Post editorial today— Michael Gerson criticizes environmentalists…….those getting overly excited about polar bears dying……

….this is an old argument which I’ve heard  from NY to Washington State…….environmentalists are a bunch of tree huggers want to save owls  and in the process make America lose out in global competitiveness to other nations who are presumably less squeemish about decimating natural wildlife habitats (including human habitats). ….we nature lovers are too emotional— not practical— will shackle economic growth if they had their way…..

This reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of ecological consciousness. Especially if we look a little deeper in such perspectives such as the deep ecology movement or eco-feminism …..what is being articulated is a fundamentally new vision of the place of humans in their natural environment…..a kind of nondualism where we properly see ourselves as embedded in or growing out of nature, in which the commodification of nature is replaced with a realization of a sacred and poetic connection (are my neoshamanistic roots starting to show?).

We commonly use the term “natural resources” which is really a dualistic term which implies exploitation, does it not?

Were we to adopt a truly ecological/nondualistic consciousnes with regard to our “relationship to nature,” we would not despoil the planet in the first place…..we would see ourselves as one with nature, and bulldozing a forest to put up a Wal-Mart would be like bulldozing a part  of ourselves.

Here’s the key: it’s not so much that we literally pave paradise and put up a parking lot, but rather mentally/cognitively or in our imaginations we have already rejected paradise in favor of an econometric and utilitarian (exploitative) understanding of nature and ourselves. Mentally we have seen both our natural bodies and the contiguous natural world as worthy of control and manipulation for the satisfaction of individual desires for more pleasure.

More cars, more toys, exessive food leading to obesity (Americans use a very dispraportionate percentage of the worlds “resources” because we see the world as our oyster).

 

In the usual econometric calculus of everyday life, it’s natural to do a cost benefit analysis.

Yes, some land is despoiled, but jobs are created, shopping malls, factories, ….resources mined for production. …..but can a cost benefit analysis really  be applied?

How can you make a balance sheet in which on one side you calculate the jobs and income benefits to a community and on the other, the cost of losing a spotted owl or even rising water levels…..it can’t be done (though that’s what policy makers are trying to do everyday!)

Our leaders, dominated by economic market consciousness have difficulty seeing the obvious……that we are nature, and to destroy it is to destroy ourselves.

No one will convince me that the benefits of having more cars to go to work in to companies making more stuff we don’t need which will poison our water and air and soil will ever outweight the value of  the smell of the crisp cold air and the smoke from the wood stove on a  Vermont autumn evening in late September when the leaves are rich in color peace pervades the land.