Central to the Christian mythology is the tale of the perfect Garden of Eden, despoiled by the sin of mankind. And I believe that this myth forms the essential motif of modern environmentalism. The roots of the tree may be from a seed planted in Eden, but the trunk grows straight up through Rousseau and Muir to feed the leaves of the modern Green movement.

In every statement the Greenies issue, all the key elements of the Eden story are there: nature, perfect in its innocence, is ruined forever by Man, who brings discord, because that’s simply his flawed nature. It’s just Adam and Eve all over again.

Except in the Eco-Genesis, Man’s original sin is not disobedience, but economic development. No historical event better embodies this persistent allegory than the settlement of North America by Europeans. The long spread of Adam and Eve Smith throughout the American Eden is a propaganda goldmine for the post-Christian left.

One nugget is the havoc brought by the Erie Canal. This canal was crucial historically, integrating the Midwest into the United States and setting the precedent for future infrastructure improvements, from railroads to electric grids. So it would be convenient if the Erie Canal was associated with some apocryphal tale of the destruction of pre-Columbian Eden. And so of course it is.

The grand hubristic canal, stretching from the Hudson to Lakes Ontario and Erie, conveyed not just smallpox, money, and settlers, but also a hideous serpent, the Sea Lamprey, which despoiled the aquatic Eden of Lake Ontario in a diabolical fashion. Once home to schools of trout so prolific that the lake seemed to writhe with fish, the slimy lampreys attacked victims by the millions, rasping holes into their bloodstreams and sucking the fish dry – until nothing was left but shriveled carcasses washed up on the shore of lake symbolism. What a perfect metaphor it was: the ugly newcomer from the North Atlantic, parasitizing the idyllic natives unto extermination. They could have renamed the lamprey the “Columbus Fish.”

The only problem is it never happened. Ichthyologists long argued that the migration of the lamprey through such a long canal was a biological impossibility, but since it was a moral imperative that it did so, biology was ignored. Besides, it was a fact that lampreys were first seen in Lake Ontario after the canal opened in 1825.

But a few years ago, scientists conducted molecular genetic studies of the Sea Lampreys in Lake Ontario, comparing them to ocean-going populations. And the evidence is conclusive: the two populations have not shared a common ancestor for thousands of years. The hideous Sea Lamprey is, in fact, native to Lake Ontario. The genetics clearly support the belief that lampreys migrated into the Lake at the end of the Ice Age – a period of global warming that was also not Man’s fault.

Thus science has come into conflict with a cherished creation myth. But just as with the “intelligent design” movement on the right, the eco-Eden movement on the left has chosen to ignore science, lest it harm a beloved orthodoxy.

Governments, environmentalists, and universities alike continue to attribute the lampreys to the canal. And governments continue to spend millions trying to extirpate the lampreys in Lake Ontario, ironically, in the cause of preserving native fishes.

Man is not harmless in his interactions with nature, of

course. We have done much damage. The lampreys of Lake Ontario actually did find their way around Niagara Falls via canals, although it’s difficult to attribute the end of the fisheries in the upper lakes to the lamprey, when Lake Ontario was so productive in their presence. But there is a constituency that is primed to believe that every pimple on the butt of nature was put there by Man – even when science does not support such a conclusion. This philosophical predisposition affects no entity more than the energy industry.

Whether the issue is offshore drilling, ANWR, Nantucket windmills, or nuclear power, the uncompromising fervor of the opposition has a familiar feel. While pro-development forces naively reference economics, geology, and safety records, they are met with counterarguments every bit as rational as the Old Testament.