white man's burnden (Break Through)

I get a sense of the common idealism pervading the established environmental clique, as provided by Nordhaus and Shellenberger: the paternal idealist.

Have environmentalists (in the traditional sense) been granted access to that rarefied club of 'father knows best,' with such honored peers as European colonialism, 19th century anthropology, Catholicism in Latin America, Cold War American anti-communist policies?
Just as the 'white man's burden' lay heavy on the British and their exploitation of southern Africa and India, is it now the 'green man's burden' to wrest nature away from humanity for our own sake?

I've always taken zealots of any stripe with a grain of salt if their mantra was rank with absolutism. I'm liberal but not necessarily a Democrat; spiritual but not denominational or scripturalist; deeply in love with my country and American ideals but not a naive warmonger.
The world is cast in shades of gray.
I must admit, however, that I hadn't looked at environmental groups with the same scrutiny until about half-way through "Break Through." Self-righteous yes, but not really misguided. Alas, as Nordaus and Shellenberger detail, all the pieces fit to point to environmentalism as preservationist not for the sake of ecology, but preservationist for sake of protecting its establishment. Like General Musharref or the California Prison Guards' Union, the goal seems to be protection of institutions that guarantee patronage; longevity through power rather than effectiveness.

In the Brazilian context, it seems unthinkable that anyone believes that Brazil's citizenry have less of an interest in protecting the Amazon than foreign idealists. The old adage of not shitting where you eat is perhaps the most powerful argument for Brazil's case for environmental sovereignty. Ironically, I happened to catch the last half of the brilliant film, "City of God," last night, and you'd be damn sure that I'd be running for the Amazon if I lived in a favela.

My only gripe thus far, is the treating Jared Diamond's "Collapse" in the same context as stagnate environmental doctrine. While Diamond has his moments of doomsdaying, he hardly paints indigenous peoples as benign stewards of natural harmony. If anything, his discussion of Easter Island supports the idea of economic and cultural restructuring as a means of environmental stability. Like Brazil (albeit on a much, much smaller scale), Easter Island was a resource-driven economy within a highly stratified society. Competition among the elite came at the expense of both the poor and the environment. Hoarding at the top harmed those at the bottom. Similarly, if Brazil was somewhat more egalitarian economically (I'm not screaming socialism, by any means), there would be less pressure on the lower classes to seek survival at the expense of things like virgin forest and biodiversity.

Paternalism can be a nasty thing. This is is not saying I'm a cultural relativist in any way. Democracy is better than ethnic or religious autocracies. Free-market and idea driven economies do create problems, but they are far more adept at fixing them quickly than state-controlled systems. However, these systems must develop organically to a degree. Hurling democracy or capitalism at a society with no history of either results in a mockery of both. Look at the democratically elected terrorist organization of Hamas, or the wild-west, thug capitalism of Russia. I won't even touch Iraq. Similarly, espousing Euro-American environmental elitism to people without the economic or social luxury of conservation is not only blind, but grossly insensitive to the poor.