Environmentalism, once the domain of science-based progressives like Dr. Norm Borlaug, has been hijacked by...conservatives.
You read that right. Outside America, 'conservative' usually meant 'attached to the old way', rather than not wanting to hand money over to the government to redistribute for votes. To those classic conservatives, the past is supreme. Sports were better, society was better, it is basically cultural nostalgia and fear of the modern.
That kind of fear of the modern still exists but rather than being old rich white people on the right, it is old rich white people on the left, who pay a lot of political science majors to raise money at environmental groups so they can send us back to the 19th century.
But even in the U.S., where $100 million corporations like NRDC block progress, sane environmentalists like the Breakthrough Institute can somehow survive despite threats against participants and worries about eco-terrorist attacks (in a recent GMO wheat trial in Europe, the budget for security and protection dwarfed the actual cost of the science), right next to Berkeley in metropolitan San Francisco, which is truly in the belly of the anti-science beast.
Dr. Alex Berezow, my co-author on Science Left Behind, which debunked shrill anti-progress environmentalism long before it was cool, spoke at their recent conference, and was probably a little surprised at "the sheer intellectual bankruptcy of mainstream environmentalism" because it has gotten worse rather than better. While much of the world has progressed, entrenched corporate environmentalism continues to retreat into the past. In that respect, it is good that there is an Eco-Modernist approach.
