Afraid of spiders?
Here’s something much more worthy of your fear: Living in an advanced society that can be brought to a standstill by the urban religion of environmentalism.
According to a recent news story, a rare spider discovered at a construction site in San Antonio, Texas, has shut down a $15 million project as federal and state officials consider ways to continue without disrupting the spider’s natural habitat.
The spider, identified as a Braken Bat Cave Meshweaver, is an endangered, non-venomous species that lives in caves, has no eyes and is virtually translucent. Josh Donat, a spokesman for the Texas Department of Transportation, said the recent discovery is only the second time the species has been spotted in more than 30 years.
“This is the second individual spider that’s ever been found,’ Donat told a local news station. ‘It’s not like we found 1 of 5,000 individuals in a species. This is the second time this species has ever been seen by human eyes. The last time it was seen was 32 years ago in 1980 in a little piece of property not far from here.”
According to the report, this discovery could halt the project altogether, officials said, as residents who live in the North San Antonio Hills TX area say they’re frustrated with the situation. The project was to make neighborhood roads safer, including for children boarding school buses and the like.
If you wonder why I sometimes write that we live in truly insane times, this is one of the reasons why.
Environmentalism is the ideology responsible for these kinds of political policies. Environmentalism is the belief that the pristine and original state of Earth comes before human needs, human fulfillment, and even human survival.
Environmentalism is a religion. Most religions elevate the notion of a supernatural being—God or Allah—above all else, including mankind. Environmentalism elevates the natural, physical state of a wild earth (ideally, in that view, an Earth uninhabited by man, or at least unimpaired by human needs.)
Like all religions, some adhere to environmentalism more consistently than others. Not all Christians, for example, want gay people denied legal rights or raped women to be forced to carry their pregnancies to term. But if Christianity is applied consistently, and Godly demands are put before individual secular needs and rights, then that would be the policy. Not all Muslims want infidels annihilated, with nuclear force if necessary. But if the religion is followed to the letter of its Koran, that will surely be the outcome.
It’s the same with environmentalism. Not all people who consider themselves environmentalists want human civilization brought to a standstill for the sake of a lone spider’s habitat. But the underlying principle of environmentalism demands that it be so.
The crucial difference between conventional religion and environmentalist religion is that conventional religion (at least in America) does not for the most part enjoy the force of law—while environmentalism does. The EPA and other government agencies have the power to almost arbitrarily impose the creed of environmentalism on private individuals, private property, or even government projects designed to benefit human needs.
I call environmentalism an ‘urban’ religion because it’s largely the religion of leftist ‘liberals’ in the ‘blue’ states or heavily Democratic (often urban) areas. Most of these leftist types are indifferent or hostile to conventional religion. But they’re no less irrational in their own right, by adopting the arbitrary and anti-human standards of the environmentalist movement, and supporting political candidates who keep making these ridiculous policies possible.
Stopping construction projects for the sake of a single insect is not an unintended fluke. It’s the logically inevitable outcome of a philosophy claiming that the pristine state of planet Earth is decisively more important than the well-being of human beings. If you don’t like this policy that’s the outcome of environmentalism, you’re going to have to reject environmentalism itself.
Just as religious zealots want to use government to forcibly impose their views about sex and abortion, environmentalists seek to use the force of government to impose their views through the EPA and other government agencies. One is as anti-human as the other.
While the conventional religious zealots fortunately have not—to date—been able to impose much of consequence on the American population, the environmentalists are enjoying more success than ever before—particularly under the uninhibited regulatory expansion of the Obama Administration.
It’s time to apply the separation of church and state not only to fundamentalist Christians and Muslims, but also to their urban equivalents in the environmentalist movement.
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