Today I delved into the South Park deep tracks and watched the awesome 3rd season episode called “Rainforest Schmainforest”. In its characteristically sarcastic style this episode follows a kids choir group aptly named “Getting Gay With Kids” as they travel to Costa Rica to sing in protest of the devastation of the Rainforest. The four boys are forcibly swept along with the group and head with them to Central America.
Following the typical South Park episode pattern the boys are the voices of reason in an otherwise inept world filled with clueless adults. The reluctant boys are already skeptical about the group’s goal of “saving the rainforest” and their doubts are vindicated by the harsh conditions they meet upon arrival. Underestimating the danger of the wilderness they quickly get lost and are confronted with giant insects, snakes, carnivorous plants, lack of food, and cannibalistic natives.
Faced with the dangers of the jungle and nearly being killed, the leader of the choir group ends up joining the boys in cursing the rainforest right before they are rescued by white construction workers clearing large sections of the forest. The overall message of the episode is that most people who preach protecting the environment are often those who then go home and probably use 10x the amount of energy and resources than the people actually living in those regions.
This episode highlights the paradoxical thinking of many environmental “protection” fanatics. More often than not they hail from western countries and only have the luxury to care about environmental issues because their society has already passed through a heavily polluting, industrial stage. The episode humorously illustrates the often anti-human-life ideals that more extreme environmentalists hold.
The policies these people advocate would essentially have the effect of either forcing humanity back in time, or in the case of countries like Costa Rica, preventing their progress and development. Nature is unforgiving to the uninitiated–inhospitable to the vast majority of humanity which doesn’t have the skills to survive without modern technology. Nature must be manipulated by man in order for us to survive. To condemn the use of resources and the manipulation of nature is to place nature above human lives.
There is nothing wrong with advocating efficient use of resources and not being wasteful. But this hardly needs advocating for. Businesses (absent government help) can only stay in business by being as efficient as possible. When the environmental costs become too high for the use of fossil fuels or the cost ceases to be prohibitively high for renewable resources then they will stop using fossil fuels. To advocate or force this transition before these developments occur is to retard prosperity and directly hurt real people.
This South Park episode shows the nature is hardly our friend. It takes thought, labor, and cooperation to take resources from nature and convert them to a form that is actually useful to humans. A jungle is a hostile and essentially useless expanse to humanity. However, the trees, lands, and potential subterranean resources have the power to improve the lives of everyone. This episode reminds us to value “untouched” nature only insofar as it benefits real people.