The Journal: News of the Churches of God

Environmental Marxism is still Marxism

Mr. Knowles, former managing editor of The Plain Truth, published by the Worldwide Church of God, makes his living as a writer.

By Brian Knowles

MONROVIA, Calif.--Marxism, even though history has consistently repudiated its efficacy, continues like a relentless virus to assert itself in the world. One of its most virulent forms is the environmental movement. Environmental Marxism is all the rage in the highest circles of government, especially among globalists.

Let's begin this discussion (monologue?) with a disclaimer: I believe every Christian ought to be an ardent environmentalist. The care, protection and stewardship of the biosphere that provides us with all that we need is a biblically mandated duty for believers. At creation God gave man dominion over all that He had created (Genesis 1:28). That was a mandate for stewardship. Man is the rightful caretaker of the biosphere.

In the beginning the biosphere was a perfect system, designed to sustain in health its myriad life-forms (verse 31). No pollution was anywhere to be found, no imperfections, no environmental "concerns." Sometime between then and now something went terribly wrong.

We Christians and Jews know what it was; it was sin. The environmental mess we have on our hands is the result of sin: the violation of divinely revealed laws. If you study the Bible closely, you will find a pattern of ecodestruction beginning with the first man and continuing apace until the great flood of Noah's day.

After the Flood we find revealed a changed biosphere. For the first time man is allowed to consume meat (Genesis 9:3). We see the nature of animals changed. The relationship of predator vs. prey appears. Man too becomes a predator.

As post-Flood man multiplies, environmental destruction grows. At creation no deserts existed (Genesis 1:31). Yet, after the Flood, deserts expand over the planet. Today some 14 to 28 percent of the earth is desert. Deserts are associated in the Bible with curses (see Jeremiah 17:5-6; Deuteronomy 28:16, 18, 23-24; etc.).

The human race is inextricably bound up in what Paul called "the law of sin and death." Between sin and death is the realm of curses. A major curse is the destruction of the ecosystem that God gave man to bless and sustain him.

True confession

In the '70s I became a serious environmentalist. I joined the Sierra Club and Audubon Society. I even subscribed to Mother Earth News. I fantasized about homesteading self-sufficiently on five acres of Alberta's Peace River country.

But at some point it began to dawn on me that behind these seemingly noble organizations was a political agenda. Their beautiful calendars and magazines belied that they were more about gaining political power than advancing anything like biblical environmental stewardship.

Once I gained a picture of the politics behind these groups, I withdrew my memberships. I wanted, and want, no part of any organization that forwards the cause of socialism or Marxism.

Today the complexion of the environmental movement has changed dramatically. No longer is its Marxism and anticapitalism closeted. They're right out there in the open for all to see.

The political tide of the once-free world is shifting strongly toward the Left. I have written of creeping authoritarianism. It has stopped creeping. It's standing on its hind legs and marching arrogantly forward, aided by a complicit press, media, Hollyweird and half the population.

The ultimate goal is not a clean and healthy environment; it's political power pure and simple.

Environmental issues are relentlessly demagogued to give Big Brother government more and more power over every aspect of the lives of "we the people."

Environmentalists in their own words

The so-called green movement collectively views as the enemy free-market capitalism, conservatism, constitutionality, the Protestant work ethic, patriotism and the American dream.

You think I'm exaggerating? Listen to these words from prominent environmental activists:

· "I think if we don't overthrow capitalism, we don't have a chance of saving the world ecologically. I think it is possible to have an ecological society under socialism. I don't think it's possible under capitalism" (Judy Barri of Earth First, quoted by Walter Williams, June 25, 1992).

· "The immediate source of ecological crisis is capitalism . . . Capitalism is a cancer in the biosphere . . . I believe the color of radicalism today is not red, but green" (Steve Chase, editor, Defending the Earth: A Dialogue Between Murray Bookchin and Dave Foreman, Boston, South End Press, 1991, pp. 57-59).

· "More science and more technology are not going to get us out of the present ecological crisis until we find a new religion, or rethink our old one" (Lynn White Jr., Science, "The Historical Roots of Our Ecological Crisis," March 10, 1967, p. 1206).

In the '70s I collected a fileful of journal articles blaming the "Protestant work ethic" for the corruption of the environment. Christian cultures, they claimed, had been responsible for plundering the ecosystem.

So the Christian faith became a target. It continues to be such.

Having kids should be a crime

We remember the Erlichs' alarmist book The Population Bomb. The Erlichs continue to demagogue population issues and have spawned an army of people such as David Brower of Friends of the Earth. He says, as do the leaders of Communist China, that "childbearing [should be] a punishable crime against society, unless the parents hold a government license."

Keith Boulding, the originator of the "Spaceship Earth" concept, has reportedly said, "The right to have children should be a marketable commodity, bought and traded by individuals but absolutely limited by the state."

Carl Emery of Germany's Green Party is alleged to have said, "We in the green movement aspire to a cultural model in which the killing of a forest will be considered more contemptible and more criminal than the sale of 6-year-old children to Asian brothels."

Do you get the picture? Do you see the kind of people who are behind environmental activism? These people are not out of sync with the movement in general. They are not the lunatic fringe. They are key players.

Grave new world

I could fill this entire issue of The Journal with quotes from others in the movement that reveal the frightening darkness of their hearts. Even the saintly Jacques Costeau is said to have mouthed some genocidal wishes late in his career. He was not alone in advocating mass euthanasia for those who don't fit in.

The brave new world of Orwell's nightmares is not just around the corner; we're in it. Like hapless frogs in a huge cannibalistic pot, the water has heated up without our realizing it.

Many powerful names on the national and international scenes advocate alarming and draconian measures in the name of the environment and with the goal of more power over the human populace for an elite, Marxist few.

The American leaders of the so-called green movement are not interested in upholding the U.S. Constitution. As Bruce Babbit once said, "you can't read the Constitution like a rule book" (Arizona Republic, July 8, 1987).

Maurice Strong, one of the most powerful and dangerous Canadians on the planet and long a key player in the United Nations, said at the 1992 Earth Summit: "Isn't the only hope for the planet that the industrialized nations collapse? Isn't it our responsibility to bring that about?"

These people have an agenda. They want to bring an end to the United States of America as we have known it. They have no interest in, or allegiance to, the Constitution or the rule of law.

Blunt instrument

Within their ranks are terrorists, saboteurs, radicals and anarchists. They are energized by hate and offer nothing but a totalitarian state to replace what they seek to tear down. They have infiltrated every major opinion-forming sector in our culture. Universities are hotbeds of environmental demagoguery. Junk science is their servant. God for them is Gaia, the earth "herself."

From Gore to Gorbachev the armies of environmental Marxism grow at an alarming pace. If they are not checked soon, they will have their malevolent way with the nations of the world.

The United Nations is a blunt instrument in their service. Modern environmental Marxists worship and serve the creation more than the Creator (Romans 1:25), but only as a means of gaining absolute political power.

The life of a stand of trees is more important to them than the life of a 6-year-old boy sold into sexual slavery.

These people are not merely crazy; they are evil. Evil unopposed is evil encouraged.

If you want to bone up on what's going on in the environmental movement, I recommend two books: Eco Scam, by Ronald Bailey, St. Martin's Press, and Green Delusions, by Martin W. Lewis, Duke University Press.

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