ou've got a bunch of rich white people. They go to a third-world country, tell the locals what's best for them and leave, making sure their ideas are enforced without regard for the feelings of the native people.
Sounds like colonialism, right?
Wrong.
It's Greenpeace.
When Penn and Teller's show "Bulls---" covered the environmentalist movement, what they found was a hotbed of anti-corporate, anti-Western rhetoric. Saving the earth, it seems, is just as important as replacing greedy capitalism with some sort of worker's paradise.
Never mind the fact that more industrialized and capitalistic societies take better care of the environment. Rich countries can afford to preserve things like pristine wilderness and the rainforest. Contrast, for instance, the United States' preservation efforts with slash-and-burn farming in the Amazon. The population there is impoverished and unable to take full advantage of what's available, leading to massive waste. The U.S., however, can afford to go out of its way to protect its natural resources.
But if today's environmental movement had been around 100 years ago, this might not have been the case.
A recent documentary called "Mine Your Own Business" addressed this problem, going to places like Bosnia and Argentina and talking to people who were counting on new, environmentally friendly mines opening in their areas. Unfortunately for them, groups like Greenpeace got there first, claiming the mines would destroy the countryside and the peoples' way of life.
But if your way of life involves an outhouse, wouldn't you want to move on? If your way of life means using a horse-drawn cart as your primary means of transportation - even in the winter - wouldn't you be willing to let that part of your culture go?
It's easy for us to get up in arms about this sort of thing. "It'll destroy their values!" we say. "What right do we have to impose our culture on them?"
The answer, of course, is that we have no right. But we don't have the right to hold them back without their consent, either.
One hundred years ago, much of the United States lacked running water, electricity, personal motorized transportation and mass-produced goods. It also lacked the wonders of modern medicine, education and information technology. But throughout the years, when someone came to a small town and installed plumbing or sold cars, people accepted it gladly.
It was progress. Progress meant more people could be educated; more education meant more progress. The economy went like gangbusters (barring the Depression), and pretty soon the U.S. was the most prosperous nation in the world.
And guess what? We still had our culture. We had moved from horse-drawn carriages to cars in a matter of decades, but we were still America.
In much of the world, "local culture" translates directly to "grinding poverty." We look at villages and small farms and have the nerve to call them "quaint" and "charming" while we ignore things like widespread illiteracy and inadequate medical care. What right have we to hold them back from the heights we have achieved?
Stopping economic growth for the sake of environmental preservation is not an effective way to solve the problem of wilderness destruction and pollution. Education, responsible investment and resource management are the greatest friends the environment has.
But most of all, the people involved have to be given the opportunity to grow and make their own decisions. To refuse them this right is the worst sort of condescension: the sort that is kindly meant.
Joanna Lees is a senior magazine journalism major and writes this 'The Scenic Route' for the Daily News. Her views do not necessarily agree with those of the newspaper.
Write to Joanna at jllees@bsu.edu.
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