Environment Incapable of Hurting or Benefitting

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For a similar argument as below (available only in English) see here (German and English).
Ich argumentiere ähnlich wie im englischen Beitrag unten in diesem zweisprachigen (deutsch/englisch) Beitrag.


From my comment here.

I agree, we need a wealth machine, i.e. capitalism, in place all over the world to make people richer and capable of devoting more resources to environmental issues.

However, Tim Worstall (in the article to which you have provided a link) uses phrases like “to benefit the environment”. A formulation like this still amounts to an unfortunate (and in Worstall’s case presumably an inadvertent) bow to green mythology.

Nothing benefits or hurts the environment, since the environment is not a conscious subject.

There simply is no Gaia, a higher being putatively setting the standards that we need to heed, a superior creature deserving to be admired, obeyed and emulated by us lower beings.

The environment is at best indifferent, but I think it is more appropriate to see it as the worst enemy we have. Unless we subordinate the environment (nature) to our needs and interests, it will quickly reveal its murderous “attitude” toward human beings.

Instead of reverting to Worstall’s misleading phrase (or similar phrases) we should emphasise in our writing that the issue is not “the environment” but “the relationship/interaction of man with the environment”. And this relationship can be conceptualised, comprehended and managed by man alone, certainly not by “the environment”.

The correct phrase is not “to benefit the environment” but “to benefit human beings through our dealings with the environment”. Environmentalism can have no other sensible meaning.

People who deify nature ( = the environment), turning it into a person or even a god, are back to the lowest stage of human development, giving up the foremost human talent, highly advanced nowadays — after countless generations of humans, expending much blood, sweat and tears, have handed these wonderful capabilities down to us — namely our ability to turn the environment into a tool and an arena for human betterment. The question whether something is “good or bad for the environment” is really the question whether something is “good or bad for human beings, given their needs and interest”.

Show no patience for those who pretend that

there are valid standards beyond fallible human counsel (which latter is dubious in the absence of freedom of speech and open discussion),

this supposed higher standard is objective and godly,

this allegedly sacred (but in fact utterly ill-conceived) standard happens to be identical with what the Greens think.