18
Fig. 3.2. Cartoon prepared by
Statoil illustrating a friendly
Norwegian troll bringing an oil
pipeline ashore (trolls are
earthbound giant spirits in
Nordic mythology who existed
before the gods and are associated with large-scale natural
phenomena)
B.W. Flemming
destroyed, or that allowing pipe construction would open the door to the industrial
exploitation of the Wadden Sea.
However, the fact that the final decision of routing the pipe track through the ebb
delta and channel system (rather than across the tidal watershed) was received with
little opposition by the environmental movement reveals two other moral failures. First,
the environmental activists concerned stand accused of submitting to a political appeasement action, although the solution continued to violate the integrity of the national park. Second, by accepting the final route without effective protest the environmentalists appear to have totally ignored the fact that the subtidal channel ecosystem,
about which much less was known than the intertidal ecosystem, would be disturbed at
least as severely as by a crossing along the intertidal watershed. The justification for
such selective campaigning remains obscure and questions its ethical basis. These examples expose some of the contradictory and sometimes even idiosyncratic attitudes
of environmental activists. They illustrate the moral cuI de sac into which the environmental movement has been manoeuvered over the years because of fundamentalist
and uncompromising stands in which there is apparently no room for human needs
and aspirations. At the same time they fuel the green backlash (Rowell 1996} without
realizing the potentially irreparable damage this may inflict upon both their own cause
and the environment.
Fig. 3.2. Cartoon prepared by
Statoil illustrating a friendly
Norwegian troll bringing an oil
pipeline ashore (trolls are
earthbound giant spirits in
Nordic mythology who existed
before the gods and are associated with large-scale natural
phenomena)
B.W. Flemming
destroyed, or that allowing pipe construction would open the door to the industrial
exploitation of the Wadden Sea.
However, the fact that the final decision of routing the pipe track through the ebb
delta and channel system (rather than across the tidal watershed) was received with
little opposition by the environmental movement reveals two other moral failures. First,
the environmental activists concerned stand accused of submitting to a political appeasement action, although the solution continued to violate the integrity of the national park. Second, by accepting the final route without effective protest the environmentalists appear to have totally ignored the fact that the subtidal channel ecosystem,
about which much less was known than the intertidal ecosystem, would be disturbed at
least as severely as by a crossing along the intertidal watershed. The justification for
such selective campaigning remains obscure and questions its ethical basis. These examples expose some of the contradictory and sometimes even idiosyncratic attitudes
of environmental activists. They illustrate the moral cuI de sac into which the environmental movement has been manoeuvered over the years because of fundamentalist
and uncompromising stands in which there is apparently no room for human needs
and aspirations. At the same time they fuel the green backlash (Rowell 1996} without
realizing the potentially irreparable damage this may inflict upon both their own cause
and the environment.