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Is ecology, the study of natural systems, informed by a will to protect the environment, strictly a "leftist" issue?

No. Emphatically, no. This issue is not at all political. There are political involvements, inroads, backwaters and obstructions, but the issue itself is simply one of logic, sound science, and sustainable economic integrity. It is entrenched opposition to intelligent ecological policy that makes this very basic scientific field into a political hotzone.

In ecology, as an issue, there is no real left or right. Instead, there are three main groups, among which "right" and "left" may overlap: 1) the Interested; 2) the Self-Interested; 3) the Ignorant.

Those who are interested in understanding the world, who are interested in doing right and doing it well, who are interested in knowledge and in a future for their children, are interested in ecology. At varying degrees, the interested will support industrial regulation, even broad taxation, in order to support intelligent ecological solutions. Their interest is to avoid the tragic situation in which one's most common everyday activities contribute mightily to the destruction of our shared environment.

Those who are interested only in their own personal profit, and who have the unfortunate situation of being unable to see beyond the narrow confines of the status quo, these are the narrowest group, but the most vehemently opposed to ecology as policy, as study, as idea. These are the Self-Interested, and they have found it useful to work through right-leaning power channels, but this doesn't make ecology as such a leftist agenda or ideology.

Despite all the efforts of the Self-Interested (which include of course those politicians who believe their office hangs on the whim of powerful polluters), ecology remains a science, supported by fact and demonstrated throughout the physical world, not a policy, not a point of view.

At last, there is the truly problematic group, the ignorant. Millions of people in the US and billions around the world receive no accurate information about ecological processes, at any level. This leads to confusion about whom to believe, the Interested or the Self-Interested, and even how to tell them apart. From the poorest to the wealthiest nations, the majority of people are suffering a self-interested assault by industry, by lobbyists and by politicians tied to these, who benefit personally in the narrowest financial sense, from increased pollution allowances, clearcutting and ecological depletion.

But even this is a false dichotomy. One cannot actually frame the debate as being between those who want to spend to save the environment and those who want to loot the environment for profit, for a number of reasons:

1. Many of the most useful proposals require no payment by anyone except the most serious and systematic violators, whose claimed interests directly conflict with those of 99% of the rest of the population.
   
   
2. It is not true that an intelligent long-term evaluation of the most self-interested course will actually serve such interests, as they are envisioned at present. Each new toxic release of long-term-decay and non-biodegradable pollutants, each forest clear-cutting, has massive future economic costs for all societies. Those whose actions give rise to these costs will be the first, most natural and legitimate targets for reparation, no matter the political climate.
   
   
3. There is much room for capitalization in intelligent implementation of ecological solutions to ecological problems. Some visionary businesses are already learning that ecologically sound methods can be as cost-effective to develop and implement as more common means of power-generation, building and design, or supply-chain management, while being cleaner, more productive, and even self-renewing. Someone, after all, has to produce the mechanisms, the tools, the technology that will make ecologically sound industry possible. Someone will get paid for keeping the world clean.
   
   
4. Ignorance plays a huge role in this false dichotomy. As ignorance wanes and the general population becomes more informed (about the truth, not by false or misleading industry sponsored ads), there will be a direct corresponding upward shift in responsibility assigned to polluters, no matter the legal/regulatory climate in which they contributed their share of the world's environmental contamination and/or depletion.

It is often asserted that there is some logical kinship between right-wing politics and religious groups. And as far as conservative morally-based social policy, there often is, but in other cases, it is tolerant ideal-based social policy to which religious interests are allied. So the left has its place in such associations. But ecology cannot be considered in any respect alien to any religious tradition.

None of the world's major religions promotes the systematic depletion of the Earth's natural life-support capacity. None promotes a divine right for industrial elites to ignore and combat the rights and welfare of the majority of people, for the sole purpose of using flawed methods in place of sound ones. And all major religions assign some level of sanctity to the natural world.

Even strict Creationists, or "Intelligent-Design" theorists, many of whom feel threatened by much of contemporary scientific research, may (and often do) find a home within ecology, because they view the natural world as God's Creation, endowed by the will of the Creator with all the virtue inherent in supporting, sustaining and serving life. That respect for the natural world is the same as the one which both inspires and is engendered by ecology, though they arrive by different roads of inquiry. So religious conservatives who support politicians that support the Self-Interested looters, polluters and poachers, are helping to undermine the very Creation which they defend rhetorically and in prayer.

Integrity between one's beliefs and one's socio-political action is vital, but again, the inclusion of ecological considerations (for their veracity) in that integrity does not make ecology any less scientific or fact-based.

Ecology is science, not politics; ecology is based in fact, not self-interest; ecology serves the vital interests of all, even those who oppose it. This is the nature of truth, not of policy. Ecology is not an "agenda", though it may be adopted by some as support for part of their overall political program. Sustainable development is not a shifty, politically-motivated left-wing contrivance, designed to rain on conservative parades; it is a necessary precondition for any activity which embraces the inherent virtue of life, humanity, democracy, or continuation of such into the future.

© 2002 Joseph Robertson