By Skip Clement, book review
[dropcap]E[/dropcap]xtremism, according to Greg Walcher, author of Smoking Them Out: The Theft of the Environment and How to Take It Back (American Tradition Institute, 2013), stems from confusion over the difference between conservation and environmentalism – how we regard America’s natural resources.
Walcher believes that conservation is a rational approach to protecting and preserving the environment. “. . . an ethic of resource utilization. Conservationists view man as a natural, invested partner in the endeavor to preserve the environment to ensure its continued, sustainable use by humans.
Environmentalism began as a sincere conservationist movement but subscribes to a view of man as nature’s enemy. Nature itself is revered and intrinsically embodied with value.
Environmentalists seek to limit human access to, rather than allow the use of, nature to advance human life, health, and happiness. Environmentalists perceive man as an immoral, destructive interloper who can interact only negatively with his natural surroundings.” – Janet Levy (American Thinker)
And wow from there on in . . .
It’s hard to say whether Walcher himself is on the extreme end of the scale or just soberly disagreeing. His views follow the beliefs of any thinker who is troubled by laws written by lobbyists and only understood by congressional staffers who enjoy weekends reading thousands of pages of gobbledygook. His non mainstream thinking is refreshing to those who are conspiracy titillated and like to challenge the Sierra Club and like organizations whom Walcher believes have fallen for extremism.
It’s hard to say what the author would have written in 2018? No one ever dreamed of a president gutting laws that protected America’s vast wild places, take public lands and hand them over to foreign and domestic extraction companies, and have a Congress so prostituted by lobbyists that they would not do the right thing – obey the overwhelming wishes of voters.
Click on cover.
Is the Sierra Club, Save Our Wild Salmon, Bonefish & Tarpon Trust, Trout Unlimited, Now or Neverglades irresponsibly perceiving man as an immoral, destructive interloper who has interacted negatively with natural surroundings?
Walcher is an honest postulate of his so-called extremist environmentalist’s theory of the 21st century – believing the more responsible “conservationist” element unpacks the same preservation of our environs more responsibly.
Featured Image: San Juan Islands National Monument (Washington). Photo by Stephen Baker Bureau of Land Management.
