Monday, May 11, 2009
Postnatural environmentalism
"Postnaturalism is not about recycling your garbage, it is about making something good out of grandpa’s garbage and leaving the very best garbage for your grandchildren. Postnaturalism means loving and embracing our human nature, the nature we have created to feed ourselves, the nature we live in. What good is environmentalism if it makes you depressed about the future (Resilience Science)?"
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3 comments:
If you read the full article in Wired, he says something even more true in my opinion:
So what now? First of all, we’ve got to stop trying to save the planet. For better or for worse, nature has long been what we have made it, and what we will make it. ... [snip] ... Instead, it’s high time we saved ourselves — and not from nature.This is what bothers me about a lot of environmentalism. It often gets very sentimental about saving the planet, species, nature. This sounds nice but what we need to concentrate on is saving ourselves. The two approaches very often overlap. However while "Earth day" is a noble cause, "Save humanity from extinction day" sounds a bit more urgent.
I am not sure I like his "saving the planet vs saving us" argument. Ecological economists, believe the welfare of the planet and the people are intertwined. It is an instrumental standpoint and often attached by environmentalists who think pure intrinsic values are more important. That is why I like his "postnatural" argument in saying, "wake up, nothing is pure here, let's move on..."
In that case I agree with you. What I am saying is that saving nature for nature's sake may be noble but saving it for the continuation of humankind is rather more pressing.
Climate Progress wrote a piece on this idea.
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