalist movement was crying wolf on a great many topics with actual facts instead of mere assertions.

It's all the more ironic that Crichton's own novel Prey ascribes near-magical powers to nanotech, feeding into the very fears of the "grey goo" naysayers that one might expect Crichton, given his views in this piece, might very well want to avoid inflating. And, yes, as an SF writer myself I know the difference between a thesis and entertaining fiction -- but there's a vast difference between dramatic license and having a plot that relies on bullshit just to hold itself together....

[dr-scott.livejournal.com]

The reaction to Lomborg wasn't too different from the treatment of any heretic, except they couldn't have him burned at the stake. And while I guess it's ironic that Crichton himself cranks out "cautionary tales" that aren't too firmly grounded in science at times, that's worlds away from suppressing progress out of fear of highly-improbable outcomes. Perhaps he's giving the speech to do penance for whatever succor he gives the Luddites with his fictions.

The reason why "gray goo" is not likely to come crawling out of anyone's test tube is the same reason recombinant DNA work turned out not to produce startlingly virulent organisms -- in Nature constant recombination between the DNA of bacteria, viruses, and other forms of life is occurring all the time. There is a sea of DNA out there constantly trying to find better ways to combine, and seemingly odd combinations we intentionally produce (like fish genes in plants). Whatever we might try, Nature has already tried, and rejected; it's actually very hard to create a new disease organism that functions well. And gray goo is just another form of life limited to the same energy sources, unless you solve the problem of distributed AI for the little guys and give them a non-organic power source. Mold is about the best that can be done.

You try to explain to people that the ethyl alcohol in gas now actually costs more in energy and fertilizer to produce than it creates (so biomass fuels so far are no solution), or that recycling on a household scale still lowers the efficiency of the system more than it saves in raw materials impact (thus creating a net additional burden on the planet's systems), and they shudder. Without these symbolic genuflections to the new religion, many would be unable to feel as virtuous.