EXTROPIAN ENVIRONMENTALISM

Toward an extropian environmentalist ethic. The ideas and values expressed within the extropian community are vigorously individualistic, find the workings of the freest possible market systems as the best current environment for incubating a positive future for humanity and challenge the sacred cows of the fundamentalist "environmental movement." But the core of extropian ideas also values compassion, generosity and a reverence for the beauty and power of the natural living environment of the earth. This last set of values is less well understood outside the extropian community and there is apparently a common caricature of extropians as "selfish, greedy despoilers of the environment".

By and large, extropians find that an "absolutist" evaluation of "nature" is as evil as is a thoughtless destruction of the beauty that nature offers. The hard questions come in deriving the right balance.

No "bright line" can or should be drawn between "nature" and "man". Humans, their technology and their effect on their environment are "natural" because consciousness and its products developed as part of the spontaneous order of the terran biosphere. Thus the concept of a "natural" environment distinct from humanity (or posthumanity), per se, is untenable. Furthermore, such a concept of nature distinct from humanity is not helpful because, unless we advocate human genocide, it is hopelessly vague and confused. But this realization does not justify any human action.

For now, at least, Earth is the only planet of which we are aware that has spontaneously generated a rich biosphere. This phenomenon is scarce. Raw materials for an industrial society that can be found elsewhere than on/in this planet, on the other hand, are not. Earth constitutes a tiny fraction of the mass of the solar system. Even with the primitive survey of the solar system we have already made, we know we can find and exploit elsewhere the resources that an expanding industrial civilization needs.

Extropian environmentalism places a high value on the living wilderness simply because it is rare and options exist and more will exist for the continued technological development of consciousness other than consuming those living wilderness zones. This does not place an unreasonably absolute value on living wilderness, but simply makes preserving it as much as possible one value among many, albeit a great value. Preserving living terran wilderness zones is consistent with the value of spontaneous order simply because life on this planet is, so far, the most complex example of this phenomenon of which we are aware. If for no other reason, mere curiosity about spontaneous order should lead us to interact with at least some of these zones as little as possible, at least until we better understand the processes that gave rise to them and by which they continue to operate.

Post-human beings will have the power to allow the planet that was their cradle to continue to harbor biological life at least similar to that which originally gave rise to them. We don't tear down the Louvre to build apartment blocks, we build housing elsewhere. No one is significantly poorer because of it and at least some people are much richer because of it. Thus, along with buying wilderness zones for their value as such, a privatist environmental ethic also looks to develop technological alternatives to consuming these areas, as much as possible, so that the relative market value of other options will spontaneously support maximal preservation of living wilderness. This is not an absolutist ethic of "sustainable development", but rather simply the economic value free people put on technological and economic developmental pathways that impact the terran biosphere less rather than more.

• The Extropy Institute
• Environmentalism entry in Eric Watt Forste's Extropian FAQ
• Harry Reid's Short Responses to Ten Green Values: a libertarian commentary on the agenda of the "Greens"
  • More complete responses to each of the "Green Values" can be found at Harry Reid's "Beyond Government" page
• Foundation for Research on Economic and the Environment
  • FREE is an educational and research foundation, established to support environmental goals
• based on individual liberty and responsibility and harmonized with economic prosperity.
• Political Economy Research Center
  • "PERC is a market-oriented think tank focusing on environmental and natural resource issues. Our research and policy analysis covers endangered species, forestry, fisheries, parks, public lands, property rights, Superfund, water, and environmental education."
• The Competitive Enterprise Institute
  • Environmental Studies Program: "Instead of relying on the political process to give sustained, long term attention to environmental protection, CEI has developed and promoted an alternative strategy called free market environmentalism."
• The Electronic Drummer: The Thoreau Institute's newsletter.  The Thoreau Institute is a group advocating free market environmentalism.
• The consept of "Wise Use"
  • Ideas espoused at the Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise about rational conservation and, not surprsisingly, free enterprise.
• Excerpts from Greg Burch's posts to the Extropians Mailinglist, from which much of the above essay was taken.
• Phil Goetz on Climax Forests
• Death March Notes: Greg Burch's backpacking page

Thanks to Hal Dunn for many of the great links above.

No Turning Back,Wallace Kaufman (1994 Basic Books; ISBN 0-465-05118-9)

• Highly recommended for anyone interested in environmental issues, the "environmentalist movement" and generally our relationship to nature. Kaufman is a self-confessed "recovering environmentalist", conservationist and science journalist. A listing of chapter titles reveals the scope and subject matter of the book:
• • Confessions of an Environmentalist
  • The Search for Authority
  • An Opposition Movement is Born
  • The Roots of Environmental Thinking in America
  • Searching for a New Sense of the Sacred
  • Winning the Public Away from Science
  • Nature as We Want It: Can the Environmental Movement Adapt to the New Ecology?
  • Who Owns Nature?
  • Technology to the Rescue
  • This is Not the End, But the Beginning
• Kaufman, who has been an "insider" in leading environmentalist groups, traces the anti-scientific development of the American environmental movement from its roots in late 18th century romanticism through it's modern anti-capitalist political activism. He makes a compelling case for privatist approaches to conservation and the employment of advanced, intelligent technology to natural resource management issues. Kaufman explores scientifically reasonable definitions of "nature" in light of the special place of humans and current insight into the chaotic nature of complex systems. His scientifically critical, but ultimately optimistic, approach to environmental questions such as global warming, deforestation, wetlands and wilderness preservation, species extinction, land and other resource use and human