Podcast here (~37.00 min long).

Delingpole, a British libertarian and anti-environmentalist, interviews Jim Steele, a conservationist who’s worked in the Sierra Nevada who has come to doubt the motives, science and incentives of many people claiming to speak for nature and science.

A heretic?

That’s probably too strong a word and there’s some hyperbole and some ideological rigidity on Delingpole’s part during the interview, but I found myself agreeing with both men often.

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As this blog likes to point out, there are many ideological discontents to whom green is a good fit apart from the natural world and the sciences:  It’s become a touchstone for many secular humanists, statists and collectivists (including some extreme anti-humanists and radical activists). I’ve come across some anti-theists as well as ex-nihilists and rationalists who want to see (R)eason enthroned while flirting with dangerous totalitarian impulses. At environmental protests, it’s not hard to find your garden-variety anti-industrialists and anti-corportatists either.

The list is long.

I’m guessing there’s a large pool of sentiment that drives many to align their pre-existing emotional and ideological commitments to green causes. Some of these people knowingly or unknowingly seek to supplant even science in the name of progress and their ideology.

Whatever you may think about conservation and your relationship with the natural world (beyond value judgments?), the environmental movement has become big business, big politics, and big money.