Charles C. Mann Quote

Road laid out the basic tenets for a now-common way of thought: environmentalism. Environmentalism is more than the simple recognition that polluting a neighbor’s well or destroying a bald eagle’s nest is a bad idea. In most cases that recognition can be viewed as a function of property rights. By poisoning a well, a polluter is, in effect, seizing the water without its owner’s permission. (More precisely, it is seizing use of the water.) The eagles, too, are being taken from their owner, the public. Environmentalism, by contrast, is a political and moral movement based on a set of beliefs about nature and the human place within it. Environmentalists want to stop polluting wells and protect bald eagle nests. But they see the well water not so much as property but as part of a natural cycle with its own value that needs to be maintained. The eagle, for its part, is a constituent of an ecosystem that has an essential integrity that should be protected. Any set of beliefs about the workings of the world is perforce a statement about what is good and important in that world. Environmentalism is an argument that respecting the rules of nature is indispensable to having a good society and living a good life.