Beautiful, beautiful writing (probably the most beautifully written and observed article I’ve read all year!) from Paul Kingsnorth in Orion – “Confessions of a Recovering Environmentalist”. His arguments are challenging, as they should be, and deeply pessimistic. I’m naturally an optimist but then I’m also an economist.
But these are not, I think, very common views today. Today’s environmentalism is as much a victim of the contemporary cult of utility as every other aspect of our lives, from science to education. We are not environmentalists now because we have an emotional reaction to the wild world. Most of us wouldn’t even know where to find it. We are environmentalists now in order to promote something called “sustainability.” What does this curious, plastic word mean? It does not mean defending the nonhuman world from the ever-expanding empire of Homo sapiens sapiens, though some of its adherents like to pretend it does, even to themselves. It means sustaining human civilization at the comfort level that the world’s rich people—us—feel is their right, without destroying the “natural capital” or the “resource base” that is needed to do so.
It is, in other words, an entirely human-centered piece of politicking, disguised as concern for “the planet.” In a very short time—just over a decade—this worldview has become all-pervasive. It is voiced by the president of the USA and the president of Anglo-Dutch Shell and many people in between. The success of environmentalism has been total—at the price of its soul.
Let me offer up just one example of how this pact has worked. If “sustainability” is about anything, it is about carbon. Carbon and climate change. To listen to most environmentalists today, you would think that these were the only things in the world worth talking about. The business of “sustainability” is the business of preventing carbon emissions. Carbon emissions threaten a potentially massive downgrading of our prospects for material advancement as a species. They threaten to unacceptably erode our resource base and put at risk our vital hoards of natural capital. If we cannot sort this out quickly, we are going to end up darning our socks again and growing our own carrots and other such unthinkable things. All of the horrors our grandparents left behind will return like deathless legends. Carbon emissions must be “tackled” like a drunk with a broken bottle—quickly, and with maximum force.
I don’t agree with all of Kingsnorth’s thoughts – he is terribly critical of the social justice movement – but like him I enjoy a good long walk, and you can file this article of his under Fucking Depressing Things To Contemplate While Walking.
this is a very romantic – Romantic, even – way of thinking, but a lot of people take the same path, hit the same despair, and then land on utility as a maybe-less-worse solution – Bill McKibben has done that, and he started out from that same wild places focus. It’s not very ecosystem-centric to think of humans as the observer who should stand outside the wild places and guard them.
I don’t think sustainability/utility is the same as corruption – the belief in “wild places” as always scenic and untouched can be corruption, because the most beautiful places aren’t always the most important to nonhuman creatures. Some of the most radical environmentalists I’ve ever known focus on highway verges in the US – continuous north-south strips of unbuilt space, that creatures and plants can use to migrate as the climate changes. They’re not as pretty as the wile Cotswolds but they’re full of native prairie grasses and insects that can’t live on monoculture corn.
Rosa, loved loved loved your comment.