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Nature and Society Quotations used in the December 2006 - January 2007 edition Sir Brian Heap accepts that South Asia and Africa are about to suffer the terrible consequences of First World excesses. What of our responsibility to them? “The poor aren’t our problem,” Heap says. “We’re their problem.” Washington Post, 2 Sept 2006 The modern commercial drive to market unhealthy food everywhere and seduce us into more sedentary leisure means we are facing a seemingly unstoppable juggernaut of obesity and diabetes. Paul Zimmet The health of living systems would move to top place in the hierarchy of priorities of the dominant culture and this crucial change would have significant impacts on the outcome of decision-making at all levels of society. Stephen Boyden Watch the action without the sound track. In other words, ignore the political speeches and see what people actually do, and how the system works. Reg Morrison The struggle for conservation is not a struggle against ‘forces’, ‘structures’ social constructions’ or ‘cultural artifacts’, but a struggle against human nature. Most people identify more with a society that takes on and challenges nature than with one that exists in a sustainable relationship with the natural world. William Lines There appears to be a hierarchy of drives in humans. The biggest concern is always survival and reproduction, and protection of clan and family. For most of human history, humans have had to struggle against nature to survive... It took a few thousand years of adoring gardens, loving exploring, expanding into unspoilt environments and so on to bring us up short with the recognition that we’ve gone too far. We broke nature and now we are smashing it and getting rid of humanity’s biggest heritage. E.O.Wilson Conservation, however, changed the character of political debate. While much of conservation seemed entirely compatible with a modern politics devoted to bureaucracy, plans, proposals and blueprints, the task of saving the country’s natural heritage raised questions that could not be resolved through business as usual. Conservation demanded a kind of clarity and veracity entirely alien to a politics based on fantasy and simplification. For, although people can be fooled, tricked and beguiled, nature cannot. Material reality resists importuning, finessing, or renegotiation. Nature’s machinery is invariant, not subject to legislation or cultural conditioning. It cannot be compromised. William Lines It would be a mistake to think this culture clearcuts only forests. It clearcuts our psyches as well. It would be a mistake to think it dams only rivers. We ourselves are dammed (and damned) by it as well. It would be a mistake to think it creates dead zones only in the ocean. It creates dead zones in our hearts and minds. It would be a mistake to think it fragments only habitat. We, too, are fragmented, split off, shredded, rent, torn. Derrick Jensen What is done to our landbases is done to ourselves. It really is that simple. We cannot live without the earth: the earth can live without us. It is an open question at this point whether it can live with us. It certainly cannot live with us as we are now. Derrick Jensen For a time the grandeur of this monumental place flooded my mind. I lost awareness of all else – my raft, my friend, my obligations; myself. The process of thirty years which had made me a mystified and detached observer of the universe was reversed and I fused into the inexplicable mystery of nature. Bob Brown rafting down the Franklin River So here’s a question I’ve been asking lately: How do I want the land where I live to be in a thousand years? The answers to that question depend of course on answers to: How does the land want to be in a thousand years? And those answers depend on answers to: How was the land prior to the arrival of civilisation? We can safely say the land itself knows better than we what it wants and what is best for it. The questions then become: how can we perceive what it wants, and how can we help it get there? Derrick Jensen Twaddle, rubbish, and gossip is what people want, not action ... The secret of life is to chatter freely about all one wishes to do and how one is being prevented – and then do nothing. Soren Kierkegaard 1813-1855 As places of beauty and fecundity, forests arouse ardour. Forest campaigns attract and animate people like no other aspect of conservation activism. Working at a desk will not enliven; writing reports will not enthuse; making phone calls will not move. But night after night around a campfire, sleeping on the ground, scrambling through the bush, climbing trees, enduring leeches, flies and dirt, and nursing sore muscles and injuries accentuates the physicality necessary for love of nature. As well, the stripped down intimacy of life in the forest with other activists builds the empathy, sympathy, comradeship, and the networks essential to the task of conservation. William Lines We can no longer afford to address the world’s problems separately. Most people wake up in the morning trying to reduce what they have to worry about. Environmentalists wake up trying to increase it. We want the public to care about and focus not only on global warming and rainforests but also species extinctions, non-native plant invasive species, agribusiness, overfishing, mercury and toxic dumps. Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus There is really no getting over the Titanic, at least not where the human imagination is concerned. It is in some ways the supreme tale of the niceties and inequities of a powerful civilization running head-on into the void from which civilization is meant to protect us. It is almost impossible to think of the Titanic without wondering what you would have done or felt if you had been onboard that night. New York Times Other animals do not need a purpose in life. A contradiction to itself, the human animal cannot do without one. Can we not think of the aim of life as being simply to see? John Gray, With every swing of my machete and every closing of my clippers, I can almost hear the blackberries cry out, “Scapegoats. We’re scapegoats, and you’re a hypocrite. If you really wanted to remove destructive exotics, we should be low on your list. What about bulldozers? Backhoes? Cars? Pavement? Number one would be homo domesticus (called by some homo stupidus) – civilised humans. Take your machete elsewhere and go after real sources of destruction. Derrick Jensen Only three decades have passed since the flimsy plastic bag was introduced to the world, but it will be another millennium before the first of these has degraded in its landfill site. The average UK household spends 470 pounds a year on packaging In the US alone an estimated 12 million barrels of oil are used to produce the 100 billion plastic bags used annually A filter-feeding minke whale was washed up in Normandy in 2002 with 800 kilograms of plastic bags and other packaging in its stomach. The Ecologist (UK) December 2006 - January 2007 edition accessible here
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