Humans above nature... A bit cocky for a bunch of primates...

If someone had asked me that question three years ago I would have probably laughed in their face. Asking me that question then would have been as inane as asking me the best breath of air I had ever taken. Unfortunately I can now answer both of those questions (I would of course say that my best breath of air has not been taken in DC). My answer to the real question though, is pertinent not because of its rarity or its “thrilling” quality, but my clarity in remembrance. I was probably about ten years old and I was sitting in a willow tree. I was watching the insects on the bark, when I heard something in the branch next to me. I looked over and saw a woodpecker (I’m pretty sure it was a male Yellow-bellied Sapsucker). I must have watched it for at least twenty minutes until it flew away.

Clearly saving “nature” is something that must happen as humans, being primates and not androids, rely upon it for our survival. The debate is most likely in degree. Do we want quaintly tamed and thoroughly domesticated fields (not that I have anything against fields, my parents did name me after one after all) with a hedgerow thrown in for good measure? Is that what gets to count for nature? Many areas of the world with histories of ungulate domestication look like this, and the people there survive just fine. However I would say that survival for just one species (humans) does not outclass the many species that would be there and thriving if not for our ridiculous need for dominance of space. I mean really it’s quite rude. “Hi, yes, I’m a human; I’m coming in and cutting everything down, or plowing it to oblivion. Once I do this I might repopulate it with those creatures that remind me of my deforested homeland…Or I might just a put up a shopping mall, hard to tell at this point. “

Of course we are learning the hard way that this sort of life on a large scale does not translate well. We are suffering with global climate change, desertification, pollution, and extinction after extinction of species. If that’s the best we can do, well you can find me in northern Canada. I’ll be chilling out on the Tundra in my deck chair and watching the permafrost melt.

Talking about technology is a little like playing with fire.

Technology is to environmentalists as religion and politics are to family gatherings. If you do not want to get burned you just keep it to yourself. Everyone inevitably has very strong opinions on the topic. This was easily seen in just that one reading that we had for the class presentations. Davis thought that all post-Pleistocene technologies were inherently violent and exploitative. Nash thought that it was not the technology but the human values behind such technology that made it into a negative force. Why is technology such a hot button issue? It is because as westerners we could not get through our day without it. And it is not just obvious technologies like ovens or vacuum cleaners or cars. New technologies also become indispensable to functioning in society after a few years of introduction. Suddenly individuals who were born before the widespread use of television are required by their jobs to have a computer so that they can read company emails at home.

I feel that this pattern is insidious and cannot be allowed to continue. Does this mean that I am against the technologies we have now? I am against some of them certainly. Are cell phones with internet access (and whatever other jazzy new extras they have these days) really necessary? Hint, the answer is no. I would even go so far as to say we could probably do without televisions as well, but my television is shooting me a nasty look and hissing, so I won’t go there). This causes me think that technology as we are currently using it will not ‘save’ us, because we are using it for entirely frivolous reasons. And as long as we are wasting resources for these technological reasons it would not at all be sustainable to increase our technological uses in another area. What I am trying to say is that in order for technology to ‘save’ us not only must we switch to new technologies, but we must also reduce our overall usage.

In environmental terms, I would guess that ‘saving’ would mean stopping the worsening of global change, as well as stopping the worsening of widespread ecosystem collapse. ‘Saving’ would also entail a mitigation of human harms. The human population has been artificially swelled by the ‘abundance’ of food and medicine available because of unsustainable resource and farming usage. Far more people exist in bubbles of population than the area ecosystems could support if not for modern technology. Cities, for example, require a constant supply of outside resources in order for their inhabitants to survive, much the less live comfortably. If we must stop using fossil fuels because of global climate change, a newer, sustainable system would have to be put in place in order for us to not have a massive, unpleasant population die-off.