# Is the doom and gloom environmental movement another expression of moral/religious anxiety? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [August 14, 2015, 12:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-doom-and-gloom-environmental-movement-another-expression-of-moral-religious-anxiety/727827 "2015-08-14T12:18:04Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2015, 5:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-doom-and-gloom-environmental-movement-another-expression-of-moral-religious-anxiety/727827/21 "2015-08-14T17:32:55Z")
> [@stillownedbysetters](#): > > Much like (some) religions, concern for the environment is healthy and a civilizing influence useful in curbing unfettered human selfishness. However, it does appear as though there as an off-scene Greek chorus intoning “global warming” every time any bit of information comes out that could be perceived as negative. I’ve got a cold today (global warming). I didn’t catch many trout last Sunday while flyfishing (global warming). You get the picture. And it is a wrong one. > **[Does cold weather disprove global warming?](https://skepticalscience.com/global-warming-cold-weather-intermediate.htm)** > > \Since the mid 1970s, global temperatures have been warming at around 0.2 degrees Celsius per decade. However, weather imposes its own dramatic ups and downs over the long term trend. We expect to see record cold temperatures even during global... > [@](#): > > Since the mid 1970s, global temperatures have been warming at around 0.2 degrees Celsius per decade. However, weather imposes its own dramatic ups and downs over the long term trend. We expect to see record cold temperatures even during global warming. Nevertheless over the last decade, daily record high temperatures occurred twice as often as record lows. This tendency towards hotter days is expected to increase as global warming continues into the 21st Century. > **[How cold winters fit in the big picture of global warming](https://skepticalscience.com/December-2009-record-cold-spells.htm)** > > \The cold snap is due to a strong phase of the Arctic Oscillation. This is causing cool temperatures at mid-latitudes (eg - Eurasia and North America) and warming in polar regions (Greenland and Arctic Ocean). The warm and cool regions roughly... > [@](#): > > 2009-2010 winter saw record cold spells > > What the science says… > > The cold snap is due to a strong phase of the Arctic Oscillation. This is causing cool temperatures at mid-latitudes (eg - Eurasia and North America) and warming in polar regions (Greenland and Arctic Ocean). The warm and cool regions roughly balance each other out with little impact on global temperature. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2015, 5:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-doom-and-gloom-environmental-movement-another-expression-of-moral-religious-anxiety/727827/22 "2015-08-14T17:44:41Z")
> [@AnaMen](#): > > I agree wholeheartedly. > > Back in the '70s, they claimed we’d be stacked atop each other from overpopulation, gasping for breath in the smoggy air, and there’d be nary a tree nor animal to be found except roaches and rats by now. This has obviously not come to pass for most of us, in spite of our refusal to mend most of our evil ways. Actually we did. And **Turpentine** is correct, as in the case of vaccines the success in controlling contamination in places like the USA has put in the mind of a good number of people (mostly on the right of the isle) that somehow the solutions are killing us. There is an agenda when that approach is taken. > **[Rachel Carson, Mass Murderer?](https://fair.org/home/rachel-carson-mass-murderer/)** > > Sometimes you find mass murderers in the most unlikely places. Take Rachel Carson. She was, by all accounts, a mild-mannered writer for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service—hardly a sociopath’s breeding ground. And yet, according to many in the media,... > [@](#): > > The problems started in the 1940s, when Carson left the Service to begin writing full-time. In 1962, she published a series of articles in the New Yorker, resulting in the book Silent Spring—widely credited with launching the modern environmental movement. The book discussed how pesticides and pollutants moved up the food chain, threatening the ecosystems for many animals, especially birds. Without them, it warned, we might face the title’s silent spring. > > Farmers used vast quantities of DDT to protect their crops against insects—80 million pounds were sprayed in 1959 alone—but from there it quickly climbed up the food chain. Bald eagles, eating fish that had concentrated DDT in their tissues, headed toward extinction. Humans, likewise accumulating DDT in our systems, appeared to get cancer as a result. Mothers passed the chemical on to their children through breast milk. Silent Spring drew attention to these concerns and, in 1972, the resulting movement succeeded in getting DDT banned in the U.S.—a ban that later spread to other nations. > [@](#): > > Even novelists have gotten in on the game. “Banning DDT killed more people than Hitler, Ted,” explains a character in Michael Crichton’s 2004 bestseller, State of Fear (p. 487). “[DDT] was so safe you could eat it.” That fictional comment not only inspired a column on the same theme in Australia’s Sydney Morning Herald (6/18/05), it led Sen. James Inhofe (R-Ok.) to invite Crichton and Dr. Donald R. Roberts, a longtime pro-DDT activist, to testify before the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works. > [@](#): > > Developing resistance > > At one level, these articles send a comforting message to the developed world: Saving African children is easy. We don’t need to build large aid programs or fund major health initiatives, let alone develop Third World infrastructure or think about larger issues of fairness. No, to save African lives from malaria, we just need to put our wallets away and work to stop the evil environmentalists. > > Unfortunately, it’s not so easy. > > For one thing, there is no global DDT ban. DDT is indeed banned in the U.S., but malaria isn’t exactly a pressing issue here. If it ever were, the ban contains an exception for matters of public health. Meanwhile, it’s perfectly legal—and indeed, used—in many other countries: 10 out of the 17 African nations that currently conduct indoor spraying use DDT (New York Times, 9/16/06). > > DDT use has decreased enormously, but not because of a ban. The real reason is simple, although not one conservatives are particularly fond of: evolution. Mosquito populations rapidly develop resistance to DDT, creating enzymes to detoxify it, modifying their nervous systems to avoid its effects, and avoiding areas where DDT is sprayed — and recent research finds that that resistance continues to spread even after DDT spraying has stopped, lowering the effectiveness not only of DDT but also other pesticides (Current Biology, 8/9/05). Again, the real “based on faith” “religion” and dogma ideas are coming from the ones that are using their beliefs to disparage environmental efforts that were made in the past and what it needs to be done in the future. Interestingly in this case one should notice that there were a lot of deniers of evolution involved when the DDT problem got worse, IMHO it is not surprising that very religious people and groups ignored the science and we can see that religion is clouding the views of the leaders that are involved right now in the efforts to deal with the issues. (not doing much now, again, thanks to their religion) ---
**Author:** ![DrCube](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/a3d4f5/32.png) [@DrCube](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrCube)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2015, 5:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-doom-and-gloom-environmental-movement-another-expression-of-moral-religious-anxiety/727827/23 "2015-08-14T17:56:00Z")
One religious aspect is the idea that God gave humans the world to use for our purposes, so we don’t need to care about extinctions or ecosystem stability, and furthermore, the world will end “any day now” and there’s no reason to worry about long term issues like climate change, deforestation or depleting fossil fuels. On the other side, I do see a Disney-influenced mindset where a lot of people think “Man” is bad for the environment, other animals and basically everything good. Sort of an original sin we all are supposed to put in the hole religious guilt used to fill. Neither of these perspectives are the majority, though. They do kind of move the Overton window towards the extremes, and I bet many of us characterize the other “side” in one of these ways when we think about our political opponents abstractly. ---
**Author:** ![Hari\_Seldon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hari_seldon/32/5173_2.png) [@Hari\_Seldon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hari_Seldon)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2015, 6:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-doom-and-gloom-environmental-movement-another-expression-of-moral-religious-anxiety/727827/24 "2015-08-14T18:04:45Z")
> [@grude](#): > > I’m talking about the absurd and unrealistically gloomy outcomes prophecized for lack of action. Think of say global warming causing the deaths of billions, while it is a real issue and harmful this takes things too far. > > I’m talking about the general view of the issue too. And you know this how? You have studied it at length and concluded that climate change is a hoax. Or you’ve concluded that the global average temperature will go up a few degrees but we will somehow adjust? That the drought in California is just a random blip? Not saying it couldn’t be, but why can’t you pay attention to the people who have spent their lives studying it? Since I am an atheist, I could not have transferred any fear from the religious to some other realm. Also, I am too old to suffer any of the predicted effects, but I have grandshildren. Tell me again how you know it takes things too far. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2015, 6:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-doom-and-gloom-environmental-movement-another-expression-of-moral-religious-anxiety/727827/25 "2015-08-14T18:11:25Z")
> [@DrCube](#): > > Neither of these perspectives are the majority, though. They do kind of move the Overtone window towards the extremes, and I bet many of us characterize the other “side” in one of these ways when we think about our political opponents abstractly. Indeed, it is not the majority. And how I wish that would be the case in congress, but a big part of the problem right now is that somehow the extreme deniers of human induced climate change are getting elected. As I have seen in polls more than half of the Republicans and conservatives do want to see the government deal with the environmental issues. [But the extreme congress critters are not abstract constructs, they do unfortunately exist](https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=lPgZfhnCAdI#t=170). This disconnect has not been deemed important by many but the point is that it should had been and it is bound to make a change if congress continues to go against the EPA and regulations made to deal with the issue. ---
**Author:** ![Wesley\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wesley_clark/32/20581_2.png) [@Wesley\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wesley_Clark)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2015, 6:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-doom-and-gloom-environmental-movement-another-expression-of-moral-religious-anxiety/727827/26 "2015-08-14T18:11:37Z")
Part of it is funding, the scarier you make am issue the easier to raise money to fight it. Plus humans seem naturally pessimistic. From what little I know of it I get the impression climate change will suck but not kill all of us. However I don’t know what happens with the positive feedback loops. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2015, 6:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-doom-and-gloom-environmental-movement-another-expression-of-moral-religious-anxiety/727827/27 "2015-08-14T18:27:46Z")
> [@Wesley\_Clark](#): > > Part of it is funding, the scarier you make am issue the easier to raise money to fight it. Plus humans seem naturally pessimistic. > > From what little I know of it I get the impression climate change will suck but not kill all of us. However I don’t know what happens with the positive feedback loops. I’m actually optimist in the sense that we humans will survive the coming bottleneck. As I pointed before, if we plan ahead or we keep the warnings in mind, we can expect just a very inconvenient change that eventually will stabilize and we will only have to worry of the descendants of Putin having a lot of the food and viable territory. Where I become pessimistic is that to make what it is more likely to happen just an inconvenience, a lot of immigration will have to be allowed. A more free movement of the people from the areas that will be most affected will have to be considered. Unfortunately the latest examples of xenophobia that I have seen coming from Europe, North America, Australia and many other regions tells me that when the issue becomes more serious a problem that indeed would had a better outcome is more likely to become a disaster thanks to other common human faults. ---
**Author:** ![Machine\_Elf](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/82dd89/32.png) [@Machine\_Elf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Machine_Elf)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2015, 6:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-doom-and-gloom-environmental-movement-another-expression-of-moral-religious-anxiety/727827/28 "2015-08-14T18:28:21Z")
Michael Crichton felt that environmentalism and religion had a lot in common. [here’s a speech he gave in 2003 about it.](http://www.hawaiifreepress.com/ArticlesMain/tabid/56/ID/2818/Crichton-Environmentalism-is-a-religion.aspx) ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2015, 6:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-doom-and-gloom-environmental-movement-another-expression-of-moral-religious-anxiety/727827/29 "2015-08-14T18:43:46Z")
> [@Machine\_Elf](#): > > Michael Crichton felt that environmentalism and religion had a lot in common. [here’s a speech he gave in 2003 about it.](http://www.hawaiifreepress.com/ArticlesMain/tabid/56/ID/2818/Crichton-Environmentalism-is-a-religion.aspx) Check post #22, Crichton was a good writer, but a very lousy scientist. > **[Skeptical Uses of Religion in Debate on Climate Change » Yale Climate...](https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2012/08/skeptical-uses-of-religion-in-debate-on-climate-change/)** > > Yale Climate Connections is a nonpartisan, multimedia service providing daily broadcast radio programming and original web-based reporting, commentary, and analysis on the issue of climate change. > [@](#): > > A Brief History of the Global-Warming-as-Religion Meme > > The global-warming-as-religion meme is an offshoot of the environmentalism-as-religion meme, which, according to New American Foundation fellow and Arizona State University Law Professor Joel Garreau, can be traced back to religious critiques of Lynn White’s 1967 essay in Science, “The Historical Roots of Our Ecologic Crisis.” By pinning the ecological blame on the Judaeo-Christian tradition’s instrumental view of nature, these authors argued, White seemed to call for the revival of nature worship. > > Elements of these early critiques were reworked in what is perhaps the most well-known instance of the environmentalism-as-religion argument, Michael Crichton’s speech to the Commonwealth Club of San Francisco in 2003. > > The first\* example of the more specific global-warming-as-religion claim appears to be the aside in Republican Senator James Inhofe’s January 4, 2005, “update” to his “greatest hoax” speech: “Put simply, man-induced global warming is an article of religious faith.” Using slightly different language, Inhofe repeated this charge a few months later in his “Four Pillars of Climate Alarmism” speech.\*\* > > In between these two speeches, in a February 16, 2005, editorial for Capitalism Magazine by American Policy Center President Tom DeWeese, the GWAR meme gained titular status: “The New Religion Is Global Warming.” > > But the most fully developed version of the global-warming-as-religion analogy is the nearly 5,000-word essay published on the Web in 2007 by retired British mathematician John Brignell — who cites Crichton’s 2003 speech in his opening paragraph. As Tim Minchin noticed, the accusation that the basics of the issue were created by a cabal of scientists using dogma is bullshit. > [@](#): > > Storm: “You’re so sure of your position > But you’re just closed-minded > I think you’ll find > Your faith in Science and Tests > Is just as blind > As the faith of any fundamentalist.” > > Tim: “Wow, thats a good point, let me think for a bit” > Oh wait, my mistake, its absolute bullshit. > Science adjusts it’s views based on what’s observed > Faith is the denial of observation so that Belief can be preserved. -From “Storm” by Tim Minchin. ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2015, 7:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-doom-and-gloom-environmental-movement-another-expression-of-moral-religious-anxiety/727827/30 "2015-08-14T19:55:28Z")
I reject the fallacy that concern over increasing human population is “nonsense.” The earth’s human population is heading toward ten billion, and 3/4 of this increase is in the world’s poorest regions. There already is not enough clean water for the people in these areas. We’re already using non-sustainable farming techniques to fee the billions who are already here. You’re in a sports car, going real fast…and there’s a brick wall ahead. By a miracle of technology, we managed to move the wall back a half a mile. Your response is to…speed up? ---
**Author:** ![Robert163](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/4af34b/32.png) [@Robert163](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Robert163)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2015, 9:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-doom-and-gloom-environmental-movement-another-expression-of-moral-religious-anxiety/727827/31 "2015-08-14T21:50:06Z")
> [@grude](#): > > Think of the overpopulation, starvation nonsense of the 70s. We don’t need to think of it, we can see it in parts of India and places in Africa. ---
**Author:** ![Robert163](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/4af34b/32.png) [@Robert163](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Robert163)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2015, 9:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-doom-and-gloom-environmental-movement-another-expression-of-moral-religious-anxiety/727827/32 "2015-08-14T21:56:25Z")
> [@grude](#): > > You have perhaps better phrased what the thing is I’m asking about, and I wonder what this anxiety is or its cause. General Anxiety: Fight or Flight and the Human Imagination Basically, what is more dangerous, to imagine a Tiger in the bushes that is not actually there, or to not notice the Tiger that actually is in the bushes? We have over active imagination and heightened sense of fear to protect us. Also, the same capacity to build bigger and better tools is the same capacity to dream up bigger and better doomsday scenarios. The imagination works in two directions on many different levels. Religion compounds these issues in various ways on top of all of that. I will comment on that later if I get a chance. ---
**Author:** ![bizzwire](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/958977/32.png) [@bizzwire](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bizzwire)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2015, 10:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-doom-and-gloom-environmental-movement-another-expression-of-moral-religious-anxiety/727827/33 "2015-08-14T22:01:46Z")
> [@Hail\_Ants](#): > > Oh nonsense\*!\* > > Just as every cause has its fringe element the environmental one is no different. In fact, it is one of the most notorious for it. Saying that environmental catastrophe is nigh has been part & parcel for the environmental whackos since the 70s. First it was another ice age, then nuclear winter, then over-population, then acid rain Let’s stop right there, shall we? Acid rain was/is real. In the mid 90’s, the Clinton administration proposed fines for emissions of SO2 from coal-fired power plants. The Republicans countered with a new-fanged concept they called “cap and trade,” which was adopted. It worked. Of course, when cap-and-trade was proposed for curbing CO2 emissions by a Democratic administration, it was roundly ridiculed by the right as unworkable. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2015, 10:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-doom-and-gloom-environmental-movement-another-expression-of-moral-religious-anxiety/727827/34 "2015-08-14T22:20:25Z")
> [@AnaMen](#): > > I agree wholeheartedly. > > Back in the '70s, they claimed we’d be stacked atop each other from overpopulation, gasping for breath in the smoggy air, and there’d be nary a tree nor animal to be found except roaches and rats by now. This has obviously not come to pass for most of us, in spite of our refusal to mend most of our evil ways. No one quite said all animals would die by now, so let’s talk about pollution. Maybe you’re not old enough to remember when nearly every weather report in California or New York had an air quality component. They don’t have them now, and both LA and the Bay Area have nice blue skies. Did this happen because pollution was just a figment of our imagination which went away? No, it went away for several reasons, one of which was California requiring cleaner cars than the rest of the country and requiring special gas blends. Which means we pay more for gas - but have beaten air pollution. Worth it to me. I think ti is worth it to most of us. If we didn’t do anything, we might be like China now. Or worse. ---
**Author:** ![AnaMen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dfb087/32.png) [@AnaMen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AnaMen)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2015, 1:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-doom-and-gloom-environmental-movement-another-expression-of-moral-religious-anxiety/727827/35 "2015-08-15T01:35:57Z")
> [@Voyager](#): > > No one quite said all animals would die by now, so let’s talk about pollution. Maybe you’re not old enough to remember when nearly every weather report in California or New York had an air quality component. They don’t have them now, and both LA and the Bay Area have nice blue skies. > Did this happen because pollution was just a figment of our imagination which went away? No, it went away for several reasons, one of which was California requiring cleaner cars than the rest of the country and requiring special gas blends. Which means we pay more for gas - but have beaten air pollution. Worth it to me. I think ti is worth it to most of us. > If we didn’t do anything, we might be like China now. Or worse. Yes, we have made some improvements, but here in the U.S., a lot of that is because the products we love to use and toss are now manufactured in other countries. We each produce more trash than people of past decades and there are more of us, but we are less likely to just chuck it out of our car windows or dump it in the woods. We sure haven’t “beaten air pollution” and we still dump tons of crap into the water. Point is, the gloom and doom was much like the anti-drug messages: exaggerations and scare tactics distracting from the facts and trying to convince everyone that “good” people recycle, only have half a kid apiece, and think that lighting up a joint will be fatal, while “bad” people drive big cars and drop acid. ---
**Author:** ![iiandyiiii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iiandyiiii/32/7924_2.png) [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2015, 1:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-doom-and-gloom-environmental-movement-another-expression-of-moral-religious-anxiety/727827/36 "2015-08-15T01:41:26Z")
I think the “we’re screwing up the Earth” type of rhetoric is a bit screwy and possibly similar to some religious nuttery. We’re not (and we can’t) “screw up the Earth” – the Earth will be fine. Nothing we could do comes close to the kind of damage that natural events (comets, meteors, and volcanic eruptions) can do and have done to the planet. It’s not the Earth that’s screwed by climate change and environmental damage, it’s us. We should be worried about future humans, not the future of the planet. We’re a blip on the planet – Earth couldn’t care less about us. ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2015, 1:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-doom-and-gloom-environmental-movement-another-expression-of-moral-religious-anxiety/727827/37 "2015-08-15T01:46:45Z")
> [@iiandyiiii](#): > > . . . Nothing we could do comes close to the kind of damage that natural events (comets, meteors, and volcanic eruptions) can do and have done to the planet. . . . I’ll disagree, only mildly. If we went totally apeshit and detonated all of our nuclear weapons over our major cities, the result would be worse than most natural disasters. It wouldn’t equal the Chicxulub event, but it would vastly exceed the Tunguska event. Meanwhile, if we let global warming continue without addressing it, the results would be pretty nasty. We’re already in the midst of one of the larger extinction events, solely because of habitat destruction. Large-scale climate change could add a lot of nasty leverage to what’s already happening. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2015, 6:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-doom-and-gloom-environmental-movement-another-expression-of-moral-religious-anxiety/727827/38 "2015-08-15T06:16:07Z")
> [@AnaMen](#): > > Yes, we have made some improvements, but here in the U.S., a lot of that is because the products we love to use and toss are now manufactured in other countries. We each produce more trash than people of past decades and there are more of us, but we are less likely to just chuck it out of our car windows or dump it in the woods. > > We sure haven’t “beaten air pollution” and we still dump tons of crap into the water. Point is, the gloom and doom was much like the anti-drug messages: exaggerations and scare tactics distracting from the facts and trying to convince everyone that “good” people recycle, only have half a kid apiece, and think that lighting up a joint will be fatal, while “bad” people drive big cars and drop acid. The diversion rate for my town is 73%, which means 73% of waste was kept out of landfills. I believe it - I have way less trash than recycling. I know the problems of recycling, but this is pretty good. Yard waste in particular gets composted and I can get two bags of it in the spring. So we are doing better with trash. How would we “beat” air pollution? There is always going to be some. That we can worry about carbon now instead of poisons makes me think we did pretty well. We don’t drop nearly as much crap in the water as we used to. That river in Cleveland may not be clean enough to drink out of, but I had dinner in a restaurant right on the bank of the river, on a patio looking over it, and it didn’t small at all. Quite pleasant, in fact. I have lots of sf stories from the early '70s featuring ecological disaster as the standard future. No more. We actually did something about the problem, and it worked. ---
**Author:** ![grude](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e47774/32.png) [@grude](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/grude)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2015, 7:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-doom-and-gloom-environmental-movement-another-expression-of-moral-religious-anxiety/727827/39 "2015-08-15T07:00:43Z")
How timely! A friend who I like a lot but is obsessed with how humans are raping sweet mother earth posted this just now with his sadness expressed. > **[By 2100, Earth Will Have an Entirely Different Ocean](https://www.vice.com/en/article/by-2100-everything-you-know-about-the-ocean-will-be-wrong/?trk_source=homepage-lede)** > > A complete guide to the hotter, higher, trashier, fish-free oceans of the near future. > [@](#): > > “In a worst case scenario, i.e. one in which we pursue business-as-usual through the end of the century,” the climatologist Michael Mann tells me, “the oceans will look something out of a post-apocalyptic Hollywood flick. ---
**Author:** ![Urbanredneck](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ea5d25/32.png) [@Urbanredneck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Urbanredneck)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2015, 10:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-doom-and-gloom-environmental-movement-another-expression-of-moral-religious-anxiety/727827/40 "2015-08-15T10:41:47Z")
Environmentalism can indeed become a religion if people are worshiping “Mother Earth”. You see alot of it in that movie a few years ago “Avatar”, which was basically one big “Save the Rainforests” and “Love Mother Earth” movie. BTW, what ever happened to the focus on the rainforests? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-doom-and-gloom-environmental-movement-another-expression-of-moral-religious-anxiety/727827.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-doom-and-gloom-environmental-movement-another-expression-of-moral-religious-anxiety/727827.md?page=3)