The Final Environmental Solution

There's something facist about environmentalism as it's being spun.

The World Without Us is an interesting thought experiment, and has a lot of really interesting imagery. But the gestalt is basically anti-human. The idea is purity.

Slate's daily podcast a few days ago (I can't figure out how to get a link to a podcast here...) was about environmentalist novels that imagine a postapocalyptic world with fewer people, so that we can all go back to this one essential, true way of being. With women cooking and men hunting or whatever. Everybody's on horseback. Sweet!

It's that romance--that clinging to the idea that there is a correct way to do things and that we have been wrong--that's the problem with the way we look at environmentalism. It's comforting, but it's not true. Native Americans wrought environmental devastation. They threw their garbage off cliffs, too. Civilizations have been going extinct for environmental reasons for a long time.

We are not especially bad.

Environmentalism is a matter of necessity, not virtue. And so we need not imagine a cleansing apocalypse--a Final Environmental Solution--as much as we need to harness the human tendencies that wrought all this mess in a different direction.

Love buildings. Love cities. Love your garbage and love your computer and all the other people around you. Love plastic. Love everything that got us here, every mistake. Love the industrial revolution and the green revolution and the revolutions of your tires because these things actually make the earth something we can grasp as a whole entity.

This morning I feel certain that every mistake we have made brings us closer to something better. And I believe that all the power we have created over the earth--our ability to move over it quickly; build perpendicular to it; shelter ourselves and find and use all the things inside the earth that we can't see--this is what it means to be human.

We are explorer-builders. And we have something new--a grand environmental resistance--to explore and build against.

Comments

[Michael Konrad]

You're a more optimistic person than I am, however I do agree with your overall point.

Every creature has both positive & negative impacts on it's environment and since we're all dependent on our environment, it's obvious that we must do our best to take what we need without totally destroying it.

That said, this is where I disagree with you: You state that "We are not especially bad." I think what you meant by this is that throughout history, people's impact on the environment has been similar and our behavior is normal in comparison. But I think that the scale at which we have operated and the gross misallocation of natural resources is so much more enormous than any civilization before us, that it is fair to say that we ARE especially bad. If everyone on the planet lived like industrialized people, things would get really ugly, really fast.

[paula]

deborah, i read this post yesterday and have thought of it on and off since. i agree with you.
Environmentalism is a matter of necessity, not virtue ...well put. I can't articulate as well as you but i often think that the universe doesn't need us. we can do whatever we want and destroy ourselves, or the cosmos can destroy us but it isn't personal. (if the cosmos destroys us that is)and if we destroy ourselves it is our own powerhungry, moneyhungry warmonger idiotic, naive, unhealthy choice. We dont own the earth/world or anything else. nor can we, ultimately, control anything either. i wish i were alive to see the day religion didn't exist. that the american dream were realized as the fairy tale that i believe it really is.

[Deborah Fisher]

Hey thanks you guys these are great comments.

I think Paula you are answering Michael's criticism for me--when I say that we are not particularly bad I mean that we are not particularly anything--that we are basically small and stupid, that we have no entitlements.

Of course we have wrought some serious badness. But I think the most harmful, least practical thing we can do is wear it like a mantle of shame.

That's like when I promise myself I am going to pay my bills on time. And then I pay them and put stamps on them and leave them in the bottom of my bag for five days. Why? Because I am ashamed of how I never seem to pay my bills on time. Feeling bad keeps me from looking at the bills at the bottom of my bag, even though they just get later and later and later.

Shame is about ego, and so it has a massive rebound effect. Ask Larry Craig!

That's why I think art about environmentalism actually has this specific purpose--it is an opportunity to reimagine our relationship to this problem that is neither good nor bad.

Art is very good at handling paradox and states of "bothness." That's what I meant by asserting that we are not particularly bad.

[Pretty Lady]

I totally agree with you, Deborah--with your optimism, your instinct for integration, and with your assertion that mistakes get us where we need to go, just as much as non-mistakes, whatever those might be.

I have had 'Desiderata' next to my bathroom mirror since childhood; 'You are a child of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here. And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.'

Enough with this 'the universe doesn't need us' crap. We are part of the universe. We're not separate from it. Neurotically obsessing about minimizing our individual 'footprint' on the planet is both egoistic and ridiculously ineffectual--out of the billions of people on this planet, and trillions of stars in the universe, a few plastic bags moved from here to there make a negligible difference.

However, our spirits can connect with the whole damn thing.

Also, understanding that the human race is still in its spiritual childhood can help a lot to put into perspective our rage and frustration about materialism, greed, and wanton destructiveness. Our awareness is still expanding rapidly. Coming across the Mexican desert toward Zacatecas, the landscape as far as the eye can see is choked with garbage, floating freely on the wind; the Mexican attitude toward garbage disposal is about what it was in the U.S. before 'Give a Hoot, Don't Pollute' campaigns raised awareness in the 60s and 70s. I think human societies have to go through the terrible twos, just like individual children.