QUORA QUESTION#7
Posted on: May 30, 2021
QUESTION: WHY ARE ENVIRONMENT AND DEVELOPMENT PROBLEMS SO COMPLEX?
ANSWER: Environmentalism started out with the idea that humans must take care of their environ (surroundings) to enhance human welfare. As for example humans are now better off without smog and acid rain thanks to the hippies and their creation of the EPA. This principle is summed up in the old hippie wisdom that if you shit in bed you will sleep in shit. But then at some point we embraced the Bambi Principle that humans are not part of nature but an evil destructive force on nature so that humans must manage and take care of nature and ensure that there are no human impacts on nature.
This view likely derives from Genesis where humans are given dominion over nature. However this view is so far removed from reality that it has created irrational difficulties and complexities in environmentalism to the point where we are not allowed to have environmental impacts on other creatures as a way of safe guarding Bambi from harm. Yet, all creatures have impacts on all other creatures. This is an essential dynamic of nature and how it evolved to its current state. We are a creation of this dynamic and therefore part of this dynamic and not its manager.
Environmentalism has been corrupted by religion. The contradictions in the Genesis and Bambi views of nature and environmentalism have no resolution and these contradictions create the complexities in the simple idea of environmentalism that created the EPA and created environmentalism. This once great idea of methods to enhance human welfare has been rendered complex with the contradictions of post EPA new age WOKE environmentalism that has thus morphed into do good-ism in a never never world where humans take care of the other creatures. These assumptions have created a field of study with no end to the complexities and contradictions that eco wacko activists and teachers can conjure.
LINKS TO RELATED POSTS
THE BAMBI PRINCIPLE: https://tambonthongchai.com/2020/11/15/the-bambi-principle/
DIVINE ENVIRONMENTALISM: https://tambonthongchai.com/2021/02/15/divine-environmentalism/
Thongchai Thailand 
May 30, 2021 at 10:34 am
Let’s put this into an evolutionary context. Humans evolved to be an exploitative species. They formed cooperative groups but waged aggression against neighbouring competitor groups in order to defend themselves and to gain ecological advantage through conquest of other groups’ lands and possessions (and wives), stealing, and slave making.
We still find it difficult to cease being warlike or exploitative and to cooperate internationally. Because we are a clever (though not necessarily wise), very versatile and exploitative species we tend to suck dry one region’s resources then move onto another virgin region. Or we exploit vulnerable groups. We can also over-exploit a wide range of resources (such as guano and phosphate).
We all aim to gain advantage so we find it extremely difficult to cooperate to solve problems. It’s our inherited nature. But we have to overcome these natural tendencies if we are to have a future on this planet.
Who was it who said “Nations do not have long term friends. They only have long term interests.” In my opinion we have to give up this attitude if we are to make progress internationally. Or am I being naive?
May 30, 2021 at 11:04 am
An interesting view. Thank you very much.