Lauding Death On Earth Day: The Left's Blindness And Our Repentance

Perhaps I will be forgiven the sin of writing the headline to this essay. Perhaps not. Maybe I will at least be forgiven for extending this grace: Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do. They really don't.

In anticipation of today's Earth Day celebration, The Keene (NH) Sentinel, where I (happily) used to work as a photojournalist, published an in-house editorial with a rather shocking title. Please note that the gist of both the headline and the editorial are perfectly representative of what I warned about in my Contratimes post "Save Us! Unite Us! (A Savior Draws Near?)", that is, that this current Covid-19 crisis will be offered as a perfect reason to save the planet from climate change, as the massive human shutdown that is upon us is good for the planet. Please take notice of what the Sentinel claims:

Earth Day: What ails us seems good for the planet, at least for now

I know, I know. It's incomprehensible ... and reprehensible. How, we might ask, can anyone be so callous?

The lede itself is enough to weep over:

For environmental advocates, we might say of Wednesday’s 50th Earth Day, with apologies to Dickens: “It was the worst of times; it was the best of times.”

The best of times? For death, suffering; horrors?

[...] it’s the best of times to be arguing the science of human-caused greenhouse gases and global warming. The past couple of months have shown indisputably that human activity — vehicle traffic, factories, power plants, etc., are a prime culprit in creating hazy skies and murky waters. Since the bulk of human commerce ceased in places like China, Italy and the U.S., the planet has quickly recovered — at least, at a surface level. Beijing and Los Angeles have been visibly smogless in satellite and aerial views for the first time in decades. The canals of Venice have cleared. Estimates place the reduction of emissions in China at 25 percent in February alone.

The proof, then, is there for all to see. We, as a species, are bad for the planet, as long as we persist in emitting greenhouse gases and polluting air, sea and land. In this respect, then, both the temporary cleansing of the air and water is a welcome Earth Day coincidence. And the lessons to be gleaned may be key to advancing the cause once the heights of the coronavirus crisis have passed.

There is so much that is disturbing here it is hard to know precisely where to begin constructing a counter-argument. Perhaps I could start with the writer's claim the canals of Venice have cleared, which they have, but not because they are less polluted but because boats are no longer coursing through those canals, the very boats which stir up silt from the sea bottom. Such sediment is not, as experts have noted, necessarily pollution. After all, a lot of clear water is clear because of pollution, while a lot of dirty water is harmlessly dirty. (National Geographic, which noted the settled silt in Venice, also cleared up the viral news that dolphins, shown in a video, had "returned" to Venice. They had not. The NatGeo video of the dolphins was taken hundreds of miles away in waters where dolphins normally live. So, too, news of the "return" of swans to Venice: they had never left.)

In the course of my intellectual life I formed (if you will) an argument that, when I have shared it with my progressive interlocutors, has always left them rather peeved and aggravated. It goes something like this:

When we begin, as atheists and evolutionists do, with the idea that there is ONLY the natural world; that there is no God or Being or Force outside the universe; that there is NOTHING but THIS life, this universe, this cosmos; then it is necessarily the case that there is no SUPER nature. ANY idea of the supernatural is laughable, absurd; an obvious delusion, as there is ONLY this natural reality in which we find ourselves. To paraphrase Holy Scripture, in NATURE alone do "we live, move, and have our being."

Thus the problem, especially for the writer of the editorial: there is NOTHING that one can describe as UNNATURAL. Everything is natural -- EVERYTHING. With the force of evolution, chance, and the blind predestination that must obey the laws of chance-driven physics, all that we see, hear, taste, touch, smell; all that is and ever will be, is natural, is the result of nature's unfolding. Gasoline? Natural. Pollution? Natural. Poisons made in labs? Natural. Climate change? Natural. Genetically modified organisms? Thoroughly natural.

All things -- ALL THINGS -- are created by nature, including what the editorial writer describes as a blight on the planet: humans. No matter how destructive or toxic, humans are, by evolution's blind logic, natural. Thus, toxic humans are thoroughly normal.

Which, as you can see, leaves us with the problem that every problem is normal, natural. In fact, there are no problems, really, when we set them inside nature, precisely because there is nowhere else to set them; just as there is no other reference point from which they can be perceived and judged.

To write quasi-poetically, with subtle irony, as the editorial writer did, that a pandemic is a moral and ontological good, is hard to justify, particularly when progressivism, the tradition in which the editorial stands, is allegedly sensitive about language that abuses those who suffer. But no: what AILS us is GOOD for the planet. Death, dying, suffering, are each and all gifts to the planet. (For the good of the many, no doubt.)

Had I written an editorial suggesting the Covid-19 crisis was God's punishment on humanity for, I don't know, immorality, I would receive swift and vicious rebuke. But if I write that Covid-19 is punishment for being a polluting human, or for denying climate "science," or for not being sufficiently progressive in politics; or that this virus is a punishment for xenophobia or lack of "inclusion," I should hardly expect a single criticism from progressives. We know this to be true precisely because of this editorial: humans are bad, and what ails us -- the worst of times -- is really the best of times. After all, or so we are told, the greatest health crisis facing us is climate change.

Which leads to this awful and very real conclusion: since humans are causing climate change, the greatest health crisis facing humanity is a particular SET OF HUMANS. And to what does this sort of conclusion generally lead? I will let you guess, but think genocide.

The recklessness of the editorial is obvious. One cannot honestly deny the cruelty of it all, irrespective of the possibility the cruelty might be accidental, couched in an editorial hastily written by someone who might have needed an Earth Day essay merely to fill space. Nevertheless, the sentiments and ideas expressed therein, slovenly as they are, remain consistent with the worldview of the progressive left.

But I will extend grace: The writer was momentarily lazy, distracted from intellectual discipline because of this Age of Covidity. He is in fact a victim of covidity. He knows not what he does.

So we forgive this happy Earth Day, in the Name of the Holy Earth, repenting for our being ... natural .. and very much of the Earth.

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