Although it is principled to teach children to care for the Earth, it is unethical to brainwash children to believe the earth is dying.

Children love the Earth. As children we are born loving the animals, the land, and the sky. Over time, we slowly grow separate from that connection and view the land as more of a relative you talk to once in a while. I was one of those kids: I played in the mud and I loved Animal Planet. I un-ironically wore one of those meme T-shirts of the wolves and moons. I also thought the world was going to end by the time I was an adult. I consumed media about the exploitation of the earth at the hands of humans. 90s kids movies like Ferngully: The Last Rainforest featured the evils of humans and their destructive tendencies. Al Gore’s 2006 documentary about climate change, An Inconvenient Truth, played in my grade school class and left me with existential dread.

In college, my professors told me how bad they felt about having children, since the earth was going to be destroyed soon. Even though I attended environmental rallies, I still felt the disconnection between the humanity and the land. It’s obvious, we view the earth as a separate entity. Almost as though we are simply along for the ride and not part of the ride itself.

The majority, if not all, of our problems stem from our disconnection to the earth. Medical discoveries show us that many of the common maladies we suffer from are because we aren’t getting enough time outside, because the stress of our unnatural lives is too inflammatory, because our food is not actually food, or because our cities are designed for cars and not people.

You might agree most of those issues fell under classic environmentalism. However, modern-day environmentalism has been politically hijacked. Years ago, I attended an environmentalist rally in Austin, Texas. There were speakers and different nonprofits, including the Sunrise Movement which calls itself “the climate revolution.” Everything was picture-perfect, there was anger in the crowd, a collective cry. Everyone was crafty with expressing their doom-pill ideas and sadness on their posters. And yet something was off; nature itself seemed to be an afterthought.

There is a clear difference between the priorities of liberal environmentalists and conservative environmentalists: you hang around the liberal ones and they feel guilty about having children, think bugs are the future of protein, and believe the world is overpopulated. Meanwhile if you are around your conservative friends, they might tell you to eat 20 raw egg yolks, return to nature, buy a homestead, and walk around outside in bare feet. Is this the new environmentalist dichotomy?

Tiger Lily (her alias refers to her Native American ancestry) is a well-known Twitter and Instagram influencer who would describe herself as both right-wing and an environmentalist. Last year, she appeared in the controversial documentary hosted by Tucker Carlson, The End of Men. She lives in the American Southwest with her husband and two kids.

I interviewed her about being a non-liberal environmentalist.

What does environmentalism mean to you specifically?

To me it means stewarding the earth. I am a Christian, so I think we are supposed to steward the land that God gave us and take care of it for the next generation.

Our land has been poisoned and [the poison] goes into our food. I want for my daughters to be able to go fishing and not have their fish poisoned with mercury. I am a huge advocate for regenerative agriculture and small farms. It is weird to me that [many] conservatives are not environmentalists, because what are you conserving?

There is a big difference in being a traditional hippie environmentalist that cares about the land versus a climate-change activist. In a lot of ways, leftists try to combat climate change with [things like] wind energy and it just makes things worse. Ireland had this thing a couple of months ago where they were going to euthanize all the cows because of the methane they produce. That is so ridiculous because if you let a cow operate in its natural habitat, like eating grass, they actually sequester carbon. We need them. I would say I am a “traditional environmentalist,” if that makes sense.

One of the reasons why I'm choosing to write about this is because there's people that care about all this stuff that you're talking about, right? But they're not liberal.

There’s the cold, weird, “humans are bad” group of environmentalists. They’re more into veganism and electric cars. Whereas on the other side, you have conservatives on Twitter promoting eating raw beef and going to farmers markets.

Yeah, exactly. If you’re on right-wing Twitter, a lot of them are homesteaders and farmers and they really care about regenerating the land and making sure our food and water supply isn't poisoned—because it is, and these people care about what goes into their body and what goes into their kids’ body.

[These people] ended up becoming environmentalists. And not in the liberal way, like being a vegan. It’s a huge divide. That's why I really try to not to bring up politics…I really like RFK’s policies and I wish that the Republican [presidential] candidate would adopt that. Because it's important to me that our families are healthy and environmentalism goes hand in hand with that. You can't have one without the other, right?

Are you an RFK fan?

There's a lot of right-wingers that are. I do like him on vaccines. He used to be kind of a climate change cultist. He interviewed a libertarian farmer named Joel Salatin on his podcast. [Salatin is] famous in the world of regenerative agriculture and farming, a bunch of right-wingers love him.

In that conversation, Salatin really opened [RFK up] to real environmentalism. So RFK now wants to get fluoride out of the water and incentivize the right ways to do agriculture instead of having these massive feedlots. They are inhumane and horrible for the environment.

Republicans don't really mesh with [RFK]. And that's fine—he's an independent anyways—but I do hope that whoever the Republican candidate is understands that environmentalism is an important thing for a lot of their base, besides old-fashioned boomers who have no idea what’s in their food.

The image of Big Oil Republicans is still very much alive and it seems to keep this conservative anti-environmentalist boogeyman going. Would you say that accurately represents current conservatives?

I tried to redpill my family before about environmentalism but obviously the oil conversation is a difficult one. The industry gives so many people jobs, and people like to have affordable gas. There are many other ways to help the environment. If you ask your average conservative, they probably don’t know what regenerative agriculture is or they probably don’t care about deforestation, to be honest. I think most people don’t have the luxury to think about those things.

I think the most important environmental issues are things like microplastics, which we are actually finding in babies now. We are starting to have many health-conscious conversations, and I think it all ties back into environmentalism. Like you mentioned, if the planet is healthy, then we are healthy.

It is all going to roll downhill eventually. Like when my family realized the government maybe didn’t have their best interests in mind with the Covid shots, then there are [probably] other things wrong with our food and water supply. It’s going to be easier to introduce other conservatives to the circle of stewarding the land if big talking heads like Ben Shapiro and Tucker Carlson speak on it.

Reclaiming Environmentalism

This is not to say nothing good ever came out of liberal environmentalism. Under its umbrella, people all over the world have been inspired to create new inventions. Scientists have researched new ways to create power with the wind, water, and sun. Many have created new types of organic materials that can replace plastic, like a group of scientists in Mexico who developed a new plastic out of avocado pits.

However, a movement is represented by the mindset of the average individual. Although it is principled to teach children to care for the Earth, it is unethical to brainwash children to believe the earth is dying. You become angry and depressed at such a young age, you view humans as evil, and you wait to die. A disdain of humanity is a disdain for nature itself.

It is misguided for vegans to attack meat-eaters, gluing themselves into supermarket aisles, instead of fighting for regenerative farming. No doubt we can all see the horrors of factory farming. It is inhumane and the online videos alone turned many people into vegans (including myself at one point).

Just like there are waves of movements through generations, so too is a new one underway for environmentalism. Women are looking into cycle-syncing and dropping hormonal birth control. Men are suddenly aware of phytoestrogens in soy. A new awareness has bloomed, this time around how environmental consciousness is directly tied to our health.

This is how movements grow like a wildfire. Gen Z is over the doomer environmentalism of the past. We are seeking new ways to connect back to the earth while maintaining a balance with today’s tech-filled world. Instead of despairing, we should build a better future. Regenerative agriculture, earthen homes, victory gardens, farmers markets, and permaculture—these are just a few of the many interests of the new, hopeful environmentalists.

Follow Sofia Oaks on Twitter.

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