we sent a copy of lebron to each man and woman who we interviewed and were gracious enough to share their stories with us. we were delighted to hear from patty use e-mail touch us and made us aware how fortunate we are to be the historianswhose e made us aware how fortunate we are to be the historians to the lions and chroniclers. i was so thrilled by the book couldn't put it down. i am so proud to be part of such a wonderful thing. thank you for making me a part of this. if i showed it to the people in my work place and the word spread like wildfire. they came to speak to me and look at the book. i was so choked up by it, my 8-year-old son who was free when i left for iraqthree

when i left for iraq actually understands because of your book -- it is a display how far women have come. sincerely, patricia, united states marine corps. i invite you to stand with patty and become a link in the remembrance of women in the united states military. thank you. [applause] >> thank you. that was such a nice talk and it is so important that women veterans remember our place in

history. as the chronicle our place in history no one else will do it for us and rosemary is one of the women veterans looking so far to do that. we thank you so much for that. [applause] >> we would like to present rosemary with a biscuit of appreciation in recognition of her outstanding contribution as keynote presenter at the 2010 women's professional march. thanks for coming all this way. >> thank you very much. [applause] >> does anybody have any questions for rosemary? yes? >> thank you for the history of

us! [applause] >> it has been an honor to do this. a lot of people i interviewed -- i want to tell you a quick story. the last one i talked about, i was in new orleans, we were at the program at the world war ii museum and when i was born, after it left, and the program, i came up behind a woman with a huge pack on her back. it was the keynote from the desert storm and all with a zipper unzip on the back came up to her to find a bottle of water and i said would you like to do that? she was very gracious. here is a woman i might be able to interview so i hold out my business card and came out of

that. we stood and talked and it was the most interesting, wonderful -- and gracious to let me interview her only on the telephone. she had a son in iraq as mine one, she was in afghanistan and he was in iraq. and devotion to what people go through on multiple levels and being active in the military at the same time. i thank you for being here today and having a chance to tell you some of these great stories about wonderful women and i bet every one of you has a story to tell as well. i encourage you to talk to the families and write things down. thank you so much. >> this event was hosted by the

cincinnati medical center. for more information visit cincinnati.va.gov. next, robert nelson argues environmentalism and economics are leading secular religions in the u.s. today. this becomes obvious when one looks at the debate over global warming. during this 90 minute event hosted by the independent institute he is joined by steven hayward of the american enterprise institute and max stackhouse of the theological seminary. >> we are all set. i am redirect your of research for the independent institute. it is a nonpartisan public policy research organization. every year we publish many books. we publish a quarterly journal, the independent review. and we host for a like this both

here and at our offices in california. our goal is to enlighten the public and better improve public debate and understanding of social and economic issues. hy want to make a note, congratulate mario on winning the nobel prize for literature. and aside from the obvious merits of this, the war at the end of the world is one of my favorite novels of all time. this is important to us at the independent institute for two reasons. mario has a deeper understanding of the foundation of a free society. as a classical liberal and true scholar behind what makes civil society possible. in addition, mario is the father

of outgrow at the independent institute. he is the author of many independent institute books including this one of liberty for latin america. he is generally an all-around great guy. he is fielding telephone calls today but he will be back in the office tomorrow. we're very excited about this. okay. today's forum is about an unusual topic, in number of people have made the argument that the environmental movement has aspects of a religion to it. michael crichton, the novelist, said the environmental movement has a lost eden, state of grace when we had unity with nature. it then has a fall from grace into a state of literal and figurative pollution and this

pollution was caused by a result of eating from the tree of knowledge and of course the environmental movement has judgment day which is coming for all of us. often critiques like this are made from the perspective of economics which is a seemingly rational listed and secular alternative to environmentalism. but our first speaker today, robert nelson, challenges this conventional perspective. economics, argues nelson, also has theological opposition about the nature of the good. being an economist myself i don't always agree with bob's arguments but they do make me uncomfortable. for example for somebody who thinks of himself as i do as a secular thinker it can be disconcerting to find that i am

often preaching the power of the invisible -- bob may have me to write on that. there is some connection. bob is a professor at the university of maryland. he is the author of "the new holy wars," environmental religion versus economic religion in contemporary america. this really is a superb book. it challenges both sides of the debate and i am very pleased to note that the "the new holy wars" was nominated for the grand prize award. for those who don't know offer was the longshoremen philosopher whose book the true believers remains a classic fast movement. bob is joined by two scholars who have fought deeply and

critically about the nature of economics and religion. steven hayward is a fellow of the american enterprise institute where he writes regularly about economics and the environment. he is also an accomplished historian and i would mention in particular his magnificent two volume history the age of reagan. we are fortunate to have max stackhouse with us who is professor emeritus at the princeton theological seminary and general editor of the four volume god and globalization series. in particular the author of the fourth volume which lays out what has been called a moral infrastructure for worldwide civil society. we will begin tonight with bob nelson followed by steve hayward and vax stackhouse and there will be an opportunity for questions and debate and questions and debate and answers from our audience as well.

>> thank you very much. so far, you are fitting my model which is when i tell an economist environmentalism is a religion they all say yes, that is a no-brainer. they recognize there's probably some truth but very nervous with the idea that economics is a religion. it works the other way. if i tell environmentalists that economics is a religion, that is a no-brainer. any number of environmentalists i have dealt with said obviously but then some of them didn't realize i was saying the same thing about environmentalism. they came in for a shock a few months later after they endorsed my book and then discovered all the nasty things i had said about -- they were not

necessarily nasty. some people use religion in a pejorative way. is not a pejorative word for me. i believe everybody has a religion. i have one too. it is hard to figure out. it is really a question, unlike most people and most social scientists i believe we can discuss religion and we don't have to have holy worse all the time although it seems we sometimes end up with them disconcertingly frequently. the other thing i will say is this project and it is up project, i have been engaged in it for 20 years looking at economic and environmentalism. it started out and continues to have a practical surface which

is understanding the world. i find i can't understand the world and what is happening unless i and corporate a large religious element. i thought i would give a little example. i see hundreds of these examples maybe not every year but dozens every year. maybe hundreds. this is from the new york times the last few days. it is called green but still feeling guilty. it is about a colorado couple. i will read from the article briefly. it is about the practices. the renovated stairway is made from reclaimed barn would. the furniture is also made from recycled wood and steel and the coffee table is what that is reclaimed twice having been salvaged from reclaimed would be made at the of floor.

they use only natural cleaning products and are constantly drinking out of a breed of pitcher so there's no need for disposable water files. all the personal care products are organic. and clothes are made from organic cotton and recycled materials. but then they confess that they like disposable diapers and haven't been able to get over jam. and the way they put it, not only do i feel guilt but hypocritical. this is not practically a set of practical measures to protect or preserve the environment in any way that anyone reasonably could

understand. it seems transparent. i think anyone else -- it raises the question of what is the religion? you have a lot of articles like this, you don't have many people -- where do these religions -- rituals' derive, what are the implicit things that make you feel you are doing these recycling and other things make you a morally better person and make you feel righteous or hypocritical when you violate one of these? this is what the project is about on the environmental side. they don't have as many rituals but other characteristics. it can't be explained by normal conventional rational analysis and this has already been mentioned as a somewhat unusual book or may be very unusual

book. it doesn't seem to have any followers which is a problem that i have. there is already somebody nervous about this. most people are either economists or environmentalists and if they are concerned if they get in on the take of they might -- the supplier might be returned to them and how are they going to deal with it? i was at the interior department. it came out of practical experience. i worked in the interior apartment from 1975 to 1993 and during that time the policymaking secretary, very interesting experience. one thing i notice that didn't fit any of the models, taught me graduate school or reading about

in books and social science and and wasn't maximizing economic benefit, or conflict of interest. it was a values struggle where what the interior department was doing was taking action that was symbolically defining what american values were. that had more to do with the policymaking in the department especially the arrangement with low value than any normal economic or political consideration and gradually it dawned on me 30 years ago that this was really religion. i didn't do anything about it for quite a while. i was a little intimidated to write about it myself. but eventually i got up my courage and here i am. but anyway, the purpose of the holding was in some sense to

understand. i am an expert in the interior department but i claim the more look around other areas of american policymaking the more i felt in these areas as well we were looking at fundamental values that people were uncomfortable with. they didn't want to seem to be fighting about religion in public so they essentially masked all their value predictions under pseudoscientific superficial presentation. but if you probe a little bit beneath the scientific explanations they offer you basically found your religion. but they didn't want to call it that so they had to offer all these disguises. so the book "the new holy wars" is kind of like -- to refill real appearance without the

superficial clothes. that is what i have been doing. if you get rid of this, what is a belief? it is also has i was saying partly a reflection on the fact that basically felt a lot of the models i was using just -- they did not explain the world. this led to various books and so forth. getting to economics, in what sense -- what am i saying fis economics is a religion? some say you just mean metaphorically or likes to be provocative and hope you will sell more books if you call it a religion. maybe that is in my subconscious but that is not how i think of it. i mean it literally.

that economics is a religion. in what sense? basically it derives from the fact that a faith in economic progress i would say has been a dominant religion of the 20th-century. and believing that economic progress can save the world and make for a vastly better place leads ultimately to heaven on earth. i argue and don't have time to go through all the people who said these things but if you read the books you can find a number of examples that this has been pervasive as a belief for route at least the last 150 years. and then, if you believe that economic progress can save the world -- it will be the people who know about how to achieve

economic progress. your priesthood will be economists. so what will economists do? their efforts will be dedicated to revealing the true workings of the economy and the path of maximum economic growth. if you believe this will save the world and economic knowledge is your new bible. the place where you go to learn how to respect things and when i talk about perfection through progress it is moral perfection, as immoral as -- has material perspective. wind what about environmentalism. it is similar to economics. it has had a front side and biologists and ecologists, also

claim scientific status. environmentalism is also a project of social change. the earth has its own moral standards and many other ways it functions like a secular religion. they have very different perceptions of the world. this is obviously a critical one of the relationship on different terms. and all kinds of policy implications. for economists, nature is a reason. something we use, to increase

human welfare. and utilitarian sense, and environmentalism is reversed. and resources for the future which is the organization and an environmental organization. there are believers in economics, and environmental amenities. and environmentalism has made two contemporary debate where we are introducing new religion, one of the main areas of this issue of how do we relate to

nature, and environmentalists, intrinsic value, outside human benefits we don't have to establish human benefits for value or protect two good things for nature. or the creation is used in and environmental discussions, to learn environmentalists don't always a god but what they really mean learn about the mind of god manifested in the creation. god is not in the creation, for creation is the product of define design. if you think of seeing this way it will be an immensely spiritual experience. had created and designed by god is a reflection of the mind of god you are learning about.

and an old way of thinking of things in christianity goes back a thousand years and in fact throughout the history of christianity they talked about two ways of learning from god. one is about reading a book of the bible, divine revelation and the other is going in to nature and especially in to the modern era of people believed nature was the original creation. it hadn't been changed much. it was seen as a revelation of god's thinking. of course we know now, we have darwin and all these others things but i claim when environmentalists goes to the wilderness they are still proceeding and experiencing the

wilderness in a classical christian way. although they -- they would be confused. if you asked an environmentalist why are you so spiritually affected by the wilderness? if you are a darwinian scientist for the rest they would not be able to answer the question. i argue in the book i describe something in several chapters which i call environmental creationism and this is something that will definitely not go over well with the environmental community. but i argue there are actually rather surprising affinities and connections between the way environmentalists see nature and the way christian creationist the nature. they both see it as essentially directly a price of god's work so i argue that a lot of

evolutionary biologists are deeply spiritual environment lists are suffering from an internal schizophrenia. they don't know how to exactly resolve. so anyway this conflict which manifests in itself in lots of other ways, often become an embittered, remarkable how much difficulty economists and environmentalists have talking to each other, even a tread a field for each other at times. like heretics or sinners in each other's presence. there is even an environmental philosopher who wrote an article in a respectable environmental journal called why environmentalists should hate

mainstream economists. that was the title of the article. a professor at georgia tech, one of those, and so we then get a whole host of tensions and conflicts. i might mention we have for example when it comes to what are the -- what are the cathedrals of the religion? this is something i write about in the book. i would say that when people in the 20th century especially the middle of the first half of the 20th-century visited a damn people would go -- i call them economic pilgrims -- they would

go to a dam and how would they perceive it? they would receive it in really religious terms. it was a symbol of progress. the dam was controlling nature, raging river falls for the purpose of generating power, creating water for irrigation, providing all these benefits which were all symbols of progress. when i worked at the interior department there were a lot of pain to murals painted in the 30s and the big symbols were not always but often large dams and so this -- the soviet union actually kind of remarkable, they had and is too. before we were in a space war we were in a damn war with the

soviet union. none of the dams actually were much good. a lot of them were wasted money. but they were seen as spiritual or symbolic on both continents. so what has happened to the view of a dam? david broward who for many years was head of the sierra club and one of the leading the environmentalists of the second half of the 20th-century, he said i hate all dams. so why? for him it symbolized the same thing, human control over nature but for him that was evil. for him, nature was innocence and we defiled it. we had the race the part of god's creation if you want to put it in a morphological way.

it was an evil thing to do. on the other hand, what are the cathedral of environmentalism? basically wilderness areas. so what characterizes wilderness? basically minimal amount of -- places with the least amount of human contact. you are most worship sites are defined by the absence of a human presence. we see this not just in wilderness areas but the arctic national wildlife refuge which has become a key symbol for the environmental movement. how is the arctic national wildlife refuge characterized? one of the last untouched places on the earth. it is the absence of human impact which allows us to go

there and see the creation and its original form or at least we might imagine it that way. probably not true, but you don't -- it is easy to get into the mood of thinking it that way. if that is one of the many differences. essentially in some sense to wrap up i had a lot more here but i am condensing it very rapidly. i am not good at time management. i do know that i am getting to an end. at some fundamental level, what you might call the modern project of rationally directed economic progress, organization of society to maximize production, economic welfare, not just because you like

economic welfare. it represents a conviction that for real source of evil and see in in the world has been material scarcity. you see this in the extreme form in marxism. so it is economic deprivation or desperation that drives people to do bad things. so if you have that diagnosis for the presence of sin in the world, then you have a fairly straightforward route of salvation. basically you eliminate economic -- what marks was all about. he thought capitalism was actually necessary because it would lead to the elimination of scarcity and that would be heaven on earth. you move along the personally reject other explanations. what were the other explanations of evil in the world? one would be the fall of the

garden of eden. that is just an old myth. you can reject that one. a more tempting one might be a genetic explanation. people are evil because of their genes. that one is obviously fraught with danger. so people are not really going to go for that. what is left? basically people are shaped by their exterior environments. the most important part in goes economics. if you perfect world you protect the economic environment. what does environmentalism say? that is all wrong. actually we were much better off before all of this. ok, what did modern efficiency get us? it got as the holocaust for example which was old-fashioned anti-semitism married to modern economic efficiency. it got us atom bombs and we might kill ourselves.

in the end. so the modern project of progress, even economists have more doubts about. that is the object of environmental criticism. you can see this with rachel carson who wrote silent spring which is the seminal book starting the environmental movement. until the late 50s, ddt was considered a miracle drug of modern chemistry. rachel carson came along and said it was not true. these modern chemicals and so forth are doing terrible feigns. we worship progress but it has blindness to the negative side and a lot of negative sides are terrible. we have to get off of this kick. that is where environmentalism

is coming from. a lot of people mix them together in day-to-day thinking. the full logic of these things we are completely clashing views of the world. what we're doing in public policies like the interior, and maximize progress and natural resources and environmental religion we want to protect nature for bad things human beings are doing. we try to minimize it. and restore it. since we have ruined so much, restoration is one of the main parts, i went over a little bit.

[applause] >> first of all, on an extraordinary book. i am going to spend my time explaining why congratulations and give -- the richness and complexity to do something we never liked to do. i am in a state of chaos how to comment. i have this massive notes. i hate doing that because there is a huge risk when that happens. i do remember reading one of robert's early books reaching for heaven on earth, theological meaning of economics almost 20 years ago. i am not sure he is right about lot of things but this is really interesting. we think of early march and late

march. but reaching for heaven and earth weatherly nelson and this is late nelson. and god and creation, and subject of environmentalism as religion i remembering when i was in london 15 years ago, slipping around and those classic comedy sketches, the comedy business. and the lord jesus christ return for the second coming the. tonight our guest is the lord jesus christ, back after 2,000 years. i suppose you will be back to doing your usual miracle healing the sick, the lame and turning water to wine and such and jesus says i assume so.

within the limits of sustainable development. there is an ambiguity in that sketch. what exactly is being made fun of? is it religion? that is what the british comedy sketch usually makes fun of or is it environmentalism or both? or is it not had a different level that catches better than philosophy. if they are not catching the denigration of religion at all the jokes work for both sides, and robert's first book sent me back to -- 30 years ago, it was a special issue of public interests in 1980 with the urban crystal road. theology practically ceased to be a respectable form of intellectual activity. the context of this was it was a

special issue about the crisis of economic theory. in 1980 everything wasn't working. and all of the rest of that you might say, the matter turned inside out. we don't have a lot of stock in them right now. the comedy sketch or urban crystals remark his religion is not respectable. one of the things robert explained in several reports including this one is the rise of economics, the deliverer of the idea of progress. and material forces would replace natural or divine law,

and providence. i think he was right to say that economic stakes form of religion. this does not require a leap of faith has religion does. this is something post modernists are on to. they dislike postmodernism or skepticism about the idea of progress really began to gain traction at the moment economics began in trouble in the late 1960s. roberts creates others, talking about economic controversy, at there worse. it is something nobody ever

does, environmentalism is religion. a lot of critics, or taking the phenomenon seriously. i am interested in science and it is a religious creed. and a lot of religious environmentalists who embrace religion and religious analogy. environmentalism like christianity has a lot of diversity. there are different environmentalism is, at all environmentalists really is a range, there is some commonality, and christianity -- and along the way all kinds of differences in style of worship

and baptism and so forth. environmentalists like that too. and a lot of friends and people in between, and a lot of them are going to be made. and environmentalism, they share the premise, enlightenment premise that religion is not respectable and those environmentalists are actually open to it. as roberts said about places like and are being a sacred space and the fullness of that meeting. there are a couple ways to do this it seems to me. in addition to the way robert has done it. another way i analyze environmentalism especially about al gore's famous book earth in the balance, it reminds me on a purely secular level of

martin heidegger's famous argument that technology separated mankind from nature. it has alienated us from nature. the premise of existentialism. if you go back and read -- not sure if it is better in the original german but the translation is difficult. if you read the essay on technology he talks about in the early 50sed we recall what of the ground and burn it, from pollution into the air suggesting that this -- didn't use this word but it is unnatural in a certain way. you see a lot of teams that make their appearance dramatically. he is an atheist and is skeptical of reason too. very late in his life if you know the story of heidegger, a year before he died he said we reach such a desperate position

of man being separated from nature that only god can save us. even he was an open to a religious answer to this problem if you can understand him at all which is problematic. it is interesting stuff. bob raise the deck about environmentalist hostility to economics. i mentioned david brower who was called the arch pruitt of environmentalism, a pagan turn. i don't know if you remember this but i should share this with you. he took out a full-page ad in 1993. the $50,000 ad. the headline of the ad was economics is a form of brain damage. this was going on to say please don't listen to these maniacs

who want you to apply cost-benefit to regulation. joe day. the year before at the real earth summit, the activism said come the revolution we will round of economists and send them to re-education camps. i actually think the real conflict, environmentalists have -- very few environmentalists would say that kind of thing today. a more openly embrace the climate issue, thinking through policy choices but i find their grasp of economics to be at the kindergarten level but that is another story. at the end of the day there is a deeper conflict between conventional environmentalism and christianity. bob hinted at a couple problems.

bob pointed out similarities, between the creation story and man being thrown out of the garden of eden for sin which has wrought parallels to the industrial revolution or other ways to think about it. just as it is possible to make out marxism as a christian heresy environmental religion as bob pointed out is a christian heresy. bob mentioned this but reemphasize this point. there is a completely different view from christianity in the place of human kind in the hierarchy of nature. let me restate that and say environmental religion denies that there is a hierarchy of nature. there is nothing distinctive about the human species above other animals or reject the idea expressed in genesis that man's dominion over nature and

responsible stewardship over nature. it may not be formally an egalitarian but here and there people will point to -- environmentalists will say the person who says something like the concept between a bear and human being i am not sure who i would route for or the government biologist who wrote the article in the los angeles times in 1989 on the end of nature where he said mankind is a play on the planets and until we change our fundamental major as and species we can only hope the right fires will come along. that is the worst expression of environmental religion. hostility toy ready worse not hostility, at least a rejection of the idea that human beings have an exalted place below the angels but above the animals in explicit christian theology. ps our two approachs to fundamentally irreconcilable.

i would suggest. and between economics and environmentalism. i see some progress in baby steps in understanding economics as a tool they need to use because resources as we are saying. you mentioned resources for the future, resources for the future but as one of the original -- osborn in the 1940s road are cluttered planet which was the first in the genre. was interesting their resources of future ended up with a bunch of economists. was the center of the political spectrum resented by the doomsayers. they don't like resources in the future which ready economists tell us things cost more than benefits.

>> i concur it is interesting reading. i had just done my christmas shopping and had a gift for my best friends who are economists. it is this book. and multiple levels, and you could begin by saying that one superficial level, and producers and detectors. producers and protectors -- is that better?

the producers want to transform natural resources to meet human needs and wants, and everyone talks about poverty, it is the same problem. and scarcity and i am reminded of bernstein's west side store where you know the song, what are you guys doing? what is the matter with you? i am depraved on account of i am deprive the. that is the account many people give to the evils of the world. so many people working on the production side, and create wealth of the commonwealth. it is all egoism and selfishness.

that is obviously present also. it was that school of thought. and the destruction of nature to end pollution and stopped disruption and extinction of species to slow global warming and save the earth from techno mania. i love that word. from the early part of last century. we see this all over the place. we see more recently about the date on drilling or nuclear power or now genetically modified sandals and where there

should be done or not or protect the wild fish from genetically engineered fish if we are going to have them out all. but they are not only causes that people have, these two moral sensitivities people have, also covers their interest. you have causes and interests in debate between these two but it is also an ideological problem about the relationship mentioned a few minutes ago about the nature of humanity to the physical universe through technology. are we in nature or over nature? we are both but in what proportion? do we have some balance that needs to be struck work can be struck or we get into one side too much or is it impossible to fulfill the other side? this debate, modern debate on

this topic is prompted by a social factor, the industrial technological capacity to control aspects of nature has been compounded in the last two centuries. if you can do it why not do it? if you can get some beneficial results that seems to confirm your right to do it. it is also doubly compounded by the recession where there is much less confidence in both the engineering capacities and economic calculation of probability. and at the same time because of the joblessness and pressure to grow the economy, enormous pressure, jobs jobs jobs. you heard that in the last few months. and one way people say you have to grow jobs is to grow them green. grosgrain job. still grow but that is not what green advocates want in this

case. it is also compounded by a factor that has not been mentioned which is growth of the nation's state as arbiter and promoter of this kind of thing. that is a political developments. that means whether we want to or not more centralization of the policies, capitalization possibilities to either grosgrain or girl against green. that had enormous political implications. i just thought i would mention that since we are in washington. nelson's argument is not wholly causes and interest that they have but also political ideology. it is cold war and that is the

religious factor. they are people of conviction. what is a religion? this is something bob and i share among other things, definition of religion. comprehensive world view helped by face in part because you can't prove them all to look worldview entirely. what held to be true and just by which we are to interpret reality and do what needs to be done to change reality. in the definition of religion you have descriptive reality and in normative reality. what is going on? what ought to be going on? how do you give work to that? whether it has to have an anchor or not, some kind of reference point transcendence to the way

things are. definition of reality and how or allocation of power to make it effective. notice there is no definition of god in either one of these religions that have been sketched out by bob. sorry, steve. first time i met him though i read him. no mention of god. it is not necessarily to have an idea of god otherwise you would be disqualifying confucianism and other orthodox -- buddhism from this. you have to have a sense of

transcendence. they are secular religions. that is a contribution elson has made to the vocabulary. secular religion. we thought we had one in marks but it turned out not to be religion, just false doctrine. the truth of the secular religions is not based in revelation or ancient wisdom as in eastern religions, but the claim is they are scientifically based as sketched out for us about how fans -- science is value free. value free. they make normative judgments that are not value free. that is part of the complexity of the two positions that they talk about. that part of his work is already

evident in two books, major writings of his. reaching for heaven on earth, 1991 and a decade later, economics as religion from samuel to chicago and beyond and this book about to come out in 2010, a decade later. these two previous books, development of the world views in the economics profession. it has presumptions about what policy is and what policy ought to be that are not scientific but religiously held. these are identified as thomas secular religions in bob's earlier book. in this one he focuses more on the environmental religion. .lead

>>s prospects for redemption or salvation, and they all view their own movements as the agents of redemption. so as the socialists had the idea the proletariat and the capitalists had the idea of industrialists or bourgeois classes, the environmentalists have the idea of naturalists as this redeeming people. and they are all opposing each other in the economics model in

trying to persuade public policy to bend against them. otherwise we're going to have hell on earth. so they tried to establish a theocratic regime without god. that's a good trick. but it would be pure rocktized, hierarchical, a new holy roman empire. bob points out in one place that we had a reformation, maybe we need a new one. while devotees oppose the economic be faith and criticize the false claims of rationality, progress and so forth. another major theme the roman church model did not produce this, this is trot instantism. -- protestantism. the father of the spirit of

capitalism, something which he wrote a long time ago, that we have to protect the natural laws. now, this is engendered by protestant roots, but these two forms of secular religion borrow from that tradition, but they do not have characteristic teachings that in sovereign god providence in spite of sin and a calling to do god's will in the world. they have that. they have that, but that's not god's will, it's natural will, i guess. an agency. but protestantism's influence is not only the protestant ethic of capitalism or technology -- robert merden and the study of

the origins of that. but it also gets traced through the intellectual his i ri. and this is one of the contributions of the volume from john calvin through jonathan edwards, john locke to john muir. [laughter] and that's a terribly inintriguing chapter and i think a contribution to understand our american historical legacy. this cluster of ideas now begins to string together. in the different levels, you can begin to see the interaction of the levels. and the book gets especially interesting for a theologian on this. one to have questions that's been mentioned before but it has to do with the definitions of creation -- by the way, the dispute between the fundamentalists, creationists and the new atheists -- anti-theology, anti-threists -- that's a boring discussion. i can't understand why it gets

so much press. if i had to write a book on physics or chemistry at the level of understanding that these authors have of theology, i would be laughed out of the court. it really is not a serious challenge to any serious view. but the idea of creation does have some resonances which are not picked up by either of these secular religions. if you use the word creation, you imply that there's a creator, and that's something rather remarkable because means there's a source and a norm for the biological world that is somehow supernatural, is transcendent to the natural. and then you begin to look and see both the possibilities from are economic behavior and

progress and the possibilities of having, reducing the destruction of the environment because nature is a gift. and then you get the idea that it's not only a gift, but it's a gift to be treasured, and it's an incomplete gift, a faulty gift because humanity is charged with the duties of having dominion. by the way, dominion's a very tricky word in theology. it comes from dominus which means lord, and how you shall have dominion is treat it the way the lord god would treat it, with loving care. it's not domination in that ordinary sense of it, but an imperialist attitude toward it. but we are charged to develop the culture by tilling the fields and naming the beast. naming the beast means that you

have a personal relationship to those creatures and that you have a capacity, also, to command them when they're disobedient the way good commands us. -- god commands us. but you've got to command the piece and so forth under the watchful eye of the commander. that means you're under norms that you don't make up and don't construct yourself. that's the theological overtones of using the word creator. and humanity is created, too, with certain gifts; reason and will and affection. the capacities for these. of course, all of them can be misplaced and, therefore, we have sin manifest in all sorts of way. you cannot only have nationality, but you can have nationalization. you not only have caring and love and affection, but you can put your loves in the wrong, undesirable objects.

and those can be mixed and compounded in various ways. but they give us the capacity to follow something of what is some calvinist theologians call the cultural mandate, to create cultures that are caring in the way that the lord cares for humans. well, the producer the world sees without god nature as a resource for economic religion, as we have heard, and they see technology is made possible essentially by an oppose bl thumb and a brain that was expanded by additional proteins. and they see progress and efficiency as providential, a substitute for providence. it's like the hidden hand of the economist and its reward for o beend yens is -- obedience is fall into poverty. they perceive the innovation that will cure disease, find new

sources of energy, bioengineer the whole civilization. geoengineer the globe so it'll stop global warming, and that becomes, then, a fan fessation from the theological standpoint of arrogance and pride, not only giftedness. well, the preservers see nature as good creation with sinful humanity violating, raping its beauty, bringing apocalyptic possibilities and world -- and the end of the world. and we've heard about that a little more from bob. but this is not all that bob has argued. this is a glimpse of it, and what he's done is connect the dots between the levels so that one can see you are dealing with a hoistic problem even if parties don't have holistic solutions yet. what shall we make of this contribution? well, i'm not sure sometimes in

the second reading, third reading whether to rejoice or to lament. i rejoice because he's done this expose of the deep roots of the conflicts, and that is a contribution to our moral and intellectual history. but i lament there are some unanswered questions, bob, and i'm going to ask you about this. when you come to your punchline that you're in favor of libertarian environmentalism, well, what does that mean? what is the role of government in libertarian environmentalism? i presume it means maximum freedom with grassroots care for the habitat. i'm all in favor of that. is that all you mean? that could be just a social adjustment that would try to deepen that. but you may have more in mind,

and is it possible that you're wrong about the fact that the christian, judeo-christian traditions are growing increasingly defunct? they may just be covered up, and it may be possible to exhume them, reconstitute them, state them in contemporary terms in a way that is compelling. do you think they could ever become compelling to a contemporary audience, or is it, is the game up on that point? and is it possible to have economic progress that is environmentally sensitive? is there some combination? it seems to me that it would require a larger religious vision than either up with of these two secular -- one of these two secular religions have, and that would be the theological path, and i'm not sure the crop of theologians from whom i've just retired are

up to that task. [laughter] but the task, theology works over generations, and it may be possible to nurture another generation. well, finally, this is a global issue, and many of your examples and many of your treatments are, in fact, national. of course, you're working on national policy all the time. and have a good excuse for that. but can your, can your answers begin to address the global issues? the economic and the ecological don't respect national boundaries anymore, and yet we think still in national boundaries and the power of the nation state. the power of the nation state itself is compromised by the global developments. so where can we go? now, i'm willing to wait another decade for your answer. [laughter] god willing. [laughter]

but i want to say, again, congratulations. this is a magnificent contribution to all of our thinking. [applause] >> okay. i think we have a microphone at the back which will come round. before we get there, though, maybe, bob, you want to tell us what a libertarian environmentalism would look like? >> i'll just say briefly, it was the last chapter of the book. [laughter] it's a little divorced from a lot of the other arguments, but i was trying to figure and say, well, okay, i've been doing all this. by looking at these economics and environmentalism as a religion, so can i say anything about how we are to organize society?

and i don't necessarily, wasn't necessarily the greatest solution, but it was the best i could do. [laughter] and, you know, essentially i guess one way to think about it was to think that maybe libertarian environmentalism is like freedom of religion, and t like this, like protestantism. i come from a protestant background although you might not know it at times. but so you could have a lot of different churches, and they could compete with each other, and each church can do its own thing, and it has to be protected from state interbe appearance. but if you were to translate that model to, you know, a political world and where with states are geographic, it would be kind of, you know, a model where you can do, you can -- i'm not ready to tell people what they should believe.

i mean, i'll probably never be ready to tell 'em. and so i see that in these matters of belief the only thick, and they are so fundamental -- people fight about them, that doesn't work very well. so we ought to let people give 'em a lot of freedom to believe but only, you know, within their own community. and so i'm willing to basically say that a community, this is a physical community and with even it own government can be pretty -- have very wide latitude to have it own religion, if you want to call it that. but as long as you don't try to coerce other people, that would be, you know, something where we need a higher authority to make sure that doesn't happen. and the other thing is to say that everybody has to be guaranteed the right of exit. so if you have a community, you

can't force people to stay. and some outside power will come in and interfere if you try to do that. but beyond that it's a fairy minimal -- fairly minimal role. but you could have a lot of theocracies. just small theocracy. i don't want big theocracy. so that's kind of the vision, but it's probably a little bit rough around the edges. [laughter] but it's a start. it bears some resembles -- resemblance to robert nozic and his idea of utopia. he says, you know, the idea of utopia from the past, there really is no utopia because we don't know what it is. but we can have multiple utopias. so actually if you went back and read anarchy state and, whatever, what's the -- liberty, yeah. anyway, it had some resemblance

to that, but i'm sort of getting there from a lot of other analysis which is actually the heart of the book. >> with okay. there's a questioner at the back and just wait for the microphone and then, please, here it comes. >> lately there's been a lot of buzz in the media about two commercials against global warming. one has, it's a british video of people being executed, school children even, for opposing -- for not reducing their carbon emissions. it's on youtube. and the other one is called no pressure. the other one is a photograph of a girl with a noose around her neck standing on an iceberg that's melting. grievously offensive. so i'd like to know what your perspective on that -- your comments on the perspective that this is growing out of a religion or a twisted version of a religion. >> yeah.

i mean, obviously, there is a certain sense -- well, maybe i'll get up -- in the environmental religion. if you actually pursue some of the logic, you recognize that in environmentalism what's basically good is natural and evil is bad or unnatural. but in environmentalism, people are unnatural. so that means that people are evil. and so if you pursue this logic, it actually leads fairly directly -- and i'm not by any means or even close to the first person to point this out. william cronin, who might consider himself an environmentalist, made the point 15 years ago that there's a certain perversity to the

thinking that human beings are unnatural but then defining good as natural. but you also find in environmentalism like david brower, he's one of my favorite people to quote, but also david forman. they both have said that human beings are the cancer of the earth. and tom watson who was the founder of greenpeace said human beings are the aids of the earth. [laughter] and so now you might say this is extreme, and of course it is, and of course any sensible environmentalist would know even if people were sensible and they've already retracted it as i understand it, but there is a logic to it that actually you can get to the conclusion that the world -- the new utopia if it's not a people utopia, is actually a world without people. and there's actually books now, you know?

popular books. the new utopian literature. >> well, you know about the -- >> a world without, a world without people, i think that's the title of the book. >> the voluntary human extinction movement. i thought their bumper sticker should be, you first. [laughter] >> well, no, i mean, the moderates in this movement say it will be done by just voluntary abstinence from having children. so in 100 years we'll reach our goal. but anyway, so there is a certain sense. the thing about it is that the assumptions that get you there, you know, are embedded in mainstream environmental thinking. now, of course, they never pursue them to that level, and they wouldn't believe it. they'd be actually somewhat distressed, i'm sure, if they actually came to accept my analysis which is that their implicit assumption leads to that conclusion. if you actually are a

philosopher and you rigorously follow the line of, you know, where those assumptions go. but i think most environmentalists i know are actually pretty nice people. [laughter] >> i don't hate 'em. >> you know, i've often said the problem with environmentalists and the left generally is they don't have a sense of humor. no pressure to prove that the problem is worse than we thought. [laughter] >> thank you very much. i've found all the comments very interesting. i have not read the book, i but this morning i read an article in the "wall street journal," quite interesting, on these 24 new dams they're going to put in the amazon tributaries in brazil. in the '60s and '70s they built huge dams with a lot of ecological damage and at the same time produced a lot of power. well, it's a very poor country,

they need power. environmentalists don't like the other forms of power. i don't know, i mean, except for, i suppose, wind and things like that that don't make too much economic sense. and the, in this case, the builders made dams that are smaller and have a different type of turbine to get more power out of it. the environmentalists have sort of posed it -- of opposed it but have been almost defeated by the fact these are not such egregious violations of the environment. so my question to you is -- and i could tell you more of the details, maybe i haven't given enough -- but does that represent a compromise between the economic religion and environmental religion, what they are trying to do with these new dams? >> i mean, i'll take this to respond to something that steve said which is that environmentalism is changing. and i think my critique is

really most appropriately directed at the environmental movement from, let's say, about 1970 to 1995-2000. and there are a lot of environmentalists are, you know, and partly it's because of climate change. you just can't play in the climate change debate without becoming somewhat pragmatic and looking at energy systems and all these other things. and i actually noticed this with my students. i teach this environmental policy at the university of maryland, and i think the students that i'm getting right now who are, they're all basically coming out of the environmental cause. but they're more pragmatic. they're more, as you were just suggesting. and a lot of it does -- they're getting in to questions of, okay, how do we organize society

as a, you know, in terms of the energy systems and everything else? but, i mean, the problem the environmental movement faces is to the extent they get into these, they don't really have very much to offer. they're not particularly good at analyzing these questions. and the contribution that they made in the past was there are sort of unique moral vision. and it was, it was easy for environmentalists to have their vision and have their policy advocacy when what they were advocating was more wilderness areas. that was a direct reflection of what they believed. it didn't fit at all with economic religion. but if you're talking about energy, i mean, both of 'em, you know, they actually start getting closer together on more common ground because we have to -- so i don't know. i mean, i actually do think that the environmental movement itself is in a transitional

stage. and so, but i do think that criticisms such as the ones that i make many this book -- i make in this book have played a modest, maybe more by other people who have gotten more visibility, but have played at least a modest role. i think the honest environmentalists are aware of, you know, these difficulties and the fact that some of their thinking leads to these theological dead ends and so forth. and so they're trying to work something out. and i don't know how it's going to, going to play out. >> i'm a big fan of stuart brand's book which is called the eco-of pragmatist. it's very good. we had a e question back here. >> yes, john burr love, competitive enterprise institute. good to see you, bob.

your lectures enlightening, as always. was wondering if you and other members of the panel could speak to the racism exhibited by environmental leaders, advocating and never taking back that all indian males be sterilized after their third child is born, charles worester, allegedly saying we don't have to worry about side effects of the ban on ddt because it will only effect harmful -- his quote -- mexicans negroes. and americans ugly and a blight on the land. so o o with all the focus on the racism supposedly in the tea party, i'm wondering if they're looking for racism in the wrong movement, and it seems to me this could have some real policy effect because if you don't want a new housing development near you that has blacks and latinos,

you can't express it openly, but you join an environmental movement that says we can't have this because it's you are babb sprawl, and it has the same effect of blocking housing for the poor blacks and latinos. >> i'll let the -- i will say one thing about it. i don't actually think that most, or t a very small number of -- it's a very small number of environmentalists who are overtly racist. few maybe. yeah, some of their solutions like population, you know, in population control i think harden and other people, i mean, basically they thought we had to impose coercive measures but not just on races, i mean, on the whole world. but there is an element of racism that i've actually written about in the book and multiple times. and that has to do with the idea of wilderness and the idea that when we go into wilderness,

we're going into an area which is untouched by human hand. and it turns out that most areas in the world have actually been touched by human hand. [laughter] by native indians, native americans. they burned and they hunted and they did a lot of things, and they may have even, you know, wiped out the mega fauna. so this whole vision that environmentalism offers of nature untouched by human hand, actually, it dismisses the whole presence of native people. who massively altered many of their environments. and so as a fantasy, i mean, you could say, well, what are they doing? i mean, they either don't know anything about the reality of what happened out there which might be true in some cases, or they're implicitly dismissing the humanity of these native people and saying, well, even if they did change it, they don't count. and they're different. or, you know, they're not corrupt.

or something. but anyway, it's putting them in a whole different category from european people. and when -- so it's really only european people who can actually go out and alter the landscape and thereby face or erase god's creation. and there is a strong, implicit racist element in that way of looking at things. but as i say, it's not really -- i wouldn't say it's racist against black people, it's racist in the treatment of any native population, basically sch. let me offer a comment. you know, john, i think it is mostly -- not wholly, but mostly -- a mistake to traffic in those dreadful and embarrassing quotes of those guys. mostly because their a bunch of has beens. i know they're all still alive, but i think it's better to talk about the distributional aspects of environmental policy as they play out in the real world which is race neutral on the service, but i'll give you one example. ten years ago when i was still

living in california and the state was still growing then, but, you know, california had some of the worst regulatory structures making new housing more expensive which meant it disproportionately affected the latino minority in a state. so i said one day at a forum, you know, smart growth could be made out to stand for send mexicans across the river tomorrow, and they went berserk. i how dare you say something like that. i said, well, you know, tell me why i'm wrong about the distributional effects of your policy, and then they get incoherent, of course. you know, i've debated ehrlich, he's a has been, i think. i think it's much better when you're talking to him rather than say, you know, what about this stupid thing you said 40 years ago which, by the way, i've pot to acknowledge that he was wrong about, but i'll say how could you defend that today, and why do you still think you're right today and wrong on your timing? this i think that works