Michael Crichton’s paper “Environmentalism as Religion Run Amok” questions the validity of modern day environmentalism. Environmentalism can now be considered a faith-based movement is ignoring modern scientific evidence to promote a “doomsday” scenario similar to that of modern day religions. The author has a clear grasp of the information and facts need to support his argument. He has thoroughly researched and clearly understands the facts and statistics associated with the environmentalism movement. He draws examples from human history, personal experience and scientific evidence to support his claim. He believes environmentalism has moved away from scientific evidence to support global efforts for improvement, to that of a religious movement basing predictions on faith and idealism. This in turn has hurt the movement as the public is misinformed and incapable of making a proper decision to improve our world as many predictions have been failures in the past.
Emotion plays a significant role in helping the argument of the author. He uses emotion effectively to gain the attention of the reader. He does this by referring to the similarities of religion to that of environmentalism. Religion is a very emotional, personal and controversial topic that gets the attention of any reader. He uses religion as imagery, referring to the “Garden of Eden” as an example of an ideal paradise environmentalist are trying to create. He then brings the audience back to the reality of nature and how human beings fit into it. It is very difficult for humans to exist in nature without our modern day technology. We have been separated from nature for so long, and we have an inflated sense of security and confidence that we can survive in nature easily. The truth is, as the author claims, we are susceptible to dangerous terrain, animals and numerous diseases and poisons that can be transmitted by insects. Mankind has a history of death from these exact causes and the society we have built today is what shields us from these dangers.
The author also makes a bold statement “There is no Eden. There never was.” (Lamm, Everett, & Crichton, 2007, pp. 594-599) which is clearly directed at the emotions of any religious person of Judeo-Christian origin. Imagery now becomes the main support for this argument, referring to the brutality of human history. He uses a number of depressing but eye-opening historical statistics such as “four children in five died of disease before the age of five” (Lamm, Everett, & Crichton, 2007, pp. 594-599) and “the average lifespan was forty.” (Lamm, Everett, & Crichton, 2007, pp. 594-599) These facts are used to show, that at no time in human history was there ever an ideal period similar to that of Eden. History is filled with atrocities, the author uses powerful imagery such as “The Maori of New Zealand committed massacres” (Lamm, Everett, & Crichton, 2007, pp. 594-599) and “New Guinea highlanders continued to eat the brains of their enemies” (Lamm, Everett, & Crichton, 2007, pp. 594-599) to support his claim. The emotion and imagery used by the author are not intended to debunk environmentalism and its efforts, but instead help the reader move away from the fantasized idealist vision of environmentalist and instead trust in scientific research and evidence.
The logic the author uses is very simple; the imagery represents the realities we have survived and continue to live in, and modern society is responsible for the improvement of the human condition. He believes environmentalism needs to find a middle ground in which we can continue to live in a modern society that is friendlier to nature. He now moves away from the religious analogies and focuses on previous environmental prophecies he has experienced in his life. He refers to population predictions “As a result, over the course of my lifetime, the thoughtful predictions for total world population have gone from a high of 20 billion to 15 billion to 11 billion—which was the United Nations estimate around 1990—to 9 billion today and, soon, perhaps less” (Lamm, Everett, & Crichton, 2007, pp. 594-599) as evidence of predictions being heavily inflated. He list numerous other predictions such as “We are running out of oil. We are running out of global resources” (Lamm, Everett, & Crichton, 2007, pp. 594-599) as all eventually being debunked. He refers to “Famed biologist Paul Ehrlich projected that 60 million Americans would die of starvation in the 1980s” (Lamm, Everett, & Crichton, 2007, pp. 594-599) as an example of past failures. Environmentalist also conceived “Forty thousand species become extinct every year. Half of all species on the planet will be extinct by the year 2000” (Lamm, Everett, & Crichton, 2007, pp. 594-599), again failed predictions.
He believes predictions such as those are a direct result of environmentalism as a religion rather than a scientific group based on evidence. By preaching “doom” scenarios and constant failures, the public begins to lose trust in the environmentalist movement. This will eventually lead to people not doing anything to improve the environment because they do not know what to believe. He wants environmentalism to return to its roots and use unbiased scientific evidence to help get everyone involved in improving the planet. He believes if science continues to be politicized, mankind will begin to go back to the “internet version of the Dark Ages.” (Lamm, Everett, & Crichton, 2007, pp. 594-599) The statement refers to the amount of misinformation that the public is constantly bombarded. In order to move environmentalism in the correct direction, the author claims “it is time to abandon the religion of environmentalism and return to the science of environmentalism, and base our public policy decisions firmly on that.” (Lamm, Everett, & Crichton, 2007, pp. 594-599)

References
Lamm, R., Everett, J., & Crichton, M. (2007). Dynamic Argument. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin Company.