Green Guilt Asma Summary

In “Green Guilt,” Stephen Asma argues that people who “feel passionate about saving the planet justify their intense feelings by pointing to the seriousness of the problem…,” but there are feelings of guilt and indignation that make people the necessity to “go green” (25). Asma substantiates his arguments on Friedrich Nietzsche who recognizes that religious emotions, “like guilt and indignation, are still with us, even we’re not religious.”(26). From this last point, Asma explains that environmentalism has emerged as a substitute for religion. Even though people do not believe in God, they need to believe in a “pristine environment”(27). At the end of his essay, Asma points out that people need to save the planet but in a reasonable way. In his overall essay, Asma describes with substantiate and convincing information how

environmentalism has taken advantage of the religious beliefs for managing people’s feelings. Also, at the end of his essay, he presents reasonable solutions to the environmental issues.
First of all, Asma points out that environmentalism has been related to religion.

Nietzsche explains that people need an ideal God in order to have feelings of guilty and indignation. However, people who do not believe in God have seen in the environmentalism a replacement of religion. According to Asma, “We need a belief in a pristine environment because we need to be cruel to ourselves as inferior beings…” (27). With this statement, Asma explains that environmentalism wants to be the same as a catholic or christian religion, and it wants to control people in the same way that religion does. When I watch on TV or listen to the radio news, I recognize that people need to take care about the environment because global warming is ending with our planet. However, the people who tell us the news use extreme arguments that make people to be afraid of the future or crazy. For example, two weeks ago, I watched on the TV news that a man got married with a tree! I did not really understand why this man decided to do this, but did the feelings of guilty and indignation make the man to get married with a tree? What does really want the

environmentalism?
Environmentalism wants to make passive human beings. It really does not want to salve the planet, it wants to create panic on the world. As Asma finalizes his essay, “But environmentalism, like other ism, has the potential for dogmatic zeal and obsession” (29). With this point, he highlights the idea that although environmentalism has made good things, it has made obsessive people about environment. They die for a tree and get married with it. It does not make solutions to environmental issues, they just justify their bad feelings. I want to have a better planet but with real actions. I like to volunteer cleaning the streets from my neighborhood, and plant trees on my yard. I believe that environmentalism does not need to be so radical, it needs to be balanced and people who follow this religion need to act with realism not with idealism.
Asma explains very well his points about what is the main reason that lead people to behave in a radical way through the environment. Also, he describes how environmentalism wants to be the same as God and establish the same religious beliefs in people. It has made frightened people instead of active people who want to rescue the world. With this last point, people need to look inside their minds and think about what is the real purpose of the environmentalism. Does it want to rescue the world or to have an empty world?