You have in our culture two tremendously divided groups debating the topic of environmentalism. You have the industrialist and the environmentalist sparring over the future of our world. For the industrialists you have Rush Limbaugh and clan saying that the world cannot be dirtied, and for the environmentalists you have the college kids crying in fears of total ecological collapse due to the loss of a butterfly in South America.
The two sides are divided in ideology, and both sides are usually blinded. As much as I hate to admit it, Limbaugh is at least on the right track when he says that man can’t destroy the Earth. It’s probably true that if man launched all his nuclear weapons and dumped all his chemicals into the air and water, there would still be life on Earth. Where Limbaugh’s understanding fails is that although there would still be life, it wouldn’t be as beautiful and civilized as we now know—humans could go extinct along with much of the other life, leaving cockroaches, amoebas and algae.
Even if you don’t go that extreme, the environmentalist’s fear is usually expressing a feeling about life itself that is touching to feel. Environmentalists, especially the vocal ones, often are wackos, as Limbaugh might say, in regards to their rationale: our world will not collapse every time a species goes extinct. The proof is that species have been going extinct since life started, and every time one species bows out of the race of life another one jumps in and fills the niche. Our environment finds a balance.
Even so, it seems that we should do all that is in our power to conserve as much as possible the diversity of life and habitat in our world that we possibly can. I wouldn’t argue as the environmentalists often do on the grounds of paranoia, since I’m not feeling fanatical about the topic. But I would argue from the emotional awe I feel for life, for the fascination that life gives. That includes the human race, too. I don’t see why people are either industrialists or environmentalists.