Article 11 of the Constitution of the Republic of Korea states that the state is obligated to identify and guarantee the fundamental human rights of individuals inviolable. However, Article 37 of the Constitution stipulates that all freedom and rights of the people can be restricted by a law only if necessary for national security, order maintenance, or public welfare. The public interests presented by the Constitution are not accurately identified and are very ambiguous. So then, to what degree must we sacrifice our individual freedom?
The sacrifice of individual freedom to prevent the spread of COVID-19 is an excellent example of that question. The pandemic made each country’s government restrict the people’s freedom. In the case of Korea, the government suppressed individual freedom for about two years for the public interest. As a result, people cannot widely meet their families and friends. When they can meet their acquaintance, they should meet less than five people, or all of them should get vaccinated. However, as of February 6, 2022, the result was 30,000 confirmed cases a day. It makes me wonder how long it is practical to suppress individual freedom.
The same goes for the environment.
As science and technology developed with industrial development, side effects such as air and water pollution affected our environment. Pollution wasn’t limited to one country, requiring many countries to cooperate through international agreements such as the Paris Agreement and the biodiversity agreement.
However, it was not until the Third Industrial Revolution that people got interested in the environment. Factory owners sent wastewater from the factory into the river without purifying it. As a result, people who drank contaminated water, such as in the United Kingdom, developed cholera. After cholera, humans contracted more infectious diseases than before. Furthermore, the causation between ozone layer depletion and cancer also worried people.
Many environmental activists moved to protect the environment. These activists do not force people. They instead make suggestions and recommendations for the efforts we must take to protect the environment. However, in the case of eco-fascist activists, they force their radical ideas on everyone to protect the environment, even resorting to killing people.
For those with eco-fascist ideas, humanity’s environmental impact, the root cause of environmental problems, is proportional to “human head number x civilization development.” So the obsession with solving environmental problems inevitably leads to an anti-civilization conclusion that the rampant growth of human civilization is a problem. One such representative of the eco-fascism idea was Theodore John Kaczynski. He killed three people and injured 23 people through three terrorist attacks.
We must protect the environment, but I don’t support eco-fascism. The idea of killing humans and eliminating democracy to prevent environmental destruction is wrong. If we were to protect the environment with such primitive logic, we would have to go back to the Stone Age, catch wild animals, and build a hut. So, I don’t think the extreme stance of eco-fascist ideas is good.
Environmental problems are similar to COVID-19. Just as the government controlling the people long-term to prevent the spread of COVID-19 isn’t practical, a coercive approach to solving environmental issues threatens democracy and individual freedoms and may create new problems. Therefore, I believe the best way is to prevent environmental pollution by using requests and recommendations, not coercion.
- South Korea