How Conservation Was Co-opted by An Environmentalism That Put the Planet on A Higher Plane Than Its People
Thomas J Shepstone
Jun 22, 2026
Craig Rucker recently did a 59-minute long-form interview on Restoration Spotlight that covers the history of the climate and environmental movement and provides an excellent overview of the issues, the challenges, and the solutions:
Rucker also points out something critically important to understanding the movements: the causists are essentially anti-human. They view us (not themselves, of course) as the pollution, and when the talk of saving the planet is offered, it’s with a dash of barely concealed bitterness toward commoners. This is because the primary instigators of both movements are NGOs run by and for trust-funders spending the wealth of their capitalist forebears to assuage their sense of guilt at not having done as well as their parents and grandparents.
This brings to mind Heinrich Marx, a German lawyer and part of the educated urban class in the Rhineland. He wrote a letter to his petulant spoiled child son on being rebuffed by a girlfriend who would later marry him anyway:
https://energysecurityfreedom.substack.com/p/how-conservation-was-co-opted-by
