[floor2]

Bit of an aside, but it's so wild that we label people as "environmentalists" and that anyone would place themselves NOT in that group.

It seems like 100% of people should want air which is non-toxic, water which is non-toxic and food which is non-toxic.

But of course, being an "abolitionist" was a political group in the 1800s but now it's just assumed that 100% of people are anti-slavery, so maybe the optimistic take is that "environmentalist" will undergo the same transformation as "abolitionist".

[JoeAltmaier]

This black-and-white thinking ignores the spectrum of what constitutes non-toxic. There are those that accept nothing short of perfect purity in air, water and food, a condition which has never existed in a million years of human history. Others are less concerned about humans and more about ecology. Still others value the morals of human-animal relations above issues of nature.

So no, we are not all 'ecologists', not in the same sense anyway. And not to the same degree.

[pasabagi]

There's as wide a gulf between our enviroment[1] and 'complete purity' as there is between slavery and 'complete freedom'.

[1](complete ecosystem collapse, widespread poisoning of populations worldwide, etc)

[Apocryphon]

One assumes that air and water purity was fairly better pre-Industrial Revolution.

[JoeAltmaier]

I'm not so sure. No water systems at all. Lack of covered drains. Firewood for heat in any population center. Tuberculosis and cholera. Unrefrigerated meat.

[Apocryphon]

Sure, but on the other hand no large-scale industrial by-products, no islands of plastic in the sea, the mountains of trash were less durable and closer to being biodegradable.

[sky_rw]

The spectrum lies in what the proposed solution to any man-made ecological problem should be. Typically solutions to these proposed problems require increased cost burden on either individuals or businesses, sacrifices in lifestyle, increased regulation, etc. With anything like this politics comes into play almost immediately.

The way I see it, your 'environmentalist' label generally applies to those who thing we should spend/sacrifice a lot. And the 'climate denier'/'anti-environmentalist' label applies to those at the opposite end of the spectrum who don't think we should sacrifice or spend anything.

Also re: slavery, more people are enslaved now in the world than at any point in history. More black men are enslaved by the prison system in the USA than there were at the height of North American slavery. So things are never so boolean.

[friedman23]

>It seems like 100% of people should want air which is non-toxic, water which is non-toxic and food which is non-toxic.

This is a really low bar for what it means to be an environmentalist.

[colonwqbang]

This is akin to saying that socialism is about promoting justice, and who isn't for justice? So how can there be people who say they aren't socialists?

People may agree in principle on what the end goal is, but disagree about the method to get there. Today the "environmentalist" is a political label like "liberal", "feminist" etc. It has a simple surface meaning but also comes with a lot of connotations and baggage, so that not everyone is comfortable pinning it on themselves.

[nickgrosvenor]

So true.