Why radical left modern environmentalists aren’t real environmentalists

And an obvious but overlooked solution environmental problems.

These indescribably beautiful places must be protected. Earth and its pristine places must continue to exist, largely undisturbed, under the peaceful rays of the sun for the next billions of years. But modern environmentalism is not going to ensure Earth’s survival; if anything, it will expedite Earth’s downfall.

“It’s too late”: David Suzuki, an 89 year old former professor and environmental activist, says. “The fight against climate change is lost. What we’ve got to do now is hunker down.” 

At a conference in Milan in 2021, youth activist Greta Thunberg said, “We can no longer let the people in power decide what is politically possible.” She then called out world leaders, yelling, “How dare you!”

In another dramatic (but quite funny) episode, CNN, a leftist media outlet, reported on climate scientists (scientists by the way—science is supposed to discover objective truths) who had predicted that the glaciers in Glacier National Park would be donezo by 2020—melted away. They had even ordered the park to erect signs informing the visitors about this horrible loss. The funny part? Due to “budget constraints,” the park couldn’t even take the signs down after it was 2020—when visitors could still very clearly see that the glaciers were still there. All that “science” and funding for what!

But the point of this essay isn’t to bash the mistakes and weird (ineffective) practices of climate scientists and activists. I myself am a diehard environmentalist—just a different kind: the traditional kind. The kind that John Muir was. The kind that Teddy Roosevelt was. The kind of that Emerson was. Yes, they were all flawed in their own ways, but with regard to environmentalism, their views were spot on. Please read about them and read their work. But this traditional environmentalism is rarer and less spoken about than modern environmentalism. And modern environmentalism is just one of many useless social activism campaigns that fails miserably at achieving its stated goals. Here are my reasons why.

Point 1: In the eye of a moderate, radical left environmentalists do objectively crazy things to achieve equally crazy, percieved, but invisible, results; this makes them hard for the common person to relate to, and thus repels them from environmentalism.

Environmentalists have somehow manifested themselves into a rather interesting, but in my experience accurate, stereotype: the typical lefty with dyed hair (or a weird haircut; one or the other), who drives a Toyota Prius with thirty million “diversity” stickers and flags I’ve never seen before on the rear bumper (no American flag, though), and goes to protests where screaming and crying are informal requirements to participate. For more moderate people, identifying with such a demographic is not so appealing for obvious reasons. It’s unrelatable, it’s weird, it’s too much.

Point 2: Those activists can do whatever they want, and I’ll respect their passion and commitment to do so. But as a traditional environmentalist myself, I can’t help but wonder: are these people—who seem so dedicated to their cause to the point of irrationality—really doing something useful? Are they really inspiring change?

When you look beyond their crazy demonstrations—chaining themselves to trees, screaming at government buildings for hours, and expressing their “true anger”—it becomes more and more evident that instead of making substantial progress (progress being inspiring the masses, and thus the politicians, to enact real change), they actually have achieved the opposite of their goals and made the situation worse. You’d think that wild protests would lead to wild results, right? It doesn’t seem like it.

In fact, according to Gallup, the percentage of Americans who identified as environmentalists was 78% in 1991. That number has fallen to a measly, laughable 41% in 2021. This is terrible—and it clearly indicates that modern environmentalism has failed miserably at fighting for what they purport to protect.

Point 3: Let’s use logic for a second here. What do modern environmentalists want?

Well, they want policy changes. They want world leaders to strip people of certain freedoms (especially private property rights), which fall away in the face of the greater cause of saving the environment and the world. The majority of Californians support Gavin Newsom, who wants to ban gas-powered cars by 2035, which would cost more than $210 billion to enforce and corner Californians into relying on a shaky electric grid while paying even higher electricity bills. (Meanwhile, LA has the most homeless people in the country second only to NYC. Big goals for a state with cities where over 187,000 people are homeless and thousands have to rely on burning fuel for warmth at night.)

Ignoring the obvious problem with government overreach on breaching individual private property rights, here is a large problem with this top down approach. Imagine you were a part of Trump’s MAGA cult, and the king Donald J. Trump has ingrained within your very existence the idea that America is built on fossil fuels and that we should “drill, baby, drill” so we can become energy independent and thrive economically in a glorious age akin to the Industrial Revolution. If one of these activists came up to and started screaming in your face based on the hat you wear, calling you evil and an apathetic villian and this and that, would you be persuaded to join the environmentalist’s cause? Probably not. If anything, the you’re going to be more MAGA after running into that crazy person!

But wait. Isn’t the point of advocacy to persuade the opposite side to adopt your viewpoint? Or maybe to appeal to those who aren’t on a side and have no interest in choosing one? Instead of a partisan fight against the other side who is inhuman and vile? Modern environmental activists certainly act as if the issue will eventually be solved by winning the war described in the latter.

Some concessions before I get to my proposed solution. Yes, there should be a reasonable amount of regulations that are imposed on corporations to ensure the safety of the environment. Yes, I am well aware of how disgusting and unethical companies can be, so yes, they should be paid attention to. No, not all activists are crazy. But you’d be surprised at the size of these protests and how many are actually pretty irrational. This argument is purely against those radical activists who I believe are doing more harm than good for environmentalism.

What modern environmentalists don’t understand is that addressing global climate change and environmental problems have to begin with the individual, not with the leaders. We, and many other countries, live in what’s called a representative democracy: we vote for representatives that we think best describe our viewpoints and what we would like to see get done. Logically, then, if more people were environmentalists—or better, if ALL people were environmentalists—more (or all) of our representatives, i.e. world leaders, would also be environmentalists.

So the first step to addressing these pressing and important issues is to convince more people to be environmentalists. Basic psychology tells us that humans are prone to reverse psychology, wherein we are told to do something and immediately want to do the opposite. It’s evident that this is the case in climate activism—especially in modern-day, hyper-polarized politics. We must ditch these tendencies, no matter how tempting they are, if we really want to make progress on the largest issue threatening humanity.

What does this mean from a pragmatic standpoint? It means we need to persuade people to become environmentalists not by telling them that the environment is great and that we need it and that it’s disappearing (because humans believe things based primarily on physical perception and don’t respond well to bossy cultish people with weird haircuts telling them what to think); but by showing them why nature is so important—why it’s worth protecting, not just that it is worth protecting. People need to discover their own revelation. They need to find out for themselves, independently, why they want to dedicate themselves to this great cause. They need to connect with nature themselves.

As Emerson wrote, when man looks out into nature, it is just nature looking back unto herself. When people see the beauty of nature for themselves, when they’re not too busy making money in the corporate machine or arguing with each other on Reddit, only then can they be convinced to indeed “save the world.”