I've had this suspicion myself. Jonathan Haidt writes about purity as one of the five basic moral categories (the others are harm, fairness, loyalty, and respect for authority), and suggests that it's purely a conservative concern. But that turns on identifying "purity" as relating solely to sexual conduct. Kosher law, as you say, relates purity to diet, and I think environmentalist concerns are driven by similar motives as well as by scientific and prudential concerns—there is an undercurrent of feeling that the Earth is sacred and must not be defiled.
(In the 19th century, people who wrote about "pollution" were often referring to masturbation.)
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Date: 2012-06-15 06:59 pm (UTC)(In the 19th century, people who wrote about "pollution" were often referring to masturbation.)