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From a discussion in my book about the underlying assumptions of government environmental management:

If the Preservation Hypothesis does not exist, if the guiding assumptions are flawed, if there cannot be a goal, if there is no technical method, if there are no output variables by which to judge the results, how can it work? If the motives of those employed by the decision-making system are toward acquiring power through environmental failure, then the results are likely to be destructive. If the sponsors of an illogical and destructive system seek control of all factors of production, then their motives must be founded upon either faith or greed.

Consider faith. Deep Ecologists deny that their body of practices and beliefs constitutes a religion, although they publicly engage in animist and shamanist rituals and speak reverently of Gaia (the “Earth Mother Goddess”) as the source of true scientific knowledge:

“Gaian perception connects us with the seamless nature of existence, and opens up a new approach to scientific research based on scientific institutions arising from scientists’ personal, deeply subjective ecological experience. When the young scientist in training has sat on a mountain top, and has completed her first major assignment to ‘think like a mountain’, that is, to dwell and deeply identify with a mountain, mechanistic thinking will never take root in her mind. When she eventually goes out to practise her science in the world, she will be fully aware that every interconnected aspect of it has its own intrinsic value, irrespective of its usefulness to the economic activities of human beings.”
– STEPHAN HARDING

Gaia was supposedly a Minoan earth goddess, adopted by a clearly wealthy, and reputedly earth-worshipping and pacifist civilization on Crete. Unfortunately, the popular beliefs about Minoan civilization largely represent the neurotic whimsy of Sir Arthur Evans, the first major excavator at Knossos. Evans was obsessed with proving that Minoan civilization had Aryan origins, and demonstrated a propensity to contort his observations in order to project upon them Druidic beliefs. Current evidence suggests that constantly warring Minoan city-states were overrun by Mycenean Greeks, perhaps after a nearby volcanic eruption. Maybe they had been weakened and their numbers were reduced. They did sometimes eat their children. One thing that we do know: They are no longer with us.

Some Deep Ecologists think that a consequence such as befell the Minoans might not be so bad. Such are adherents to the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement (VHMT, pronounced “vehement”) or the Church of Euthanasia (whose central tenets are: Abortion, Sodomy, Cannibalism, and Suicide).

If a belief system has a flawed foundation in logic, a codified structure of beliefs, a hierarchy, icons, a personified supernatural deity, and spiritual rites, then it is equivalent to a religion whether it has a 501(c3) or not. If a religious body of belief starts to direct policy, it is equivalent to an establishment of religion capable of confounding all civic deliberation. Perhaps the only thing that keeps deep ecologists from being sued successfully is that they don’t have an office or a bank account.

These folks are on the power curve. Consider greed.

Together, environmental activists and agencies of the United States government have advocated a plan of human withdrawal and ecological inaction over 50% of the continental United States: The Wildlands Project. The plan is to set aside enormous “core reserves” with “connecting corridors” surrounded by “buffer zones.” The plan is being enacted over the objections of both landowners and many scientists. The published goal is to institute the plan, as soon as possible, nationwide, based upon the mere assumption that to withdraw human action constitutes preservation of natural resources. There has been no fractional experiment with published expectations, established methods, or means of measuring relative success. There certainly has not been an experimental trial. The first indications are by no means promising and, because of the preconditions listed above, are subject to interpretation. The real goal is resource land acquisition.

In order to get the land it sometimes has to be acquired over the pesky objections of its owners, with the temerity to indicate that the preservationists have no idea what they are doing. The key point of leverage is control of the water in the connecting corridors. Given the democratic claim on the use of water as a commons, the key to a public taking becomes the management and interpretation of specific provisions under either the Clean Water Act, or uses of water pursuant to the Endangered Species Act. Determining the outcome nearly always involves a court of law, where the assumptions of a judge and the infinite legal resources of government render the decision nearly a fait accompli or a coup de grâce (depending upon your perspective). The agencies and activist organizations are armed with experienced lawyers and “experts.” The landowner and their legal representatives are usually unschooled in the conduct of dispute or technical argument and are very unlikely to have either deep pockets or sufficient data from expert witnesses.

The experts are, of course, scientists. Technical testimony in environmental cases is often composed of value judgements of the degree of threat to or criticality of an ecological resource. These experts are representing themselves to the courts as objective witnesses of activist organizations, universities, and government resource agencies. If, however, these same scientists have been trained to subject their observations and data to what is, at least functionally a religious belief system, then they make their testimonies before courts of law on the bases of such subjective science.

Under a biocentric ethic, our Gaian scientist believes that everything is ecologically critical and all economic value to the property owner is to be disregarded. Such a “scientist” is fully capable of the delusion that subjective interpretation is equivalent to objective data or that dishonesty ‘in the defense of nature’ might not be a moral failing.

A judge is no judge of technical integrity and has no experience upon which to evaluate testimony other than by considering university credentials and the quality of the legal presentation. Consider the above quote in that regard as applies to the expert testimony of such a scientist.

The courts are predisposed to make judgements on the behalf of government agencies under the erroneous assumptions that the testimony is objective and that employees of the U.S. Government are representing policies according to laws passed by Congress. Nothing could be further from the truth.

First, most Federal resource agencies are members of international non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that are likely to take positions in the legal conflict, contrary to the agencies’ constitutional and organizational mandates. These private NGOs require agencies of the United States Government to adhere to multilateral treaties as a prerequisite to membership, WHETHER RATIFIED OR NOT. Some such treaties have been specifically rejected. The texts of these treaties grant virtually unlimited power governing land use within the United States to those agencies.

These treaties, such as the Convention on Biological Diversity, were designed and drafted by activist NGOs such as the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN). Congress never allotted payment of Federal Agency membership dues to these international organizations. Both these organizations were started with grants from private, tax-exempt, “non-profit” foundations of the major stockholders in oil companies. These treaties, originating at these NGOs, were blessed by United Nations Environ¬mental Programme (UNEP) and routed for “approval” to the respective member governments of the UN.

Would the UN be representing an interest in acquiring global control of all resources? Under the current plan for reorganization, the UN plans a congress of NGOs that subsists entirely off grant money as supposedly representing civil society: The People’s Assembly.

What kind of government gets to decide who represents “the people?” One that is sponsored by greed and controls “the people” by fealty to faith.

In addition to the philosophical bias on the part of testifying NGO grantees and agency professionals, are also direct career interests. Agency executives often circulate through a revolving door, at either environmental NGOs or private foundations. There is obvious reason for these political appointees to exert pressures upon technical civil servants with few other career options. The inherent conflict of interests in technical testimony thus deepen, to say nothing of the ethical considerations regarding ecosystem health. Though the human propensity to cower in compliance in return for personal security can be understood, it cannot be morally condoned.

The members of any group, with deeply held beliefs in a cause, will suffer frustration if they don’t get what they want. It is natural for them to elevate the consequences of failure to heed their claims. Upon attributing the point of contention to an issue of collective survival, it isn’t hard to justify internally any means to achieve their ends. It is predictable then, that they rely upon the courts, executive fiat, or the irreversible slide down the road to serfdom. Once they get their paycheck in service to that cause, it makes the case more personal. Desperate activists will accept support from any source, even if that source was the historic cause of the very problems they seek to solve! They do it to get their way, through legal coercion at the pleasure of its direct beneficiaries: a moneyed elite interested in manipulating the global commodity value of resources or their substitutes (as we shall see in Part V). To socialize a commons is to control the factors of production. It is a way to power. A financial elite can dominate the political appointees in charge of administrative bureaucracy. That elite will always subordinate ecology to the acquisition and maintenance of power. It is an ultimately corrupting process destructive to its purpose.

Social “scientists,” subsisting off of the ill-gotten cash from the scions of the industrial robber barony, are gleefully destroying the very foundations of individual freedom that have the best hope of fulfilling their dreams. They are selling scientific subjectivity and a biocentric ethic to dedicated human beings, confused into believing they are engaged in unselfish acts. They are mucking with the scientific method. They are destroying the technical integrity of young people, who commit their lives to save the environment.

The antithesis of this book is designed to connect the results with the perpetrators, the philosophy with the policy, the motive with the means, and the local with the global. Each of us will see our own piece of this terrible conflict. The message to many environmentalists, here, is this:

You are being used. It doesn’t work the way you think it does.

To render observation subjective is to engage in self-deception. A scientist, engaged in such art, is trafficking in opinionated guesswork for the mere benefits of self-aggrandizement and a subsistence paycheck. Without technical integrity, deep ecologists may do irreparable damage to everything they say they love, to their great personal sorrow.

It was published in late August 2001 (which is one reason why few people noticed) See tag line.