Thursday, February 28, 2008

What Christian Environmentalism Isn't

Ok look. I'm all Nature Girl and everything, but for Pete sake, aren't there better things to do with our money and scientific knowledge than create and fit a prosthetic flipper on a green turtle?

I mean, you know, plenty more green turtles in the sea.

She's pretty cute, I'll admit, but that's kind of the point hey? The non-Christian kind of environmentalism seems to mostly be motivated by sentimentalism. "We all really loved her" so we're going to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on fitting the cute disabled turtle with a specially designed prosthesis.

If it were me, I'd just eat it.

But I guess that's why I couldn't get a job with PETA.

Sentimentalism about animals, BTW, is a characterisitic of middle class white urban dwellers. The kind who march in support of a "woman's right to choose".

John Muggeridge told me once that in his experience, "animal rights" people, as well as vegetarians, are invariably utilitarians who think that the human species is the one that has no right to be here. It turned out to be exactly accurate. Jeremy Bentham, the father of utilitarianism, was also well known as an advocate of "animal rights". To him, the animals had rights, but the humans none.

Pertinent also, was the fact that he was one of the first advocates of welfarism.

It was a pretty cute turtle though. Have to admit.

No comments: