The really inconvenient truth - part II

Similarly, Hindu-Buddhist Nepal has terrible deforestation (71 per cent cleared) and erosion problems; animist Maori New Zealand had a distressing record of species extinctions (e.g. all 11 Moa species exterminated); and Muslim Iraq drained its southern Marshes region, a priceless wildlife and cultural refuge.

Christianity has been portrayed as being particularly unhelpful in caring for nature, with justifiable reference made to its calls to multiply, subdue and exert dominion over the earth. These damaging exhortations, though, have been balanced, at least to an extent, by Christianity’s nurturing of the concept of stewardship for the planet and of “nature” clerics, such as St Francis of Assisi and the Victorian minister-naturalists of Europe that took unbridled delight in God’s creation - the natural world, and sought to care for it.

What, then, to do? With so many inherited and learned behaviours acting so strongly against our long-term interests and the interests of all life on earth, it will require a different way of thinking about ourselves, of how we are to live; continuation of old patterns will deliver a depauperate world for all.

It is beyond the scope of this article to go into the detail of the processes by which we will need to turn things around, but space allows suggestion of some basic principles and orientations.

First, we must re-establish context and connection. Our individualised, post-modern world is splintered and fractured into a million parts, each demanding identity, recognition and rights. This is supported and even created by a media that seeks to highlight individual actions, events and people but is loath ever to establish any context or connection between these entities. Everything is reported as being one-off, without a history and certainly without any form of context or perspective.

This ensures that we cannot establish proportion or significance, cannot see effects over space and time; in effect, we cannot learn because this sort of world and how it is communicated is one without patterns, one without any sort of framework of understanding.

A world and people without connections is, of course, anathema to environmental protection because it effectively denies the environment’s existence as the context for all our lives, just as it alienates us from it. We cannot hope to make broader, wiser, more balanced decisions about the globe if we have as our only reference point ourselves and the here and now. The simple adoption of reasonable temporal and spatial scales for our decisions, and the acknowledgement of others, human and non-human, will go far towards ensuring actions of enduring benefit.

Second, we need to acknowledge the concept and truth of the word “finite”. Some things are finite, some things are limited, sometimes there is no more, no matter how petulantly we may rail against this. There is only one earth, with only so much space and resources, and though there are a million and one clever and not-so-clever ways we can live within this equation, the answer is still the same: it’s finite.

Third, and closely related to the second point, we need to replace the “god” of growth with a god of quality. We will, in various ways, continue to grow and decline or be in some sort of equilibrium, but growth per se must come to be seen as a valueless concept, as merely a description of a change in state that can be good, bad or neither. Growth of an embryo is a good thing, growth of cancer cells a very bad thing, and growth of hair neither. This analogy can and should be extended to the scale of society and the entire globe.

In the space left by the mindless worship of growth we will need to establish a true concern and desire for quality, develop a concept that measures far better the true value of our actions than the infantile “bigger is better”. In this future it will be the quality of our society, the quality of our goods, the quality of our actions that will matter, not how many we are, how many we produce and how much we consume; we are not bacteria, after all.

Fourth, we must be more honest with ourselves. We have to stop trivialising and exempting ourselves from the simple realities of physics and the ultimately finite nature of the globe. We are like obese persons who insist that they can still eat cream buns all day so long as they walk to the letterbox in the morning and take a diet pill at night. If we keep on “eating” the environment the way we have, then it will be and is degrading and this will cause us and other creatures severe problems. This is the really inconvenient truth, one we have to fundamentally address, not just make partial, technical changes to how we generate power or dispose of pollutants, like CO2.

Fifth, and most important, we need actively to engage with the challenge that consciousness presents us, with the gap that it creates between ourselves and the natural world. We can never be, nor should be, an unconscious creature of nature and it is silly to think of us as such. But this said, we can strive to be more a part of the natural world, more aware of its workings and subtleties, more emotionally tied to its richness and health.

There are many, many paths that can help deliver this, from scientific enquiry to childhood experiences, to religious insights or educational opportunities, but it is perhaps through a much greater appreciation of, and involvement in, the arts that most ground can be gained. Perhaps this will help us, as Tim Winton says, find a sort of grace in nature, without which we can never hope to achieve some sort of equilibrium on this earth.

Embracing these values will be as enjoyable as it is necessary. Far from diminishing the human experience, it will nurture and enrich it in the widest sense; it will structure and encourage a life of true quality in connection with others and the great stream of life. Life will be enjoyed, not at the expense of the natural world, but because of and with nature. Then we will truly be engaging in Mill’s “art of living”.

Read The really inconvenient truth - part I.