You wrote:

"Gar Smith is the epitome of the elitism and anti-humanism of these people. This is your environmental movement, folks."

It took you only four sentences to go astray, and your entire rant is built upon this error, that Gar Smith IS the environmental movement.

Earth Island is but one of many environmental groups, some of whom spend a great deal of time bickering with each other, and Smith's critic Moore notes that he doesn't even have much regard for the Earth Summit attendees, calling them, essentially, political hacks.

It is possible, perhaps even likely, that the environmental movement has been infiltrated by agents provocateurs and others who would pervert the movement or otherwise get it more in step with industry.

At any rate, in the final analysis, there is a germ of truth at the core of Smith's argument: too much rapid modernization may not always be in the best long-term interests of primitive cultures, and it may not be in the best long-term interests of the planet.

Until we develop, perfect and widely deploy sustainable, non-polluting sources of energy, it seems to me that discouraging further growth and consumption would be a wise idea. Solar, hydro, and wind-based sources of power offer great potential with only modest environmental degradation as the price.

But we continue to stoke the petroleum engine. Now we are on the verge of going to war in what some observers see as a blatant move to straddle the mideast oil hubs and bring them under our control.

Changing the compostion of the atmosphere and oceans may have unforeseen consequences, some of which we are just beginning to see. Almost all reputable scientific bodies who have studied the question have come to the conclusion that the Earth's current warming trend is at least partially due to the activities of man.

An automobile with an overheating engine runs almost normally right up to the instant when the radiator blows and the engine stalls.

We have no experience with overheating planets beyond what we learn daily.

Prudence alone, it would seem, dictates we proceed cautiously .

sp

ps. Going to war also may have unforseen consequences.