The past couple of years environmentalism has been a rallying point of so many debates it's become an ignored drone in the background for most people. That is, until this summer when prices for gas skyrocketed. So, now that everyone's pocket books are getting pinched, lots of folks want to talk about it. For years, people who have been crusading for the cause feel vindicated, as if we have a major wake up call and times will change. I am admittedly a little cynical. First of all, I think people need to walk, ride their bikes, sell their car, carpool and get over their obsession with being able to do what they want when they want. In this country, we are lazy and obsessed with having too much per individual.

On top of that, though, I have a bigger issue with part of the environmentalist agenda. Now, I wholly believe and recognize there are people out there who make personal sacrifices and truly live according to the laws of conservation so blindly ignored in the US. But, I also believe there are many who are not being environmentalists because of the repercussions of ignoring this movement, but, rather, because of a larger spiritual movement: nature worship.

In Greek mythology, Gaia was thought to be the spirit of the earth, or the goddess of the earth. Even today there are small groups who espouse nature worship, though, they would hardly admit it as such. In their minds, destroying the environment is killing this goddess. To them, the earth is alive, it possesses spirit and our actions are harmful to this goddess and must be stopped.

Though I doubt many environmentalists would even accept such a claim, let's look at the idea of what we are trying to protect with the movement. The crust of the earth covers the first 35 kilometers of depth as you approach its core. The other 6,343 kilometers are various forms of molten rock and liquid matter. So, aside from the fact that people can't live beneath the surface of the earth, we are only looking at 0.5% of the earth's radius as being affected by our destructive trends. Comparing this to the human body, it's about 1/4 the thickness of the skin on your fingertip relative to the thickness of your finger. So, we know it's not the earth as a whole.

Okay, let's relegate our review to the surface of the earth. There are so many elements that we take into consideration: air, water, land, trees, animals. Pretty much everything that we as humans are in contact with. These things are being polluted and the end result is the environment, that is, everything that sustains life, is being destroyed. Rising water levels don't matter because the water is rising. Rising water levels matter because it is changing the ecosystem. We, the theory goes, are losing precious, rare life because of this.

So, life, not the earth, is the real focus here. I guess as we get closer to ourselves the focus shrinks. Originally, "saving the earth" was the motto of the environmentalists. Now, it's "saw the parts of the earth that affect us and the things we think of that make us realize the ills of our ways". Hmmm, so, environmentalism may have once had the aire of sprituality, nature worship, but, it's a way of looking at the world around us and using it as evidence for the ills of our political and sociological ways.

I guess it really ties into the notion that the American democratic emphasis is on that of ideals, where as republican emphases are on humanity. When it comes down to it, in many realms, ideas prevail in the democratic mind, whereas in the republican mindset, people win over all else. Let's look at abortion. Democrats value freedom; republicans value human life. While both are necessary, neither one, alone, is solely right. Without freedom, human life is really no life at all. Without life, freedom is meaningless. That's just one example. I'm sure it'd be very easy to point out a contradiction to this, but, I think it does illustrate that ideals matter more often than not to some and I believe that environmentalism is often more of an ideological than a humanitarian focus.