Environmentalism

A recent letter on environmentalism in The Jakarta Post forces me to go back to the subject. We should consider the background of environmentalists. It may show the source of their anxieties.

Westerners began to value security over self reliance. After a lifetime of employment, social security, welfare, and billions of dollars in insurance, they discovered boredom and lack of opportunity, instead of security. Their unchallenging life styles and their neighborhoods, where nothing happens, did not bring them happiness.

The well-meaning westerner keeps looking for the mythical idyllic egalitarian society, from a pre-colonial past. Disenchanted with the achievements of their developed societies, they see developing countries, through rose-colored glasses, as the lost paradise.

They promote zero-growth and want to bring industrial development to an immediate halt, shielding the earth from the technocrats. Four-and-a-half billion years after this planet was formed, after it had been through all the changes such a time span allows, they want to freeze it in its present stage.

Since we are back to greenness, it would be good to update our friends on the latest Greenpeace developments.

OSVALDO COELHO

Bandung, West Java