A Wall between Environment and State

by Micah Tillman

Your worldview answers four questions, the last of which is, "Why?" Your understanding of humanity -- and therefore of politics, religion, and science -- is shaped by where you locate the source of value, and what you think other things must do to tap into that source.

Since value flows outward from its source into those things which support, serve, enable, further (etc.) that source, it's more proper to call the source a "valuer" than a "value." But since humans are "valuers" too, it is most proper to call it the "prime valuer."

In many (though not all) religions, the role of prime valuer is played by a deity. This is why "God is love"; love is valuation, and God is the prime valuer.

But this does not mean the atheist's worldview has no prime valuer. Every worldview locates the source of value somewhere. It's just that the role of prime valuer is not played by a deity in atheism. Rather, atheists follow the prime valuers prefered by Plato (the Good), or Descartes (Truth), or Kant (Reason), or Camus (Humanity), or Mussolini (the State).

The atheist's options are wide open (which may be why Chesterton says the atheist believes "in anything").

But nowadays, atheists and non-atheists alike are converting to environmentalism above all. Peter Wehner, recently returned from London, reports that environmentalism has become "a kind of proxy for religion in a continent that is increasingly secular." And it makes sense.

Humanism -- the primary modern alternative to theism -- must face as many challenges as theism. "How can Humanity be good when humans are so bad?" is just as troublesome as, "How can the Creator be good when Creation is so bad?"

Many people can only believe in humanity as Robert Heinlein did for so long, and eventually must either cling with Joe Klein to "the perfectibility of human nature," or give up altogether.

(The same process can be seen among progressives when it comes to patriotism. Faced with an unlovable country, they either turn to loving it for its potential/perfectibility, or they give up trying.)

Those who give up on humanism are finding something more transcendent waiting to take over the role of prime valuer: the environment. And with the advent of the Carbon Footprint, environmentalism stands ready to not only structure every aspect of your life (as religion is said to do), but to give meaning and importance to things that never mattered before (like what you eat for breakfast).

Every decision takes on a life-or-death importance. Even your choice of windows or lightbulbs becomes a way for you to "save the environment."

The similarities between environmentalism and religion will not be clear only to those who have read Michael Crichton on the subject, but to those who recognized in the Green Day concert scene from the Simpsons Movie exactly what happens at many Christian rock shows.

"We've had fun tonight with our rock-n-roll music, kids. But now I want to take just a few minutes to talk to you about what's really important."

And just as many Christian pop songs are love songs with "God" or "Jesus" where "Baby" and "Girl" should be (on this subject, see South Park), many mainstream musicians are now doing Christian-style evangelistic concerts and festivals -- with "the environment" where "God" and "Jesus" would be.

None of this is critique. I'm just pointing out the facts.

But the facts should make us ask the following questions:

What meaning does the "separation of church and state" have, if every worldview has a prime valuer in it? Are we supposed to just keep the worldviews with a personal deity in the role of prime valuer out of politics?

Since things only get value by tapping into the source of value, isn't the point of every worldview to show you how to do so? That is, isn't every worldview a kind of guidebook for how to reconnect with what is truly important? And isn't such reconnection exactly what religion is?

What really is the difference between environmental legislation, and religious legislation? Aren't both meant to fulfill the requirements of the prime valuer?

Are you willing to sacrifice humanity for the environment? (Some people are. Others have yet to notice the tension.)

And if you are, how is this devotion to something above and beyond humanity -- which requires you to see the value of human life as derivative, dependent, conditional -- any different from the problems with religion that Dawkins and Hitchens want so desperately for us to see?

One solution to these quandaries is for the environmentalism to be demoted, by incorporating it into some larger worldview. With the environment in the role of prime valuer, it becomes impossible to distinguish environmentalism from religion, and therefore serious political issues arise.

But if the environment is seen as having to derive its value from something higher, environmentalism ceases to be a worldview, and becomes a way of living out part of some higher worldview.

And, I would argue, this is exactly what we need, speaking politically. Each government is already founded on a worldview, and it is the fact that religion (and environmentalism, when the environment is prime valuer) presents a competing worldview that forced the Founders to raise a "wall of separation."

But if the environment can find a place within the worldview which created our government -- if it can tolerate such a demotion -- the conflict disappears. Or, if nothing else, the conflict becomes much less troublesome.

What this would mean, however, is that true environmentalists would have to join all other religious people in bowing to government. Fortunately for them, though, a defense mechanism has already been developed within the other religions.

That mechanism is the idea that there are "different areas" of life. While the government may reign in the "political realm," it is not all powerful in the others. Render unto Caesar the things that are Caeser's, and unto the environment the things that are the environment's.

But that would mean keeping the two separate, not integrating environmentalism into the government's worldview.

And this means environmentalists are faced with the same three options as all other religious people: (1) replacing government's worldview with their own, (2) incorporation by subordination, or (3) separation.

None of the three are easy. Welcome to the club.

Micah Tillman (micahtillman.com) is a lecturer in the School of Philosophy at The Catholic University of America.