Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, March 3, 1990 TAG: 9003052167
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A7 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Ecology is a rather complicated and precise science. It is not based on vague notions of food chains, but on exact studies of the ways in which all life interrelates.
The philosophical underpinning of environmentalism is not some form of animism, some anthropomorphizing of animal life at the expense of humankind. Rather, the basic principle of environmentalism is that the life of humankind depends on the continued existence of the planet. We cannot exist on a dying planet. If Earth perishes, we perish.
The extinction of the sea turtle, like any action in nature, is a neutral event. It occurs and nature adapts. Efforts to prevent this stem from an awareness that this is one extinction of up to 100 species per day that the Earth will suffer in the next three decades, the cumulative effects of which are arguably devastating to our planet and thus ourselves.
It is this premise alone that motivates many of us to environmentalism. Face it, we are killing our planet bit by bit. We are not socialists, feudalists, or societal reactionaries, as Hoffman alleges. We simply see the issue in broader terms than the survival of a small group of Texas shrimpers.
Hoffman is arguing against a specific environmentalist position from complete ignorance of the real basis of ecological science. Please, in the future, when you choose your devil's advocates, pick someone who at least understands the issues.\ WILLIAM P. HAY III PILOT
by CNB