Chris Adams

New Scientist has an interesting interview about the changing face of the environmental movement:

The poor are to blame for environmental decline because they have been putting their own ecosystems under intolerable population pressure. That's the hidden ideology of far too many environmentalists in the US who really should know better, says Betsy Hartmann, a radical feminist and academic. So much for the "green on the outside, red on the inside" label that's often hung round eco-campaigners; some conservationists, she told Fred Pearce recently, are the new conservatives

This reminds me of the curious tone in Paul Ehrlich's The Population Bomb where he describes how the crush of people on 'one stinking hot night in Delhi' frightened his family - an experience recounted as the inspiration for the radical, and in hindsight quite unnecessary, population reduction measures he proposed. One gets the impression that he would never have reacted so fearfully in cities such as Paris, Tokyo, New York, London, or, for that matter, San Diego, which have higher densities of safely affluent people.

She's confusing the issue, however, by describing this as a move to the right. Virginia Postrel used a more accurate approach in her excellent book The Future and Its Enemies which divided people into stasists who fear change, striving to keep it under central control and dynamists who take an evolutionary view, where false starts and flame-outs are ultimately part of an unpredictable but extremely effective development process.

In this light the common cause between greens and conservatives seems natural - Ralph Nader and Pat Buchanan may differ on many points but they're both reactionaries. It also illustrates an increasingly common divide on many issues: the quasi-authoritarian left and right at odds with old-school liberals and libertarians. The socialist left doesn't mind the continued concentration of power in the executive branch - they're more upset that John Ashcroft is the one exercising those powers; meanwhile, the libertarians and traditional liberals are vying to see who can more vehemently condemn these new threats to personal freedom.

Here's hoping that this sort of realization will result in a widespread rejection of the toxic elements which are increasingly influencing traditionally liberal causes.