The End of Nature
In The End of Nature, Bill McKibben, a writer from the Adirondack region of New
York, laments the loss of a pristine natural world untouched by human hands and
capable of sustaining and renewing itself indefinitely. With the advent of such global
environmental problems as acid rain, the greenhouse effect, the depletion of the
ozone layer, and the massive destruction of tropical rain forests, humankind has lost
its sense of nature as an infinitely renewable resource capable of absorbing any
amount of human alteration. Whatever we think nature is—the external world,
wilderness, the biosphere, the source of life, God—it can no longer be considered a
force independent of human impact. The air, the water, trees, land, and oceans all
have become increasingly subject to environmental degradation to the point that
they have lost their natural resiliency. Earth, Gaia itself, is like a great organism
suffering from the impact of man’s technological civilization.
In his title essay, McKibben laments the loss of the concept of wilderness, or
unspoiled nature. Increasingly, everything in the natural world is in some way
altered by human use. Along with the loss of the last remnants of pristine natural
environment, McKibben suggests, we are losing our idea of nature, so that we can no
longer appreciate the value of an unspoiled natural environment. Unspoiled nature
is our Eden, our genesis, our point of departure. Surrounded by a monotonous,
artificial landscape of urban sprawl, we feel the need for pristine nature, untouched
by human presence. Such wilderness is valuable for its own sake, for its spiritual
value, as Henry David Thoreau and other naturalists have argued. The existence of
wilderness reminds us of those natural forces beyond human control, but such
places are increasingly difficult to find.
Westerners have traditionally viewed the natural world as a collection of natural
resources to be developed—as sources of food, habitat, and raw materials—or as an
adversary to be conquered rather than as a sacred, nurturing habitat in which
humans take their place alongside other forms of life. Lacking primitive human
sense of the sacredness of the natural world, the artist’s aesthetic appreciation of
natural beauty, and the conservationist’s sense of prudent husbandry, we have
heedlessly consumed and polluted the natural resources necessary to sustain the
earth’s biosphere.
Awareness of an impending global environmental crisis suggests that the earth’s
natural, self-regulating systems have reached the limits of their capacity to absorb
manmade pollutants and are being seriously degraded by the deluge of toxic
environmental pollutants. With the loss of the health of the natural environment,
McKibben argues, humans will be forced to manage the entire planet as an artificial
environment—as a convalescing patient whose health must be constantly
monitored. This would be a profoundly depressing fact if it could be proved
incontrovertibly true; most of McKibben’s arguments, however, are unprovable
assertions based upon extrapolations from scientific evidence. Huge natural
cataclysms have occurred periodically in the history of the earth, McKibben
concedes, and aside from computer-generated models or extrapolations, there is no
clear way of predicting the effects of possible human global alterations of the
natural environment. The warning signs, however, of increased atmospheric carbon
dioxide concentrations, with dire forecasts of global warming, massive changes in
weather patterns, melting of the polar ice caps, and a consequent rise in the level of
the oceans, have given scientists pause for thought. In much the same way that
studies of the global consequences of nuclear war led to the hypothesis of a nuclear
winter, McKibben is warning of the equally serious cumulative effects of global
atmospheric pollution from the burning of fossil fuels.
McKibben’s argument feels like an absolute, ( entitled: “end of nature”) but this is
more of slogan, caution, and hyperbole than scientific insight. Perhaps we are
indeed reaching a great watershed in human civilization, akin to the introduction of
domesticated crops or animals, as a result of which we will henceforth become
stewards of a domesticated global environment; perhaps, however, the natural
world is more resilient than McKibben imagines.
As McKibben makes his case for global environmental crisis in terms of the scope
and degree of our environmental impact, what concerns you?
Is humankind, in terms of McKibben’s view, not at least in some sense, a part of
nature?
Read his article “Do the Math” or watch the film on Youtube (same title).
Link:
The myth I found most resonated with me was
"knowledge is increasing and by implication human
goodness." Information is so readily available
everywhere all the time and I know from experience
that just because there is an excess of knowledge
doesn't mean that human goodness is in excess. On
the contrary, more knowledge has created more
division and made people turn on each other. There
are many issues that have become "big deals" but
really, they're inconsequential compared to
information that we need to know for survival.
The principle that most resonated with me was
"knowledge carries with it the responsibility to see
that it is well used in the world. " I think that
knowledge can be used for good and evil and if we
truly hold a belief in this knowledge, it should be used
to help benefit the world. We use knowledge to learn
more about places, people, topics, and more to better
understand them and when I think about my own
journey through education, I know that I want to use
my knowledge to help others and make the world a
better place.
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