The Wonders of the Environment

As I gaze out of my window I look down on the wonders of nature. The sun is shining grimily through a gentle haze of pollution onto the asphalt driveway, the concrete paths and the garbage bin enclosure that lead up to my flat. "Ah!" you think, "here is Neil engaging in a little heavy handed irony". Not at all, I actually mean it. In the interests of strict accuracy I should acknowledge that the sun is also shining on the bushes, grass and trees that make my block of flats a rather pleasant place to live. But back to the garbage bin enclosure; this simple little spot is, indeed, a wonder of nature, albeit one I wouldn't advise spending too much time around. Think of it as a hungry lion.


One of the greatest concerns in what we laughingly call the civilised world is the environment. Many people, not all of them stupid, are deeply concerned that we are destroying the environment and ruining nature. Allow me to reassure them; we are not ruining nature and there is just as much environment around as there was a million years ago. Silly people (who will henceforth be referred to by their chosen title of environmentalists) point to all the animals and plants we've killed as evidence of our destruction of the environment. Is this bad? Well it certainly wasn't good for the animals and plants in question then again a heart attack isn't good for the sufferer and nobody says that heart attacks are destroying the environment. Going further environmentalists point to whole ecosystems destroyed or under threat from human activities. I have no wish to deny facts, ecosystems are being hammered all over the place but do these things constitute damage to the environment? I don't think so.


Of course our actions change the environment but that is a vastly different thing from destroying it. By its very definition the environment encompasses the entire universe and is really a rather difficult thing to destroy. It could be argued that we are, at least, destroying that part of it adjacent to ourselves and I repeat; we are not destroying it, we are changing it. The environment changes all the time with or without our input and should it change in such a way that is inimical to certain lifeforms then those lifeforms will die, again with or without our input.


I think that part of the problem is that environmentalists have a static view of what the planet should be like. They have a mental picture of what they think the earth was like several centuries ago and think it should be like this forevermore. Come the next ice age (which is overdue by the way) these people are in for a rude shock. There is no law of nature that says that the planet should remain the way it was a millennium ago. Indeed there is a fair bit of evidence to the contrary.


Naturally during the course of our changes to the environment a fair few animal and plant species have fallen by the wayside. Is this a bad thing? It depends on how cute they look on nature documentaries. Of course it is bad for the lifeforms in question but nature doesn't look at things the way we do. We see a dead panda bear and go "awww" (or "yum" depending on the local food situation) but all nature sees is an evolutionary niche that can now be filled. Nature is concerned with what lives, it doesn't care at all about what dies. Every species on earth gets only one instruction; survive. If it fails nature doesn't particularly care why.


The second mistake environmentalists frequently make is in their interpretation of nature. It is a common complaint that human activities upset the "natural balance". Before pointing out how wrong that is can I just mention that the natural balance consists of everything trying very hard to kill each other and not quite succeeding. But back to our alleged upsetting of this cycle of terror. How can we possibly upset nature, we are part of nature. As the panda bear or the humpback whale so it is with us. We are not alien intruders, we did not spring fully armed with a twenty first century civilisation from the head of Zeus. Everything we are and everything we have done is the simple result of us using the tools we naturally evolved to follow natures dictum; survive. Our tools happened to be opposable thumbs and a moderately effective brain. With the zebra it was disruptive pattern camouflage and a good turn of speed. There is no essential difference between an oil refinery or a block of flats on one hand and a beaver dam or birds nest on the other.


Some say that it is the pace of change rather than the change itself that is causing problems. Now that we are charging ahead much faster than evolution we are simply moving too quickly for nature to keep up. I might point out that the dinosaurs were given about fifteen seconds to evolve a defence against asteroid collisions and when they couldn't, they died. Nature didn't care and the resultant gap at the top of the food chain allowed lots of other animals to evolve in their place. Many of those animals are now likewise extinct but one of them was us. The dinosaur's loss was our gain.


There is a lot of talk about living in harmony with nature which seems to stem from a modern day misinterpretation of Paganism. I have no problem with the old time Pagans. For the time and place they were sensible enough; they worshipped the earth and the cycles of nature and guided their lives by these rhythms. Let's not go too nuts about it though. They worshipped nature because they were terrified of it. Nature was full of bears, wolves, diseases and unexpected temperature shifts which played hell with the harvest. Lacking guns, penicillin and adequate storage facilities it made perfect sense for the Pagans to worship nature. Hopefully if nature liked being worshipped the crops would ripen, the sheep fatten and the bears and wolves would visit the next village along. It took a peculiarly twentieth century mindset to reduce nature to the level of a cuddly chew toy.


Fortunately for the surviving animals and plants on earth there is a much better reason to preserve them than environmentalism. It is called sentimentalism and it is one way in which humans really do step away from nature. Despite everything I have written here I personally will be very sad if, during my lifetime the last bear is shot or the final lion disappears from the Serengeti. I also think areas of wilderness have a beneficial effect on people even if they only see them on television. They inspire us, excite us, relax us and create a diversion in our lives. This might be one of the most subtle and effective survival strategies yet, to convince us that we will be better off if we keep some wilderness around. For those who are more cynical I would point out that while we are changing the environment it is quite possible for it to change in a way that can't support human life. If that happens we will die and nature will care no more about us than it did about the dinosaurs.


Don't pay any attention to environmentalists though, they are all compromised anyway. The only possible way to stop us having any effect on the environment is to return us to the level of animals. So unless the environmentalist you are talking to is naked and living in a cave he can't be trusted. And if you do encounter such a one why the hell would you trust him? He's naked and living in a cave for god's sake.