In Support of Santorum’s Environmental Theology

Presidential candidate Rick Santorum’s remark that President Obama’s theology is not based on the Bible was pretty clever. It threw a scrap to his most primitive supporters by implying that Obama is anti-God, or at least anti-Jesus.  That grabbed everyone’s attention so that he could make his real point. Speaking of “radical environmentalism," Santorum said, "I think that is a phony ideal. I don't believe that's what we're here to do ... we're not here to serve the earth. That is not the objective. Man is the objective."

Now I would never vote for Santorum because he is a flaming theocrat and that’s no good for our pluralistic nation. However, he perfectly identified my frustration with the prevailing Democratic view on the environment.  The Democrats’ position is too often based on the idea that nature is good and people are bad—that all the woodland animals were living happily ever after before we showed up.

First of all, there’s an enormous amount of suffering every day in nature regardless of whether it’s been “spoiled” by humans. Do you think it matters to a deer if his head is shot off by a hunter or chewed off by a coyote? Do you think the little sunfish are swimming around reflecting on how there used to be more sunfish before the power plant was built? No. They are fish and animals. We don’t need to concern ourselves with their interests. Protecting the deer and fish population only matters if it benefits humans (which sometimes it does). As Santorum says, our job isn’t to serve the earth, the earth is here to serve us.

All of which brings me to the eagles in Hastings. A judge ruled that the wind turbine project there couldn’t be built because it might kill some eagles. I understand that people like to watch the eagles, but there are lots of eagles.  There will still be lots of eagles even if the wind turbines are built. The eagles that are hit by the turbines will die a little younger than they would have otherwise, but so what? There will still be plenty of eagles to watch. We need the energy.

Many of us have grown up with assumption that human activity spoils nature. My views were tempered by living on a farm where it was far more likely that nature would spoil human activity than the other way around. Nature is no more idyllic than the inner city. It just seems that way when the only time you’re in “nature” is on a sunny afternoon stroll in the woods. We need energy, roads, bridges, housing, taconite, copper, wood and so on. The earth is here to provide its resources to us. It’s okay to take to take from it. Seriously—it’s ok.