Words like "sustainability" have become so over-used and are such a catch phrase in today's day and age, that they've almost lost their meaning. I like the author's point: we need to change our language and perspective in this battle. "Sustaining" implies a sacrifice in some sense: whether reducing our resource use for the better of the planet, or changing our behaviours. Instead, we should be focusing on the value of these things to us as humans, and "promote", "advance", "endorse" them. It's shifting the focus from one of lack and struggle, to one of positivity, empowerment, and abundance.
So we humans and our ego..we think that everything happens because of us..for good or bad, and of course if a human being believe in God will end up thinking and believing that the planet Earth was created for us, dinosaurs was just a rehearsal right? This article is an enlightenment to understand that we are just part of the "Nature" not the custodians of It, if human beings start practicing having more respect we could get along with "Nature"and naturally adapting to the coming changes.
So, in that way dumping plastic in the ocean, poisoning the water and promoting other species and resorces will be part of our nature.
So, in that way dumping plastic in the ocean, poisoning the water and promoting other species and resorces will be part of our nature.
Many of the comments here seem to miss what I believe is the authors larger point. Much of the language surrounding environmentalism today promotes a dualistic view of the human situation. The very fact that we talk about 'humans impact on nature' (humans vs. nature) sets up an arbitrary conceptual divide that flies in the face of basic evolutionary principles. Did humans evolve on this planet? If the answer is yes, by what process do what evolve into its destructors? The very idea that we are 'damaging', 'destructing', or otherwise negatively altering the 'natural world' implies that, a) there is a static state or set evolutionary path within which nature is operating correctly, and b) humans have emerged from merely being acted upon by evolution, to being in some ways its authors. This paradigm depends on the same human vs nature and 'dominion' narratives that many bemoan as the root cause of our environmental woes. Conceptually placing humans back into nature is the first step toward extending our ethics of community to the non-human world. As long as we view ourselves as 'outside' and 'above' the non-human world, it will be up to us to manage and manipulate based on our own incomplete understanding. The alternative is viewing all life as sacred- that is, having a right to exist independent from human knowledge, judgement, or usage. The valuation of 'ecosystem services' and other 'market-based' strategies are a continuation of human dominion paradigms.
1
This thinking shows how a cancer would justify itself to the rest of the body, if a cancer could speak (and it does speak, in a fashion, to the immune system): "You see, I am just another part of you, it is only natural that I should grow". But by means of unrestrained growth, it undercuts the basis of its own existence, and the whole body dies.
2
The premise of this article is that sustainability is based on the "idea of a perfect, ordered nature and unchanging industrial-technological conditions." This contradicts almost every book and scholarly article on the topic. Sustainability embraces a worldview based on complex adaptive systems. It isn't a dogma, it is an evolving, adaptive process.
1
A lot of commenters are pretty heated themselves. Nice to see passion for the issue, shame it's not accompanied by calm, clear thinking. I think the provocative title has readers imputing a far more 'destructive' attitude than Butman intends. It's a nod to A Rebours I suspect? Clever, but at a cost it seems.
God save us from graduate students in philosophy.
What a wretched little world this one would have us construct.
What a wretched little world this one would have us construct.
1
Talk about elicting an emotional response. A lot of quotes and going against the stream does not make a truth. Just a (shallow) opinion, that as a foreigner i am frankly surprised is on nytimes.
Talk about sustainability comes from the fact that companies have the rights of persons, but no conscious. That we have no laws against exploiting the common good, so companies do it.
The good in nature is not a transference. God is in nature (not the christian concept), is nature, and as such it is there that it is easiest perceived by many.
Maybe it would help to forget some of that theory (philosophy) and get in touch a little more yourself, before you write free passes for companies.
Talk about sustainability comes from the fact that companies have the rights of persons, but no conscious. That we have no laws against exploiting the common good, so companies do it.
The good in nature is not a transference. God is in nature (not the christian concept), is nature, and as such it is there that it is easiest perceived by many.
Maybe it would help to forget some of that theory (philosophy) and get in touch a little more yourself, before you write free passes for companies.
1
In my opinion, this article makes things more confusing.
I think geoethics is a solution (see definition at http://www.geoethics.org).
Geoethics gives answers to problems raised by this article and proposes a new way of thinking and a new framework of values, identifying the responsibility as the ethical criterion to interact within the Earth system.
I think geoethics is a solution (see definition at http://www.geoethics.org).
Geoethics gives answers to problems raised by this article and proposes a new way of thinking and a new framework of values, identifying the responsibility as the ethical criterion to interact within the Earth system.
2
Declining resources, exploding population..."sustainability" or "promoting", either is preferable to "exploiting", which is what we actually do. Whichever, we better start taking care of what's left.
This article fails on so many levels, it's even hard to begin. 'The fact that they [mass extinctions] are traced to the behavior of an individual species only makes them particular, not in some way “unnatural.”'. This is, of course, not correct in any way or form. Just because something has happened before, doesn't make it less 'unnatural'. That's a logical fallacy. 'It might be that the truest meaning of human being, from the perspective of planetary history, is that we are a mass extinction event.' From a 'planetary history' world view, Earth is also flat and bloodletting can cure all disease. This is the next logical fallacy (Appeal to Tradition). 'When we talk about sustainability, then, what is it that we hope to sustain?' What about the preservation of rapidly declining species unable to comment on this article? 'In one sense, we preserve nature for industry.' If you're a hardcore Christian, traditionalist and/or fundamentalist and look upon animals as mostly as a means to an end – an 'asset' to man – then yes. However, and luckily, that type of ancient world view is declining.
3
Ugh. We need to become aware of the facts so we can stop poisoning the earth, air, and water of our once hospitable finite planet, Genesis notwithstanding. Infinite and growing exploitation of cheap nature and abuse of cheap labor is getting us into trouble fast.
3
Maybe I missed the grist of Butman's argument but it seems to me he is advocating for an interpretation of nature whereby it's very survival is necessarily dependent on the decisions of the humans. This may be how it's playing out in the 21st century but that reality does not make it right or fair or moral or even in our best interests.
There is intrinsic value in every habitat, every predator, every glacier that has absolutely nothing to do with man or religious fairytales. To allow the earth's slow natural cycles to affect change on it's ecosystems is to obey the forces that created us and all the bounty we depend on. Who has the better track record? A creature that is dumping gases into the atmosphere that will bring an end to the lifestyle it covets and is reproducing itself uncontrollably or balanced ecosystems untouched by humans where all resources recycle naturally and no creature eliminates another creature?
Human arrogance is not the answer.
There is intrinsic value in every habitat, every predator, every glacier that has absolutely nothing to do with man or religious fairytales. To allow the earth's slow natural cycles to affect change on it's ecosystems is to obey the forces that created us and all the bounty we depend on. Who has the better track record? A creature that is dumping gases into the atmosphere that will bring an end to the lifestyle it covets and is reproducing itself uncontrollably or balanced ecosystems untouched by humans where all resources recycle naturally and no creature eliminates another creature?
Human arrogance is not the answer.
2
Gag me with a spoon. Enough philosophical nonsense. The reason we need to save nature and create a sustainable economy is for our own economic good. An unsustainable economy is the royal road to disaster. As Aldo Leopold once said: An intelligent tinkerer saves all the pieces. Amend. We don't know what pieces that we are throwing away right now will be necessary for our survival. Best not to find out.
3
You come to The Stone and say "enough philosophical nonsense?"
Do you read the Sports section and say "Enough of this talk about scores and statistics!"
Do you read the Sports section and say "Enough of this talk about scores and statistics!"
5
Even at at the Stone, there ought to be some acknowledged distance between philosophical nonsense and philosophy.
This whole mess would be far better argued, and written, if it started with a clear statement of the the author's specific argument against "sustainability", then supported that argument with facts, quotations, etc, then restated the argument in context, in conclusion. This is widely held to be a successful form for a persuasive essay, and doesn't provoke much nauseum among those seeking to persuade.
The most obvious nonsense here is the author's claim of authority. Philosophical modesty appears in the beginning of the first paragraph, "Among...", "...perhaps..", "In this version...". But the paragraph ends with unsupported nonsense. "...the good twin to evil...", "Today, when we talk...", "...we typically still understand..."
The train-wreck continues in the second paragraph. "the prequil to this origin story...", "he is an arch-villain...", "in effect reduced the world...". and continues for many paragraphs. These many paragraphs are philosophical nonsense. They not plain facts anyone would agree to. They are not what Descartes earnestly sought, something even a skeptic would have to accept. They are baloney. At the ninth paragraph, the author finally says something about the purported subject of the essay. Something with might be implied by the preceding 8 paragraphs, if one accepted them as true.
Better to start with the main point.
This whole mess would be far better argued, and written, if it started with a clear statement of the the author's specific argument against "sustainability", then supported that argument with facts, quotations, etc, then restated the argument in context, in conclusion. This is widely held to be a successful form for a persuasive essay, and doesn't provoke much nauseum among those seeking to persuade.
The most obvious nonsense here is the author's claim of authority. Philosophical modesty appears in the beginning of the first paragraph, "Among...", "...perhaps..", "In this version...". But the paragraph ends with unsupported nonsense. "...the good twin to evil...", "Today, when we talk...", "...we typically still understand..."
The train-wreck continues in the second paragraph. "the prequil to this origin story...", "he is an arch-villain...", "in effect reduced the world...". and continues for many paragraphs. These many paragraphs are philosophical nonsense. They not plain facts anyone would agree to. They are not what Descartes earnestly sought, something even a skeptic would have to accept. They are baloney. At the ninth paragraph, the author finally says something about the purported subject of the essay. Something with might be implied by the preceding 8 paragraphs, if one accepted them as true.
Better to start with the main point.
2
Many, many unsupported statements in this article, as well as some outright factual errors.
"Sustainability" does not refer to "sustaining nature" — nobody's trying to hold nature in a "perfect" state. The term refers to the systems we build. A sustainable system is one that is self-contained, replacing the resources it takes in, using up the waste materials it outputs, so nothing is out of balance.
Our current systems of agriculture, energy production, etc. are unsustainable because of the excess of waste that is not reabsorbed by the system, and the use of natural resources that are not replaced.
The sustainability movement has made huge progress in helping to bring awareness to these issues, gathering momentum towards making changes to these vital systems our species depends on. To opine "against sustainability" threatens this progress. If we don't continue making progress and change these unsustainable systems, nature will overthrow us and find a new balance, which we will either need to quickly adapt to or perish.
Our current systems of agriculture, energy production, etc. are unsustainable because of the excess of waste that is not reabsorbed by the system, and the use of natural resources that are not replaced.
The sustainability movement has made huge progress in helping to bring awareness to these issues, gathering momentum towards making changes to these vital systems our species depends on. To opine "against sustainability" threatens this progress. If we don't continue making progress and change these unsustainable systems, nature will overthrow us and find a new balance, which we will either need to quickly adapt to or perish.
7
Nature takes care of itself, with or without humans. When we talk about sustainability, we should be talking about sustaining humanity. This requires a certain relationship with nature. We need to abandon industrial farming because it depends on fossil fuels, which are finite and will be economically inaccessible within a century. We also need to abandon industrial agriculture because it is based on monocultures, and heavy use of pesticides and herbicides. Supporting biodiversity makes it more possible for us to survive, because putting all your eggs in one basket is a recipe for disaster. Sustainability is ultimately about human survival, not the survival of nature.
5
It is worth reflecting that ideas like 'nature', 'wild', and 'wilderness' fundamentally reflect an urban mindset, flow from urban experience, and exist only as a contrast to the built human environment. People living close to the land do not recognize a fundamental division between human and natural experience. Don't buy it? Another commenter misattributed a Thoreau quote, "in Wildness is the preservation of the world" to Theodore Roosevelt. Thoreau was born in a Boston suburb, wrote his most famous work on 'living in nature' less than a half mile from downtown, while Roosevelt was born in a New York brownstone.
Butman rightly points out that the standard model of the environmental movement - greedy humans despoiling the Garden of Eden - is a very recent construct, burdened by narrow moral presumptions. The only truly sustainable path forward is for society to reject the nature/human dichotomy and embrace humanity's role as both consumer and steward of natural resources. This will not set easy for those with a preservationist mindset...
Butman rightly points out that the standard model of the environmental movement - greedy humans despoiling the Garden of Eden - is a very recent construct, burdened by narrow moral presumptions. The only truly sustainable path forward is for society to reject the nature/human dichotomy and embrace humanity's role as both consumer and steward of natural resources. This will not set easy for those with a preservationist mindset...
2
You've wrapped the philosophy of ecological preservation up into subtle call for action; but done very well. The topic won't gain further momentum without the arising of an emotional concept or attachment to nature itself. A fresh way to think/feel about conservation, and our responsibility to address it with best-practices.
1
the article missed alexander von humboldt the founder of ecology
1
Butman's piece is a timely contribution to the never-ending discussion of the human animals place and engagement with non-human Planet Earth - the biosphere, hydrosphere, atmosphere, lithosphere, and pedosphere. Most cultures around the world are grounded on the notion of human supremacy over the natural world and all its non-human inhabitants. This is the issue to address as humans muddle through understanding and mitigating the great acceleration of human impacts on Planet Earth. Human animals must come to a new awareness that we share the planet, not exercise dominion and supremacy over the planet. Only until this new consciousness emerges will we be able to achieve a harmony with the natural world that will benefit all species. Otherwise, as we dither, geological time will make it a moot point.
3
I agree with the author's assertion that we need to be clearer and more honest about how to define environmental responsibility. However, his proposed language is far too vague and easily manipulated/malleable. We need clear benchmarks for resource management and human health and well being on earth, tied to realistic estimates for population growth and standards of living. These can then provide guidance, rather than ambiguous words.
4
I have lived in Portland for the past 30 years and am out in "Nature" every weekend. I have seen it change in a very short period of time. This has nothing to do with God or metaphors. What is true is that the culture at large has very abstract and mechanistic ways of viewing a world that is complex beyond our understanding. The planet and life will survive. The question is whether we will, too.
5
Philosophers run amok in the realm of the natural sciences.
3
Dear Jeremy,
God and Goethe and Wordsworth aside, your next draft might be strengthened by giving more historical and philosophical attention to humility.
God and Goethe and Wordsworth aside, your next draft might be strengthened by giving more historical and philosophical attention to humility.
6
It's a nice argument, even if it does kind of slap a simple binarism on a much more complex relationship.
However, there's one big flaw here, one that somebody at the New School maybe should have noticed--as the language ("promote," "bustle," etc.) gives away, this is kinda an apologia for making the natural world into a factory floor.
However, there's one big flaw here, one that somebody at the New School maybe should have noticed--as the language ("promote," "bustle," etc.) gives away, this is kinda an apologia for making the natural world into a factory floor.
7
Sustainability has been tarnished by the greenwash and the way the corporates have grabbed and abused the word. But, in essence it merely means to live on the planet, acknowledging that we're a part of a dynamic and vulnerable nature and to try to do as little damage to it as possible. The philosophical preamble is simplistic and fails to justify the proposed change of a term. It is not the term that is causing the damage to our world, it is our systems which we need to transform radically.
5
Sustainability=diversity
diversity= healthy ecosystem that can support life (including ours)
monoculture= dangerous and vulnerable, unsustainable system
This is the scientific reason why we NEED a diverse ecosystem to survive.
For an aesthetic reason, look to Eastern philosophy, which sees perfection and beauty in complexity.
Not all of us are content with videogames.
diversity= healthy ecosystem that can support life (including ours)
monoculture= dangerous and vulnerable, unsustainable system
This is the scientific reason why we NEED a diverse ecosystem to survive.
For an aesthetic reason, look to Eastern philosophy, which sees perfection and beauty in complexity.
Not all of us are content with videogames.
2
This reads like a sorry excuse for humanity's short sightedness and greed. We build iPhones but dont clean up the oceans. It's a choice we are making, not a reflection of some objective state of flux in the natural world.
If we don't find a way to choose another path we will reach the carrying capacity of the planet and the choice will be made for us.
If we don't find a way to choose another path we will reach the carrying capacity of the planet and the choice will be made for us.
5
What a moronic reverie. "Sustainability" is not fodder for philosophical debate; it is a scientific key to our species's survival. The author doesn't understand the critical importance of biodiversity to our survival as he fails in his opinion to reference the word/concept. We try to learn and practice strategies that sustain diversity of species because we hope generations who follow us might have a chance of inheriting a quality of life that many of us have had the good temporal and geographical fortune to experience and benefit from in manifold ways. These many species that we - humans - are routinely casting into oblivion are our evolutionary cohorts. We could not have gained our sensory and intellectual keenness without their age-old and illuminating guidance. Recognition of this conspicuous fact is what informs our urgency to learn and practice sustainability. While it is easy to love biodiversity's seemingly limitless expressions of phenomena, the core logic driving our attempts to protect it have nothing to do with "romance." The author writes with fluid academic aloofness and references a range of classic philosophical texts but his conclusions at this indisputably grave juncture in biological history declare with Trumpish clunkiness.
8
What he misses--and what you miss--is that the whole idea of "sustainability," is one of a measured, careful exploitation.
Teddy Roosevelt was smarter than this, as was the old remark "in wildness is the preservation of the world."
Teddy Roosevelt was smarter than this, as was the old remark "in wildness is the preservation of the world."
1
Yes. Exactly my thoughts. Thanks. The absence of any idea of biodiversity in this article is painful, the failure of properly exploring and defining its key term, 'sustainability' (and why the generic term 'adaptability' is supposed to be better), is more than annoying. This whole thing doesn't deliver a single argument 'against' sustainability, which is why I can't believe it got published under this very title. Having that said, Tim, your last comparison seems still a little bit unfair, since Trump hasn't read a single book.
Adaptability is for all of us that wishes to experience nature, and by implication ourselves, by far the most intriguing aspect of it. It's nature's key concept. Charles Darwin noted the phenomenon a short time ago. Nature is about the known and unknown cooperation of nature' s manifestations, part of it are species. And we are one of them. We may not like it, whatever the translation of our fears may be, but nature – or life – has and always will be about cooperation and thus about adaptation. In our not knowable future there is no perfection, but the search will continue. I really enjoyed the article, especially given the complex nature of the subject. Tulips from Amsterdam.
1
What is the point of philosophy if it doesn't make us better creatures? If after all these years of progress in the fields of science and thought, if we behave worse than our non-enlightened ancestors and knowingly so, what is the point?
6
The author is correct that ecosystems are in constant flux, and have been since, well, since cyanobacteria evolved photosynthesis. And, yes, humans have done the most, recently, to alter, and re-direct those ecosystems. In my opinion it's pointless to discuss 'sustainability' for the world's ecosystems until the human population stabilizes. The current guess is that we'll arrive at 9 billion around mid-century. What the world will look like with 2 billion more mouths to feed is what we should be planning for. But humans planning ahead is an oxymoron. Sometimes I think we're no better than bacteria growing in a petri dish.
3
Only a philosopher could be this ridiculous, wreckless, and franky, cruel.
Hello--there is a living world out there. And we're killing it.
Hello--there is a living world out there. And we're killing it.
19
thank you Carl! Amen
4
Thanks for your words. One might add naive and disconnected when it comes to this unfeeling preachment.
3
Once again we have a discussion about "sustainability" that fails to recognize the greatest factor, unbridled growth of the human population. For every increase in human population, birth, by birth, habitat is lost for other species and energy consumption increases. Reinventing the language we use to describe our place in nature is not going to change that. This piece advocates a shallow ecology - it disparages deep ecology - and acknowledges that it is all about us. Until we come to believe that it is not all about us the discussion is hardly worth having.
"We certainly do not sustain nature “in itself.” Rather, we sustain nature as we humans prefer it. More precisely, we preserve the resources needed for human consumption, whether that means energy consumption or aesthetic consumption. In one sense, we preserve nature for industry."
What is needed is a new morality that acknowledges both our limits within planetary ecology, and the inherent rights of other species. The end of human population growth will be the indication that we are there.
"We certainly do not sustain nature “in itself.” Rather, we sustain nature as we humans prefer it. More precisely, we preserve the resources needed for human consumption, whether that means energy consumption or aesthetic consumption. In one sense, we preserve nature for industry."
What is needed is a new morality that acknowledges both our limits within planetary ecology, and the inherent rights of other species. The end of human population growth will be the indication that we are there.
13
The average fertility rate in the World is below replacement. There are some problem areas remaining, most notably sub-Saharan Africa, but even there four of the countries are already well below 3 children per woman and another group of countries are below 4. This indicates that the demographic transition that has already happened in the rest of the World is also well on its way in Sub-Saharan Africa. There is still population growth, but that is due to inertia and will soon (in the next 40 years) damp out.
The real target of the article is simply that way of thinking which was advanced by the ancient Greeks and which considers ideas/forms/species as eternal and perfect. The author is simply applying mechanistic (Darwinian) thinking to the realm of ideas. (Dewey has a nice article on this subject). In this case, all biological wholes (and concepts) must necessarily be (historically) contingent. The totality of biological wholes (considered as a system), i.e, "Nature", therefore, must also be contingent. Hence, our "mourning" is misplaced. This is nineteenth century logic run amok.
Historically, this kind of attack on the possibility of "truth" gains full force after Quine and Kuhn get the attention of the sociologists with their arguments that science cannot be exempt from the logic of this enterprise. I submit that the position is actually pernicious to societal interests, for, in the end, it is an attack also on the possibility of "goodness" (beauty, etc.) and a threat to the idea that reason can have the authority to govern human conflict. (Hence, the position would appear to be maladaptive). There is a book by John Zammito titled, "A Nice Derangement of Epistemes: Post-positivism in the Study of Science from Quine to Latour". I recommend it as a partial antidote to this agenda, which now permeates the realm of "common sense" and has apparently been successfully advanced at the authors' post-secondary institution.
Historically, this kind of attack on the possibility of "truth" gains full force after Quine and Kuhn get the attention of the sociologists with their arguments that science cannot be exempt from the logic of this enterprise. I submit that the position is actually pernicious to societal interests, for, in the end, it is an attack also on the possibility of "goodness" (beauty, etc.) and a threat to the idea that reason can have the authority to govern human conflict. (Hence, the position would appear to be maladaptive). There is a book by John Zammito titled, "A Nice Derangement of Epistemes: Post-positivism in the Study of Science from Quine to Latour". I recommend it as a partial antidote to this agenda, which now permeates the realm of "common sense" and has apparently been successfully advanced at the authors' post-secondary institution.
7
Wherein we bump up against the limits of conceptual thinking...
2
I'd suggest steering clear of this sort of "the moral relativists has don took over our schools!" argument, and reading Richard Rorty and Gerald Graff instead.
2
Is this prudence or wisdom speaking? Note that although Rorty is no friend of idealism, neither is he a friend of post-structuralism - see his article "Nineteenth Century Idealism and Twentieth Century Textualism".
1
if we are going to talk about humans as if they're apart somehow from nature than the whole argument being made is false--humans are a part of nature, the same as all other flora and fauna--and therefore what we do both destruction and preservation are both therefore equally natural--
finally there are no values to be derived from nature anymore than there are to be derived from the vacuum of space--
finally there are no values to be derived from nature anymore than there are to be derived from the vacuum of space--
I love the idea of looking at nature not as some static 'idealized artifact', but as a dynamic system in which humans participate. The author used deliberately provocative language to force readers to look at the familiar in a different light. This is the highest use of philosophy; creating a moral construct in which to critically think through everyday issues and hopefully spark new ideas through that changed perspective.
2
Meanwhile, our two political parties' candidates both fail to address the issues of unsustainable "capitalism"...the Earth is finite. We can only bomb, sell, make, buy so many goods, have so many babies, wipe out so many species, and heat ourselves up so much longer...
The answers are complex, but some countries are attempting to grapple with them way better than ours is...instead of going through coal country and "feeling their pain" or promising jobs, how about some real dialogue about the sustainability of our current "model.?
The answers are complex, but some countries are attempting to grapple with them way better than ours is...instead of going through coal country and "feeling their pain" or promising jobs, how about some real dialogue about the sustainability of our current "model.?
2
Deliberately or inadvertently, you're misreading Hobbes. That famous phrase ("nasty, brutish, and short") refers to life without a central government, wherein everyone is left to his or her own devices for survival, self-defense, and supporting a family. The Framers used "Leviathan," from which this phrase is drawn, to formulate the US Constitution. His argument has nothing to do with ecosystems or our relationship to the environment, and everything to do with the need for a working government.
A pity Congressional Republicans aren't familiar with this concept, but that's an issue for another day.
A pity Congressional Republicans aren't familiar with this concept, but that's an issue for another day.
3
It would seem that you haven't considered that all the issues addressed in this essay, and in these comments, have emerged under the aegis of "central governments." Human beings thrived without them. Not to mention other forms of life and the habitat that supported all of them.
Central governments exist to facilitate the madness of techno-industrial civilization. How is that otherwise "educated" people cannot (or will not) have these discussions with this fact featured front and center?
Central governments exist to facilitate the madness of techno-industrial civilization. How is that otherwise "educated" people cannot (or will not) have these discussions with this fact featured front and center?
This guy didn't even look up any current definitions of "sustainability." He doesn't know what he's talking about. He puts a silly definition in the mouth of Environmentalism -- probably what he's heard we think it means -- and then "corrects" us with a tortured paraphrase of what we already understand better than he does. I recommend the Times get some power review on its opinion pieces before publishing.
5
Dear CoR--Sustainabilty as currently bandied about is a non-sensical term in that it violates the laws of thermodynamics--ain't no perpetual motion machine possible all things tend towards entropy--
1
An "either-or" solution is exactly what the author is supposedly against. No practical environmentalist thinks the wild world of the past can be preserved, but maybe its outright destruction can be greatly reduced by not being stupid. "Adaptability" will mean we have to keep accepting whatever comes along. This is another way of saying "Get over it."
2
I'm not melancholy from the imaginary death of an imaginary god.
I'm melancholy from the knowledge that many among us--including, it seems, the author of this essay--mourn not at all the loss of magnificent species with whom we share this planet, and whose loss was entirely preventable if we chose courage over greed, and action over ineptitude.
I'm melancholy to think that if we follow this author's lead and those who share his narrow benighted view, we leave to future generations of both the human and other species a barren and toxic planet that need not have been so unsustaining.
I'm melancholy from the knowledge that many among us--including, it seems, the author of this essay--mourn not at all the loss of magnificent species with whom we share this planet, and whose loss was entirely preventable if we chose courage over greed, and action over ineptitude.
I'm melancholy to think that if we follow this author's lead and those who share his narrow benighted view, we leave to future generations of both the human and other species a barren and toxic planet that need not have been so unsustaining.
3
Humans have become a force of nature destroying nature itself to support the continuing unsustainable increase in population that sustains the unsustainable increase in wealth for a few.
2
There is of course so much wrong with this absurd position it can't possibly be debunked properly in 1500 characters.
The web of life on earth does not exist for humans to have dominion over & be just fine without us. We on the other hand would not.
The idea that humans are destined by our existence to 'management' of nature makes the assumption that we are the only ones with rights to life, when in fact the ecosystems which we would claim to 'manage' have every right to live unmolested as we.
The old growth forests did not need to be 'managed', they were doing fine, management of forests as a 'resource' for human exploitation is greenwashed by the forestry industry as 'better' for the forests, when the very argument is undermined by the fact that the most valuable lumber is the Old Growth, that was allowed to self-adjust through thousands, sometimes millions of years to create communities, soils, select for the strongest, straightest, tightest-grain trees fighting in the dense, multi-generational stands.
'Management' of 2nd-growth has been a disaster for the forests, their young mono-cropped, slash-covered landscape prone to fires, erosion, many communities can't return, it's thought they evolved in the post-ice-age period of cooler & wetter climes.
But in short, these former forests (denuded by our 'management') are their own expression of life, the oldest & largest on earth, yet we 'managed' to slash the entire continent in a few centuries.
We did not have the right.
The web of life on earth does not exist for humans to have dominion over & be just fine without us. We on the other hand would not.
The idea that humans are destined by our existence to 'management' of nature makes the assumption that we are the only ones with rights to life, when in fact the ecosystems which we would claim to 'manage' have every right to live unmolested as we.
The old growth forests did not need to be 'managed', they were doing fine, management of forests as a 'resource' for human exploitation is greenwashed by the forestry industry as 'better' for the forests, when the very argument is undermined by the fact that the most valuable lumber is the Old Growth, that was allowed to self-adjust through thousands, sometimes millions of years to create communities, soils, select for the strongest, straightest, tightest-grain trees fighting in the dense, multi-generational stands.
'Management' of 2nd-growth has been a disaster for the forests, their young mono-cropped, slash-covered landscape prone to fires, erosion, many communities can't return, it's thought they evolved in the post-ice-age period of cooler & wetter climes.
But in short, these former forests (denuded by our 'management') are their own expression of life, the oldest & largest on earth, yet we 'managed' to slash the entire continent in a few centuries.
We did not have the right.
7
Indeed.
1
YES! This is the best essay I've read in The Stone since it started.
The diagnosis of environmentalism's melancholia and nostalgia is spot on. Equally correct is the assertion that Homo sapiens stands not in opposition to nature, but as an integral part of it and that human creations, both the beautiful and the ugly, are just as "natural" as a forest.
The author's strong argument might be further bolstered by the observation that after the last great extinction event, it took just one million years--a blink of the eye in geologic time--for biodiversity to rebound. Thus, if environmental romantics remain unwilling or unable to accept anthropogenic extinction as the natural and inevitable event that it is, they can be consoled by the awareness that sooner rather than later in terms of Earth's history, after mankind either finds a new equilibrium with the non-human world or else goes extinct itself, things will return to the desired state of normal flux.
The diagnosis of environmentalism's melancholia and nostalgia is spot on. Equally correct is the assertion that Homo sapiens stands not in opposition to nature, but as an integral part of it and that human creations, both the beautiful and the ugly, are just as "natural" as a forest.
The author's strong argument might be further bolstered by the observation that after the last great extinction event, it took just one million years--a blink of the eye in geologic time--for biodiversity to rebound. Thus, if environmental romantics remain unwilling or unable to accept anthropogenic extinction as the natural and inevitable event that it is, they can be consoled by the awareness that sooner rather than later in terms of Earth's history, after mankind either finds a new equilibrium with the non-human world or else goes extinct itself, things will return to the desired state of normal flux.
3
This article doesn't provide the alibi for trashing the joint that you want to believe it does.
Humans are a part of nature even though we do not often act like we think so. Apart from the rest of the natural world we are as dead as the plants that long ago became part of the soil and we know that the universe outside our thin atmosphere is hostile and that which sustains us is actually very fragile in the face of the impact of 7 Billion humans.
Aside from all of the philosophy we can divide actions and intentions into two camps: one that seeks to live as part of the natural world and one that seeks to deny our dependence upon it. One takes that which it needs and the other takes what greed drives them to take.
As an agnostic I do not see our world as God's perfection contaminated by the hand of humans, but am well aware that it is our only home in all of the known universe. As such we would be well advised to live and govern ourselves as a part of nature rather than living apart from nature.
One thing is for sure- Nature bats last. The planet Earth can survive anything humanity can dish out from global climate change to nuclear winter. The issue is that the Earth will still be here, but could likely be uninhabitable depending upon what we do and how soon we do it.
Aside from all of the philosophy we can divide actions and intentions into two camps: one that seeks to live as part of the natural world and one that seeks to deny our dependence upon it. One takes that which it needs and the other takes what greed drives them to take.
As an agnostic I do not see our world as God's perfection contaminated by the hand of humans, but am well aware that it is our only home in all of the known universe. As such we would be well advised to live and govern ourselves as a part of nature rather than living apart from nature.
One thing is for sure- Nature bats last. The planet Earth can survive anything humanity can dish out from global climate change to nuclear winter. The issue is that the Earth will still be here, but could likely be uninhabitable depending upon what we do and how soon we do it.
2
"Sustainability" means the ability to keep doing things for a long time, like harvesting fish, say, or living. Sustainability is good.
5
You could call it Sustainability or Adaptability, but you better make sure the action behind the term accomplishes something. Or, the next term we might adopt could be Desperation which leaves no room for interpretation or even discussion. When you are in it, you know you are in it, and you won't have time to read or write any philosophy about what to do about it or how it might end.
Do you realize the luxury you live in to be able to write such fluff? Write away as fast you can, it won't last.
Do you realize the luxury you live in to be able to write such fluff? Write away as fast you can, it won't last.
4
The next term? We must assume you mean the next president. And surely you jest. Clinton is nothing if not another cheerleader for Progress.
My god, do people not understand that there is a public record of what politicians say, the bills they propose, and how they vote? Clinton will do exactly nothing to change the direction of our destructive techno-industrial civilization. How could anyone suggest otherwise?
My god, do people not understand that there is a public record of what politicians say, the bills they propose, and how they vote? Clinton will do exactly nothing to change the direction of our destructive techno-industrial civilization. How could anyone suggest otherwise?
While the author is technically correct that we influence the rest of the natural world just as the rest of the natural world influences us, it is intellectually dishonest to imply some sort of equality or balance here. Human influence on the rest of the natural world is both immense and disproportionate. Among all animals to have ever lived - at least as far as we reasonably know - our power is uniquely planet-shaping.
5
Sustainability refers to human civilization, not nature. The question is how to build and maintain a sustainable human presence on this planet. Civilization is far more fragile than we suppose. Any one or a combination of resource depletion, mass extinctions, global warming and geometric population growth can do us in. Nature, on the other hand, will continue to adapt and survive long after our cities have crumbled into dust.
4
We would do well to remember that human societies thrived for eons--before the advent of civilization. Civilization is indeed fragile, especially because none of your list of terrible things that "can do us in" existed on any large scale until we had, yep, civilization.
It is civilization that is not "sustainable." This is obvious to anyone who is willing to let go of their indoctrination.
It is civilization that is not "sustainable." This is obvious to anyone who is willing to let go of their indoctrination.
Dr Michael Ben Eli, founder of The Sustainability Laboratory, presents the following definition and objective of Sustainability on its website: http://www.sustainabilitylabs.org/approach/#article-218
"The term “sustainability,” a relatively recent addition to our lexicon, has been widely and indiscriminately used to the point of trivialization."
"We hold that the ultimate objective of establishing the concept of sustainability as an organizing principle is to foster a well-functioning alignment between individuals, society, the economy and the regenerative capacity of the planet’s life-supporting ecosystems. This alignment represents a particular type of balance in the interaction between a population and the carrying capacity of its environment. It is this specific balance that must be the focus of a meaningful, operational definition of sustainability."
The Lab offers the following definition of “sustainability”:
“A dynamic equilibrium in the process of interaction between a population and the carrying capacity of its environment such that the population develops to express its full potential without producing irreversible, adverse effects on the carrying capacity of the environment upon which it depends.”
"This equilibrium has been greatly disturbed in our time, making the current trajectory of human affairs unsustainable."
"The term “sustainability,” a relatively recent addition to our lexicon, has been widely and indiscriminately used to the point of trivialization."
"We hold that the ultimate objective of establishing the concept of sustainability as an organizing principle is to foster a well-functioning alignment between individuals, society, the economy and the regenerative capacity of the planet’s life-supporting ecosystems. This alignment represents a particular type of balance in the interaction between a population and the carrying capacity of its environment. It is this specific balance that must be the focus of a meaningful, operational definition of sustainability."
The Lab offers the following definition of “sustainability”:
“A dynamic equilibrium in the process of interaction between a population and the carrying capacity of its environment such that the population develops to express its full potential without producing irreversible, adverse effects on the carrying capacity of the environment upon which it depends.”
"This equilibrium has been greatly disturbed in our time, making the current trajectory of human affairs unsustainable."
Any "definition" of sustainability that incorporates "the economy" without declaring that it must be eliminated is worse than worthless. Much worse.
Written from a cement sarcophagus?
What the author is missing is the fact that the discourse of sustainability was meant to do exactly what he argues for. If you look at some of the landmarks: the 1987 Brundtland Report, or the 1999 U.S. National Academies report, you see that they all speak to this idea of adaptability. The latter (stated bias: I was a contributor, a graduate student research assistant to the report's lead author, William Clark) is particularly insightful in its metaphor of "scouting the rapids", to make sure that humanity doesn't unintentionally go down a pathway with respect to the environment that throws bigger waves (and rocks) at us than we can handle. That precisely captures the idea of adaptability, and the recognition that things can easily get out of hand, and make adaptation impossible.
3
Very well said, Tony - I wish you had written the article instead of Mr. Butman. He really did not do his homework on this topic.
The population explosion drives everything else: pollution, resource depletion, global warming, rise in the ocean levels/temperatures/acidification, loss of habitat/species, every large body of ice is melting, etc....
I hope it is not true, but i believe we have already passed secondary and tertiary tipping points such as CO2 levels.
That these things are even debatable is a really bad omen.
Before I engage in any debate with anyone I don't already know, I give a quiz:
1) state the laws of thermodynamics
2) state Planck's law of black-body radiation
3) you get the picture
I place extremely little weight on narratives of math and science illiterate people such as the one provided by Mr Butman.
I hope it is not true, but i believe we have already passed secondary and tertiary tipping points such as CO2 levels.
That these things are even debatable is a really bad omen.
Before I engage in any debate with anyone I don't already know, I give a quiz:
1) state the laws of thermodynamics
2) state Planck's law of black-body radiation
3) you get the picture
I place extremely little weight on narratives of math and science illiterate people such as the one provided by Mr Butman.
4
It's tragic that x is destroyed only if x is perfect? Why should we grant that?
1
Today I have been researching the long term use of herbicides in the public forests of California. This, along with clear cutting, and managed mono cropping of tree farms, has been the USFS policy for years. On our public lands, poisons are used to kill the oaks, manzanita, all the species that compete with the "resource" lumber pine. This "resource" lumber is a "cheap" building material, soon to be "cheap" housing which spreads with every real estate bubble here in California. I am well aware of the history of resource extraction in my home state, and I am not "nostalgic" I am filled with existential disgust, and anger at the endless human greed which destroys nature. I wish I had spent every day of my adult life opposing this destruction. I am ashamed to be a human. I guess I should just take a look from a different perspective, to see that my authentic feelings are somehow philosophically misguided? I am so sick of the perversion of language, we are just stupid apes chattering on a sinking ship. When I read this I just think, great, take a dig at "sustainability" I am so sure that is where the problem lies.
3
Mr. Butman, do you know where your water comes from? And what's being done to keep those supplies and their origin watersheds "sustainable" for the next 200+ years? Or is that just an illusion of faulty thinking?
It's really time for you to get out of your office, and enter the real world of environmental action. You have reified "sustainability" as if that term is a singular, real thing, and then pursue a philosophical goose-chase about why it should be opposed or abandoned.
As someone in the trenches for decades of environmental policy, politics and real consequences, I experience your column as that of an amateur, making naive mistakes with serious consequences.
I work in the complex arena of watershed policies and restoration in N. California's Eel River, having to address the actual and predictable consequences of failures. The loss of our soils, water, plants, animals, local and regional economies, public health, and ability to live and work successfully isn't theoretical, nor just something to "adjust" to.
I invite you to visit here or anywhere people are working really hard to restore damaged portions of our planet, against institutions, cultural behaviors, greed, resource and human exploitation, or siloed thinking. That is our role, as conscious beings. Come, join in.
It's really time for you to get out of your office, and enter the real world of environmental action. You have reified "sustainability" as if that term is a singular, real thing, and then pursue a philosophical goose-chase about why it should be opposed or abandoned.
As someone in the trenches for decades of environmental policy, politics and real consequences, I experience your column as that of an amateur, making naive mistakes with serious consequences.
I work in the complex arena of watershed policies and restoration in N. California's Eel River, having to address the actual and predictable consequences of failures. The loss of our soils, water, plants, animals, local and regional economies, public health, and ability to live and work successfully isn't theoretical, nor just something to "adjust" to.
I invite you to visit here or anywhere people are working really hard to restore damaged portions of our planet, against institutions, cultural behaviors, greed, resource and human exploitation, or siloed thinking. That is our role, as conscious beings. Come, join in.
5
Beautiful article. I've definitely felt that the environmentalists, especially around where I live near Boulder, CO, have been promoting environmentalism as a zero sum game. As in, either nature wins, or humanity wins, but not both. There is not efficient use of resources like oil to them, no sensible mining operation, no good dam. Everything built by humanity necessarily also destroys nature.
This environmentalism is analogous to the 2nd wave feminist movement. Rigid, dogmatic, and zero sum. Either men win or women win, but not both. Today, the feminist movement has gone far beyond those simplistic first steps, while environmentalism has become more and more dogmatic.
For the future, environmentalists need to realize that humanity needs to live in a harmony that allows for an efficient allocation of resources and maximum use (i.e. recycling and reuse programs) of those resources. We should live like native tribes....they drove entire herds of animals off cliffs, but they used every part of that herd to enrich their lives. However, we should not abandon technology and industry, but rather embrace them and work to make them more efficient.
This environmentalism is analogous to the 2nd wave feminist movement. Rigid, dogmatic, and zero sum. Either men win or women win, but not both. Today, the feminist movement has gone far beyond those simplistic first steps, while environmentalism has become more and more dogmatic.
For the future, environmentalists need to realize that humanity needs to live in a harmony that allows for an efficient allocation of resources and maximum use (i.e. recycling and reuse programs) of those resources. We should live like native tribes....they drove entire herds of animals off cliffs, but they used every part of that herd to enrich their lives. However, we should not abandon technology and industry, but rather embrace them and work to make them more efficient.
Not only does our resident transgender commenter do a terrible disservice to second wave feminism by repeating the slanderous nonsense that it advocated women dominating men and "winning." She also demonstrates a lack of understanding of the essay at hand and plays right in to industrialism's version of "environmentalism" and "sustainability."
Resources. Efficiency. Technology. These are the problems, not the answers. We've arrived here because of that mindset, as the author here describes.
Resources. Efficiency. Technology. These are the problems, not the answers. We've arrived here because of that mindset, as the author here describes.
This piece manages to bark up several wrong trees at once.
The origin of "sustainability" in this context was a 1987 UN report that talked about "sustainable development," i.e. economic development "that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs." It was always about the economy -- and never about "sustaining nature."
The real problem was within a few years hundreds of definitions of "sustainability" arose. The dominant one in practice today is Nobelist Robert Solow's: as long as we replace natural resources with man-made ones of comparable or greater value, it's OK. As Solow says, our descendants might prefer concrete to trees.
The second wrong tree is Latour: his idea is to allow inanimate objects to "participate" in politics. The effect on some PoliSci departments has been like intellectual Dutch elm disease: a descent into seminar room fantasy -- as this piece also demonstrates.
Finally, if we're talking about metaphors to deconstruct, how about economic "growth"? It connotes happy kids and abundant flowers, but both the results and policy temptations of GDP growth can be anything but: like global warming, soil pollution that lasts centuries, and, as in the country where I live, the government's new aspiration to become a leader in selling arms. At least in wealthier countries, "swelling" might be more appropriate. No need to be a Romantic to question that.
The origin of "sustainability" in this context was a 1987 UN report that talked about "sustainable development," i.e. economic development "that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs." It was always about the economy -- and never about "sustaining nature."
The real problem was within a few years hundreds of definitions of "sustainability" arose. The dominant one in practice today is Nobelist Robert Solow's: as long as we replace natural resources with man-made ones of comparable or greater value, it's OK. As Solow says, our descendants might prefer concrete to trees.
The second wrong tree is Latour: his idea is to allow inanimate objects to "participate" in politics. The effect on some PoliSci departments has been like intellectual Dutch elm disease: a descent into seminar room fantasy -- as this piece also demonstrates.
Finally, if we're talking about metaphors to deconstruct, how about economic "growth"? It connotes happy kids and abundant flowers, but both the results and policy temptations of GDP growth can be anything but: like global warming, soil pollution that lasts centuries, and, as in the country where I live, the government's new aspiration to become a leader in selling arms. At least in wealthier countries, "swelling" might be more appropriate. No need to be a Romantic to question that.
1
Just now rereading Walter Kaufmann's translation of Martin Buber's I and Thou, I couldn't help but think of the importance and uniqueness of the I-You relationship. Earlier civilizations related to nature more in this manner. We moderns have had a lengthy I-It interaction with nature, thanks in large part to the scientific method and its I-It focus. Science, though, informs our awareness of the damage or injury our activity does to nature. Even so, we need more I-You awareness in our relating to nature. Science has its limits.
Rapid adaptation=suffering. "You're fired," requires rapid adaptation. Ethnic cleansing requires rapid adaptation. Climate change is requiring rapid adaptation and is inducing, already, a lot of suffering.
There are really two fears that sustainability addresses. One of them is addressed in this essay, namely "is 'nature' at risk of collapse?" The second one is less discussed and somewhat related to the first, namely "are humans at risk from unconscionable suffering?"
Nature will undoubtedly continue to thrive in certain forms long past the mass extinctions and profound landscape changes we are inducing today. The first fear posits that there are tipping points in nature's functioning beyond which human existence becomes barely viable.
While this is a fear I share, I am (slightly) more confident than most of my colleagues who work in this field that humanity will endure no matter how badly our natural surroundings degrade. I personally focus more on the second fear where things like these loom large: a) 500 million climate refugees in the next century, b) the prospect of a world awash in nuclear reactors and therefore fissile material, or c) the need for trillions of dollars in infrastructure to protect a fraction of the world's most vital human habitats.
The driver of the unconscionable suffering will be the speed of adaptation that un-sustainability is requiring. This essay is blind to what is important about the crisis we face today.
There are really two fears that sustainability addresses. One of them is addressed in this essay, namely "is 'nature' at risk of collapse?" The second one is less discussed and somewhat related to the first, namely "are humans at risk from unconscionable suffering?"
Nature will undoubtedly continue to thrive in certain forms long past the mass extinctions and profound landscape changes we are inducing today. The first fear posits that there are tipping points in nature's functioning beyond which human existence becomes barely viable.
While this is a fear I share, I am (slightly) more confident than most of my colleagues who work in this field that humanity will endure no matter how badly our natural surroundings degrade. I personally focus more on the second fear where things like these loom large: a) 500 million climate refugees in the next century, b) the prospect of a world awash in nuclear reactors and therefore fissile material, or c) the need for trillions of dollars in infrastructure to protect a fraction of the world's most vital human habitats.
The driver of the unconscionable suffering will be the speed of adaptation that un-sustainability is requiring. This essay is blind to what is important about the crisis we face today.
I think it is important to recognise that nature is completely indiferent to us. It will survive us and the worst we could possibly throw at it. In the end we will be no more than a layer of archeology and life will adapt until the earth is finally victim to an exhausted sun. Everything we do is really about us and nature's ability to support us. Other species, well . . . In the regard we should focus on self-survival and perhaps Jeremy Butman's argument will help us tighten that focus. We are now clearly in the driver's seat (as Bill McKibben pointed out long ago) and we can "promote" the things that will extend our existence on earth as long as possible. We are a selfish species and if we accept that maybe we'll respect nature more, just for our own purposes . . .
1
Nietzsche's "God is dead" line was not a declaration in the sense of passing judgment on whether or not God exists; it was a report on the condition of social belief at the time: people had stopped believing that God mattered. Nietzsche didn't "kill" God; rising materialism did Him in (though, God knows, Nietzsche still gets the blame for it, along with the blame for Hitler).
1
So for lack of a better idea, graduate student Bautman effectively suggests doing nothing.
This kind of passive philosophy is very en vogue these days—not least to Silicon Valley capitalists, techno-libertarians, and Wall Street new age-poseur investors who have co-opted Buddhist notions about rolling with it and minimalism as a digestible, marketable front to their avarice.
But whether it’s Jeremy Bautman confronting his powerlessness and/or cowardice— or capitalists throwing up a smoke screen for their greed—it’s the same lame excuse for putting the self before a human race that with a little more selflessness, could go a long way toward preserving itself and this precious state that we share on this amazing gift of a planet.
It's still a noble goal.
This kind of passive philosophy is very en vogue these days—not least to Silicon Valley capitalists, techno-libertarians, and Wall Street new age-poseur investors who have co-opted Buddhist notions about rolling with it and minimalism as a digestible, marketable front to their avarice.
But whether it’s Jeremy Bautman confronting his powerlessness and/or cowardice— or capitalists throwing up a smoke screen for their greed—it’s the same lame excuse for putting the self before a human race that with a little more selflessness, could go a long way toward preserving itself and this precious state that we share on this amazing gift of a planet.
It's still a noble goal.
4
Sure,man: in Geologic time it's all good.
Unfortunately, for those of us sentimentalists watching clean air, wild animals and ocean life disappearing before our very eyes, it tends to get a bit "melancholy." You don't seem to get that we depend on this environment, and that not everyone wants to live in the sort of Corporate monoculture you seem to be urging us to accept.
It sounds like you spend a lot of time in little boxes surrounded by concrete and that you don't have kids. I suggest you get outdoors and see what you're talking about.
Unfortunately, for those of us sentimentalists watching clean air, wild animals and ocean life disappearing before our very eyes, it tends to get a bit "melancholy." You don't seem to get that we depend on this environment, and that not everyone wants to live in the sort of Corporate monoculture you seem to be urging us to accept.
It sounds like you spend a lot of time in little boxes surrounded by concrete and that you don't have kids. I suggest you get outdoors and see what you're talking about.
7
Trump said Global Climate Change was a Chinese hoax.
Jeb Bush and Kasich said there maybe something to it but doing something to stop it, or reverse it, will be an economic threat.
So all Republicans are against attempts at sustainability. Instead Republicans propose as you do, adaptability.
This means let the earth incinerate but let's adapt to the effects by wearing asbestos underwear and overcoat to keep the fire from consuming us. This approach may help the bottom line of ExxonMobil and other vile fossil fuel entities such as Saudi Arabia but it is not a very effective strategy for life's survival on our planet.
Jeb Bush and Kasich said there maybe something to it but doing something to stop it, or reverse it, will be an economic threat.
So all Republicans are against attempts at sustainability. Instead Republicans propose as you do, adaptability.
This means let the earth incinerate but let's adapt to the effects by wearing asbestos underwear and overcoat to keep the fire from consuming us. This approach may help the bottom line of ExxonMobil and other vile fossil fuel entities such as Saudi Arabia but it is not a very effective strategy for life's survival on our planet.
2
There are some great points made here, but in that last paragraph the author seems to indicate that traditional notions of sustainability, as oppose to the one he's suggesting, do not value difference and diversity. I'm pretty sure they do. Many scientists and activists alike have declared that among the biggest threats to sustainability is decreasing biodiversity, and so biodiversity is one of the things environmentalists try to "preserve" and even encourage. So some sustainability work is already taking the approach the author suggests, even if the lingo hasn't quite caught up.
1
Jeremy Butman, described as a graduate student in philosophy, clearly knows nothing about biology, ecology, or evolution. Philosophical drivel will not substitute for the fact that humans have no idea what will happen to the biosphere as a result of the combined effects of climate change and habitat destruction. Analgesic nonsense about 19th century poets does not help the present urgent need for more funding for research on the effects of climate change, and more political action. The NYT could have been forgiven for rejecting this piece.
6
I have read several of my fellow reader's comments in this thread, and nearly all of them more or less wilfully miss Butman's point. He is not in any respect suggesting that we should just sit back and accept catastrophic climate change as the inevitable consequence of human existence. Rather, he is suggesting that instead of looking backward, seeking to "sustain" and "preserve" that which by its very nature is subject to endless transformation, we should look to the future and seek ways to sustain and preserve ourselves.
Nature can and will look after itself. The earth has existed and evolved for eons before Homo sapiens made its appearance, and it will continue to exist for eons after we are gone. To mourn the loss of unsullied nature makes no more sense than to mourn the breaking of a wave.
Nature can and will look after itself. The earth has existed and evolved for eons before Homo sapiens made its appearance, and it will continue to exist for eons after we are gone. To mourn the loss of unsullied nature makes no more sense than to mourn the breaking of a wave.
3
You fail to understand that nature is a system, and we have the ability to understand the system with many variables- without bees, with global warming, without top predators - all these, and many more variables, we can comprehend! Amazing, isn't it!
Yes, nature changes, but the current changes that we are speaking about are man-made global warming, and the standard we would like to get to is a planet that is not dying from our exhaust. No nostalgia there, just survival, buddy. We need bees, we need air, we need water, we need top predators, we need to eat less cows - all these variables we as humans, can control, for a healthier earth. Your entire article is an act of specious and subversive double-talk. You remind me of the CS Lewis characters in "That Hideous Strength", who always seek to obscure their true destructive purpose with a veil of obscure and misdirective words. As the phrase goes, what you are saying is so far from language, so close to garbage.
Yes, nature changes, but the current changes that we are speaking about are man-made global warming, and the standard we would like to get to is a planet that is not dying from our exhaust. No nostalgia there, just survival, buddy. We need bees, we need air, we need water, we need top predators, we need to eat less cows - all these variables we as humans, can control, for a healthier earth. Your entire article is an act of specious and subversive double-talk. You remind me of the CS Lewis characters in "That Hideous Strength", who always seek to obscure their true destructive purpose with a veil of obscure and misdirective words. As the phrase goes, what you are saying is so far from language, so close to garbage.
3
The vehemence with which many of the commenters are attacking this op-ed piece and its author strikes me as highly defensive in the worst way: the comments have the aspect of denial. Fact is, humans really are part of Nature and what we humans are doing is part of and within Nature. Will Nature adapt and survive? Yes. Will humans adapt and survive? Maybe, maybe not. And if not, then Nature will have done what Nature does to non-adaptive species; it extinguishes them.
That said, there is one point on which I diverge from Mr Butman. He writes, "Nature, after all, includes us in its list of animals, and our products differ in degree, not kind, from those of beavers, bees and spiders." Actually, our products (plastic trash, toxic waste, nuclear waste, etc.) really are different in kind from what beavers and bees produce. And that is our problem, our human problem. It doesn't take us outside Nature, but it does transform Nature in a huge way.
That said, there is one point on which I diverge from Mr Butman. He writes, "Nature, after all, includes us in its list of animals, and our products differ in degree, not kind, from those of beavers, bees and spiders." Actually, our products (plastic trash, toxic waste, nuclear waste, etc.) really are different in kind from what beavers and bees produce. And that is our problem, our human problem. It doesn't take us outside Nature, but it does transform Nature in a huge way.
3
and, just to be clear, at some point a difference in degree becomes a difference in kind ...
The author seems to conflate environmentalism, which generally does seek to preserve the state of grace in nature, with the sustainability movement, which seeks to prevent a catastrophic loss of natural systems that would threaten all life on Earth (including ours). Whereas environmentalism may value nature in and of itself, sustainability is based on an economic argument: natural systems provide irreplaceable services that sustain life; therefore, if we wish to live, we must find a balance with nature. Many designers are even modeling aspects of our industrial ecology on natural systems in order to improve economic outcomes; in architecture, the biophilia movement could ultimately give us cities that are extensions of natural systems, rather than exploiters of them. I'm both an environmentalist and a sustainability practitioner, but I suspect it's the economic utility argument that will eventually force us into alignment with nature.
1
Thanks for the brilliant mapping of the pathway underling how we think about sustainability, but what is missing is natural science. What one sees in your map is a pathway that needlessly beats against opposing currents, meanders through gyres for no apparent reason, and avoids monsters where there be none.
It is as if humanity is piloted by drunks.
The problem, however, is not, inebriated navigators so much as it is distraction by social and humanist concerns. Like Eastern Airline Flight 401 whose cockpit crew was so distracted by a faulty lamp that they failed to notice all the indicators that warned of their descent. Had they not been distracted and focused on the whole dashboard, they would have pulled up.
Consider the UN Sustainable Development Goals; they are almost entirely social – gender equity, poverty alleviation, universal schooling, etc. What matters most, however, is building a biogeochemically robust Earth in order to achieve these goals by their target year of 2030.
But therein lies the rub. “Biogeochemistry” concatenates biology, geology, and chemistry – a trifecta of things scary and unpleasant.
We have little tolerance for science, but we will fight about gender, economics, and education till blue (or red), as our current election cycle illustrates.
Humanity is a distracted crew in Earth’s cockpit, worried about bathroom signage when the science of extinction, climate, and disease are all lit up on the dashboard.
Shahid
Columbia University
It is as if humanity is piloted by drunks.
The problem, however, is not, inebriated navigators so much as it is distraction by social and humanist concerns. Like Eastern Airline Flight 401 whose cockpit crew was so distracted by a faulty lamp that they failed to notice all the indicators that warned of their descent. Had they not been distracted and focused on the whole dashboard, they would have pulled up.
Consider the UN Sustainable Development Goals; they are almost entirely social – gender equity, poverty alleviation, universal schooling, etc. What matters most, however, is building a biogeochemically robust Earth in order to achieve these goals by their target year of 2030.
But therein lies the rub. “Biogeochemistry” concatenates biology, geology, and chemistry – a trifecta of things scary and unpleasant.
We have little tolerance for science, but we will fight about gender, economics, and education till blue (or red), as our current election cycle illustrates.
Humanity is a distracted crew in Earth’s cockpit, worried about bathroom signage when the science of extinction, climate, and disease are all lit up on the dashboard.
Shahid
Columbia University
7
This article reads like a student thesis (who else would name drop so many dead philosophers?), so I wasn't surprised to see that it was written by a graduate student.
I find this "total gardening" philosophy to be fatalistic and also overly anthropocentric. This argument of "well, we've raped Mother Nature before, so anything goes now, right?" But there is more to nature than charismatic megafauna and national parks. Floods, fires, drought, earthquakes, and epidemics are also part of nature. It's pretty obvious that the feedback systems on Earth and starting to work against us. If we push too hard it's going to shut us down pretty hard. It's arguable that we're already seeing it happen, with climate change being linked to drought and thus mass migration out of the Middle East. It may be too late to sustain a pre-industrial version of nature, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't take a huge step back and just let the dynamic non-human processes of the world work as they should. Anything else is, on a long enough timescale, suicidal.
I find this "total gardening" philosophy to be fatalistic and also overly anthropocentric. This argument of "well, we've raped Mother Nature before, so anything goes now, right?" But there is more to nature than charismatic megafauna and national parks. Floods, fires, drought, earthquakes, and epidemics are also part of nature. It's pretty obvious that the feedback systems on Earth and starting to work against us. If we push too hard it's going to shut us down pretty hard. It's arguable that we're already seeing it happen, with climate change being linked to drought and thus mass migration out of the Middle East. It may be too late to sustain a pre-industrial version of nature, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't take a huge step back and just let the dynamic non-human processes of the world work as they should. Anything else is, on a long enough timescale, suicidal.
4
After reading the title, I hoped this piece would be about how we need to act in the next 5 (10, 15) years to rapidly move away from supporting the fossil fuel industry. Then after that, and only after that, we could start thinking about "sustainability" in the long run. But no. Give me a break. Then hand me the Val Plumwood.
2
I was skeptical of the author's intentions at first, especially with the provocative title, but his points are all good ones. He's not arguing that humans should ruthlessly despoil the environment regardless of the consequences. Rather, he's advocating that we approach environmentalism with a humanist perspective: basically, science-based, enlightened self-interest. Sustainability implies a hands-off approach, and often that is the right approach, but we should also be just as willing to alter our environment when appropriate or necessary, which is where the author's idea of promotion versus preservation becomes useful. Ultimately, it's ourselves we're trying to preserve, isn't it? And if not, I would question your ethics...
6
Sustainability does not imply a hands-off approach. Today's "sustainable" fisheries, for example, invariably require strong regulation (hands on). Unregulated fisheries will inevitably crash. That is the "tragedy of the commons".
If as you say the author is promoting science-based, enlightened self interest, then he is saying nothing new. That is basically the definition of "conservation", a word strangely absent from Butman's piece. Perhaps he is unfamiliar with it.
If as you say the author is promoting science-based, enlightened self interest, then he is saying nothing new. That is basically the definition of "conservation", a word strangely absent from Butman's piece. Perhaps he is unfamiliar with it.
Just don't get it do you? The fate of humankind is at stake and we get this nonsense from the ivory tower.
2
With all due respect, it's not self-evident that this article is "nonsense." If you've got a case to make, then make it. Blanket condemnation with no analysis to back it up contributes nothing to the conversation.
1
I don't know where to begin. The essay's analysis of the philosophy underlying sustainability will be entirely unrecognizable any actual advocate of sustainability. I was not aware that we had a problem of seeing the planet "as a video-game landscape, programmed by God."
The implication in discussions of sustainability is that mankind is more important than plants and animals and that we must sustain the earth for US. What a self-centered view point. The truth is that the earth does not need us; plants and animals existed and flourished before we showed up. But we humans do need the earth and its air, water, food and beauty. We act as though the earth's resources are our right to take and use instead of precious and fragile, temporal blessings we must protect. Overpopulation is the root cause of global warming, so if we want sustainability we must begin with population control. All ecosystems require balance to be sustained; man has severely thrown Earth's ecosystem out of balance.
16
Slowing population growth is job one. For the simple reason that overpopulation makes every other problem worse. The rest is just rearranging deck chairs.
In the next 20 years our U.S. national parks will become the next vacation and living resorts for the 1%- It is already happening now with the slow introduction of corporate sponsorship. It's only a matter of time before ALEC introduces legislation for private entities to purchase parcels of park land [for pennies on the dollar] and convert these areas into luxury homes and condos. The bad news is- Hillary won't stop this from happening, she will be right there in the back room cutting the deal in the spirit of "bi-partisan cooperation," she'll sign over our only remaining public land to wealthy investors. She and Bill have already done this in Haiti and areas in the Baltic States through their foundation- so this is nothing new. By the way: Vote Hillary 2016!
The author fell into a classic trap that so often dooms this type of writing. He assumes that we all agree on a definition of sustainability. We patently do not. Here he assumes that sustainability is concerned with the ideal of nature and a mythic battle between 'nature' and 'industry.' William Cronon in his book Uncommon Ground and in particular the essay therein, The Trouble with Nature or Getting Back to the Wrong Nature, has written far more eloquently and precisely about this problem.
Sustainability as I understand it is the balancing of the three 'E's, the environment, the economy, and ethics. The values of modern capitalism privilege the economy while our own peril, ignore and at best give lip service to the environment and ethics or justice. We ignore the free gifts of nature, ecosystem services, like clean air and water, soil, and the entire web of life in pursuit of one goal, economic growth. Modern capitalism assumes that unlimited economic growth is possible on a planet with finite resources. To circumvent the problem of resource depletion, we just substitute another economic good.
As a thought question, I often ask my students, "What would the world look like if we used justice as the main organizing tool instead of the economy?" You might guess that I am met with completely blank stares.
Sustainability and socioecological resilience assume that the world is in constant flux. They are concerned with the processes that sustain life.
Sustainability as I understand it is the balancing of the three 'E's, the environment, the economy, and ethics. The values of modern capitalism privilege the economy while our own peril, ignore and at best give lip service to the environment and ethics or justice. We ignore the free gifts of nature, ecosystem services, like clean air and water, soil, and the entire web of life in pursuit of one goal, economic growth. Modern capitalism assumes that unlimited economic growth is possible on a planet with finite resources. To circumvent the problem of resource depletion, we just substitute another economic good.
As a thought question, I often ask my students, "What would the world look like if we used justice as the main organizing tool instead of the economy?" You might guess that I am met with completely blank stares.
Sustainability and socioecological resilience assume that the world is in constant flux. They are concerned with the processes that sustain life.
4
Sure, we could embrace a Hobbesian view and let nature take its course. But what are the broader implications then? The end of social welfare? Perpetual war? Genocide?
Ideas such as sustainability, equity, and rule of law should be cherished as evolved and evolving ideas. They should not be discarded simply because they go against some innate biology. Indeed, that tension is precisely the point: to become better stewards of humanity and the planet more generally by resisting our base impulses through critical reason.
Ideas such as sustainability, equity, and rule of law should be cherished as evolved and evolving ideas. They should not be discarded simply because they go against some innate biology. Indeed, that tension is precisely the point: to become better stewards of humanity and the planet more generally by resisting our base impulses through critical reason.
5
This is what happens when you let Grad students write op-eds (especially when they are philosophy students and write about politics).
The confusion in this piece is harrowing. Parsing semantics should never be confused with making a philosophical or political argument.
At the least, semantic arguments should clarify debates, offer new terms for new concepts, or reveal higher level questions. Instead, this piece just confuses the matter further, avoiding grappling with the actual issues raises.
What an incredible waste of time.
The confusion in this piece is harrowing. Parsing semantics should never be confused with making a philosophical or political argument.
At the least, semantic arguments should clarify debates, offer new terms for new concepts, or reveal higher level questions. Instead, this piece just confuses the matter further, avoiding grappling with the actual issues raises.
What an incredible waste of time.
5
Sustainable agriculture replenishes the soil rather than depleting it. An economy predicated on the use of a finite resource is not sustainable. Etc. The idea is to do things in such a way that they can keep going, isn't it? Romantic nature worshippers may be drawn to the idea for their own reasons, but the idea itself--sustainability--is a practical one, having less to do with seeing the Divine in the natural world than with managing matters in this world well.
6
Many comments reflect an understandable resentment against presenting certain well-known concepts in ecology as new, and for suggesting that a linguistic switch from "sustainable" to "adaptable" could result in any meaningful change in thought or behavior. But a related point that Butman alluded to holds the most promise to influence our thinking for good or ill. This is our emerging scientific understanding that catastrophic change is the modus operandi of nature. It is the "death" of Nature, akin to Nietzsche's death of God. Grappling with this requires coming to terms with planetary (and universal) time scales, something that we are generally not yet prepared for.
5
"a video-game landscape, programmed by God"? Sorry, we pre-Millenials don't suffer from that particular delusion.
2
Do you do you recommend adaptation in a way that would continue for a long time or one that would use up too much "stuff" to quickly? Sustainable or not?
1
Excellent article, although I take issue with the applicability of tragedy only to the loss of perfection; the loss of even imperfect lives can and often is still tragic.
Here is a philosophical question then:
Why does it matter (if it does) that humanity survive?
Here is a philosophical question then:
Why does it matter (if it does) that humanity survive?
2
I think huge change would have happened anyway, maybe a few centuries, or lots of centuries later. However, we have certainly fouled the nest. Life on this earth will continue. Without us, almost certainly, but it will continue.
1
A religious philosopher attempting to drive our collective heads into the sand. Which by the way we are running out of due to our insatiable demand for concrete. Sorry kids.
1
As someone who teaches sustainability in the context of both business and climate change, and one who is a strong proponent of the sustainable development goals, I know full well how loosely defined the term 'sustainability' can be, depending on who is using it, and for what purpose. The world is being affected by climatic changes that will keep going for decades and to which all living things will have to adapt. Businesses know that in order to sustain their viability as businesses, they will need to adapt to not only climate change but also changing ecosystems and dwindling resources. So, for me, using 'adaptability' is a far more useful term than 'sustainability'.
Adaptability also accepts the idea that we (humans) are connected to nature in ways that we have forgotten and so no longer fully understand. Everything - the animate and inanimate, human and nonhuman - is connected. The more we understand this interconnectedness, the better off we will be.
Adaptability also accepts the idea that we (humans) are connected to nature in ways that we have forgotten and so no longer fully understand. Everything - the animate and inanimate, human and nonhuman - is connected. The more we understand this interconnectedness, the better off we will be.
4
The more we understand this interconnectedness, the more we will disdain and destroy "sustainable development," and indeed "business."
From a historical perspective of the environmental movement, I get where Butman is going. I am surrounded by "environmentalists" who want a modern lifestyle and cheap food, but who work mostly and maximizing their personal wealth and taking vacations to places less messed up than where they live. The outrage from nearly every commenter to me speaks to that arrogance that people who don't actually make their living from a close relationship to nature and their willingness to proscribe to those who do. You want to stop factory farming? Don't sit there and protest it, go out and promote locally grown food. BTW, there is no purity to go back to. That fantasy is a romantic one worth examining. Slow your roll people.
5
The reality of nature, strangely, doesn't fit in to human conceptions, particularly not the lumbering, self-admiring, pedantic mess that philosophy in its modern form has become. Only a discipline lost in itself could sustain such utter impractical drivel. "Clear and distinct ideas" are for people who rarely have ideas of any kind. These rare events don't get lost in the crowd as they do in creative or perceptive people, and are preserved like Dead Sea Scrolls. They are then quoted ad nauseam by people who should know better.
Defining nature in terms of ancient hacks is hardly a great leap in to the unknown. The scientific fact, churned out regularly, is that the lack of knowledge of nature has been consistent. Since the "scientific" view of the world became the modern scribbled shopping list of those trying to make trivial points, the logic has simply continued to congratulate itself. Any argument that states that a global environment full of unknowns must be somehow patronizingly tolerated, rather than explored and understood, is anti-survival and anti-fact. It's even anti-science. What else do you study, if not things derived from the many different forms of nature? Industry is transient; it changes, comes and goes. Do you destroy your living room and kill your kids so someone can make a few phones? Yes you do, and this is the sort of argument that justifies it. Sustainability is valuable; arguing for the endless failures of a polluted, mismanaged world is worthless.
Defining nature in terms of ancient hacks is hardly a great leap in to the unknown. The scientific fact, churned out regularly, is that the lack of knowledge of nature has been consistent. Since the "scientific" view of the world became the modern scribbled shopping list of those trying to make trivial points, the logic has simply continued to congratulate itself. Any argument that states that a global environment full of unknowns must be somehow patronizingly tolerated, rather than explored and understood, is anti-survival and anti-fact. It's even anti-science. What else do you study, if not things derived from the many different forms of nature? Industry is transient; it changes, comes and goes. Do you destroy your living room and kill your kids so someone can make a few phones? Yes you do, and this is the sort of argument that justifies it. Sustainability is valuable; arguing for the endless failures of a polluted, mismanaged world is worthless.
1
The bright side of global warming: when the famines, mass migrations and wars are over, when the waters have risen and we humans have contracted our footprint to what’s left of cultivatable land, the billion or two of us who are left may have learned some valuable lessons from the experiences humanity will have endured. 1) We should not ignore scienctific consensus. 2) We can best preserve ourselves by becoming a niche species with a stable population living off the sustainably renewable resources left to us in the lands that are left to us. Hopefully we also learn 3) We can only deal with the global effects of human activity by recognizing that we are one humanity and working out ways to get along with each other and act jointly to stabilize earth’s living systems.
Call it Nature or call it God, in either case, it educates us by making us confront our bad behaviors by bring down on us the results of those behaviors. This is the school of hard knocks on a global, species wide scale. Folk wisdom rates this school the best college, and we must devoutly hope that attending it teaches us the lessons we must learn.
Call it Nature or call it God, in either case, it educates us by making us confront our bad behaviors by bring down on us the results of those behaviors. This is the school of hard knocks on a global, species wide scale. Folk wisdom rates this school the best college, and we must devoutly hope that attending it teaches us the lessons we must learn.
4
"the billion or two of us who are left may have learned some valuable lessons"
You make some very good points, but I think this estimate is overly optimistic by at least an order of magnitude. When the crash happens, I suspect the surviving human population will be numbered in millions, not billions. But it's nice to know that Mr. Butman would not find that tragic.
You make some very good points, but I think this estimate is overly optimistic by at least an order of magnitude. When the crash happens, I suspect the surviving human population will be numbered in millions, not billions. But it's nice to know that Mr. Butman would not find that tragic.
This is a graduate seminar paper in which academic jargon is replaced by journalese ('skews away from' etc.). Why is it here? Other commenters have pointed out problems with the arguments. I would highlight the uncannily imprecise statement (introduced of course by the words 'more precisely') that equates the destruction of 'resources' with the aesthetic enjoyment of the 'natural'. Eyes and axes are apparently the same. D minus, Jeremy.
1
Your arguments are tortuous and specious and misrepresent philosophers. We are not children to be lectured by grad students in philosophy.
God is not only dead, it never existed, and I am not mourning. Descartes assumptions never held water. He said he was suspending belief, but his assumptions are full of belief, and neither science nor views of nature can follow his dualism.
Nietsche celebrated God's death and the coming of better humans.
But the treasures of nature, many of which we have already have lost, are worthy of deep mourning and sacrifice.
God is not only dead, it never existed, and I am not mourning. Descartes assumptions never held water. He said he was suspending belief, but his assumptions are full of belief, and neither science nor views of nature can follow his dualism.
Nietsche celebrated God's death and the coming of better humans.
But the treasures of nature, many of which we have already have lost, are worthy of deep mourning and sacrifice.
4
Was that the entirety of your thesis?
2
As I often say, when I hear the word "sustainability," I reach for my sunscreen.
1
The idea that humans have been affecting the environment and still do so is a false equivalency.
In the last fifty years we have basically transformed the planet in direct correlation with our population doubling and then doubling again. Large mammal populations, fish population have all crashed. They will be limited to a few reserves parks rather than roaming continents as they did less than one hundred years ago.
Hunting one or two species to extinction over a long period of time is not the same as creating a mass extinction event in a period decades.
In the last fifty years we have basically transformed the planet in direct correlation with our population doubling and then doubling again. Large mammal populations, fish population have all crashed. They will be limited to a few reserves parks rather than roaming continents as they did less than one hundred years ago.
Hunting one or two species to extinction over a long period of time is not the same as creating a mass extinction event in a period decades.
2
Somebody's thesis statement. As someone has already said, get back to us when you have at least read something about the science of ecology. You don't have to understand it, a couple of secondary sources is okay
1
This Op Ed was brought to you by right-wing-think-tank dark money. We saw the same baloney trotted out years ago when the timber extraction corporations were caught back on their heels by the burgeoning environmental movement--google Ron Arnold and his ilk. They were highly embarrassed; they panicked; and this was all they could come up with.
The environment is not a literary text or a social construct any more than is a cloud or a volcanic eruption. It is a closed system in which human activity plays only a transitory role--and we're playing strictly on waivers. Whoever wrote this article hasn't been within ten miles of a clear cut, a good river, or a native fish.
Take this speculation about a hypothesis back to the sophomore dormitory.
The environment is not a literary text or a social construct any more than is a cloud or a volcanic eruption. It is a closed system in which human activity plays only a transitory role--and we're playing strictly on waivers. Whoever wrote this article hasn't been within ten miles of a clear cut, a good river, or a native fish.
Take this speculation about a hypothesis back to the sophomore dormitory.
3
I read the title and salivated. Finally, a mainstream media piece that critiques so-called sustainability, describing how it is built on a platform of the same old destructive techno-industrialism. "Sustainable energy" and all that jazz will be exposed, along with the corporations and, most especially, environmental organizations that promote it as some panacea. We'll see how it is simply yet another chapter in the myth of progress. Maybe the author will assert that it's imperative for us to recognize that industrialism as a lifeway must be abandoned; that it's time to launch a managed collapse of our terribly misguided civilization.
Nope. Instead we see a facile rehash of the simple fact that human beings aren't outside nature; that we're part of the deal, and we're messing it up big time.
We also see yet another version of the misanthropic assertion that humans may well be an inevitable mass extinction event. My goodness, even if the author believes we are essentially stupid beings who cannot figure out how to stop all this madness via dismantling capital's power and thus enabling better public discourse, he could at least propose that we try to roll out some different memes and foundational premises in order to reconceptualize our existence.
And maybe that's what he's up to here. Pretty remedial and murky, though. Adapt to what exactly? We won't be adapting to the psychic terror that springs from recognizing that our lifeway is poison.
Nope. Instead we see a facile rehash of the simple fact that human beings aren't outside nature; that we're part of the deal, and we're messing it up big time.
We also see yet another version of the misanthropic assertion that humans may well be an inevitable mass extinction event. My goodness, even if the author believes we are essentially stupid beings who cannot figure out how to stop all this madness via dismantling capital's power and thus enabling better public discourse, he could at least propose that we try to roll out some different memes and foundational premises in order to reconceptualize our existence.
And maybe that's what he's up to here. Pretty remedial and murky, though. Adapt to what exactly? We won't be adapting to the psychic terror that springs from recognizing that our lifeway is poison.
The author seems to be a typical philosopher, who like economists seem to live in some plane of existence that is out there someplace. Arguing that mass extinctions have happened before, that human beings change things (for example, the extinction of the mastodon, the dodo bird or the passenger pigeon) is not an argument, because that is the old justification of 'well, everyone does it'.
More importantly, to argue that sustainability is strictly about man's use of the natural world, I beg to differ. Sustainable agriculture, for example, is about being able to grow enough food without using the fertilizers and pesticides and herbicides we routinely use, that have major consequences. When we set aside nature preserves and national forests and the like, we are saving habitats for animals and also providing a place where human beings can actually go and see nature, we aren't raising the animals there for food or for commercial products.
More importantly, it is recognizing that the fate of human beings is not seperate from animals and nature, but rather is tied together, as John Muir, much more of a philosopher than the auther is, that you cannot touch anything in nature by itself. More importantly, it is about survival, the chaos he claims we should accept has also caused mass extinctions of human beings and societies, the Hopis and Maya were wiped out because of bad environmental practices.
More importantly, to argue that sustainability is strictly about man's use of the natural world, I beg to differ. Sustainable agriculture, for example, is about being able to grow enough food without using the fertilizers and pesticides and herbicides we routinely use, that have major consequences. When we set aside nature preserves and national forests and the like, we are saving habitats for animals and also providing a place where human beings can actually go and see nature, we aren't raising the animals there for food or for commercial products.
More importantly, it is recognizing that the fate of human beings is not seperate from animals and nature, but rather is tied together, as John Muir, much more of a philosopher than the auther is, that you cannot touch anything in nature by itself. More importantly, it is about survival, the chaos he claims we should accept has also caused mass extinctions of human beings and societies, the Hopis and Maya were wiped out because of bad environmental practices.
What an anachronistic worldview that still sees a world derived from a god. Mr. Butman, leave your superstitions unsaid. Modern science has moved past them. Philosophy should get on board.
1
Population increase has created havoc with environmental sustainability. The Biblical Garden of Eve, the agricultural region south of Baghdad in between the Euphrates and Tigris Rivers, is now a mixture of swamps and garbage suffering from the lack of fresh water flows (Thanks Ata Turk). Same problem with massive Indian Rivers like the Ganges dumping the highest levels of chemically poisoned waters into Bangladesh - in that small country alone some 150 million poverty stricken people are relying on that stuff.
Using the word ‘Sustainability’ is perfectly OK provided we only mean "Sufficient and Non-Poisoned Food for People"; that should be the only focus and nothing else.
Using the word ‘Sustainability’ is perfectly OK provided we only mean "Sufficient and Non-Poisoned Food for People"; that should be the only focus and nothing else.
4
I pray that I'm never in a life or death predicament and Jeremy is my only option for help.
1
"Man is the measure of all things,
of nature, how it is,
and of nature, how it should be sustained."
We live on an otherwise cold and indifferent planet. As the philosopher Sharon Street argued in her famous paper "A Darwinist Dilemma for Realist Theories of Value", without anyone doing the valuing, there is no value. And it just so happens to be that only a single animal species (yes, that's us, homo sapiens) is capable of attaching value to something as abstract and general as, here we go:
"the long-term sustainability and thriving of one's own or any other species in a stable and diverse ecosystem"
To be honest, I haven't met a single polar bear who gave me his concerns about the impact of dwindling icecaps for his species' long-term survival. Probably because, polar bears do not have the mental capacity to do so. In the same vein, the only value that blue-fin tuna, giant panda's, the woolly mammoth, or the sabre-tooth tiger have or had for us, is purely instrumental, i.e., so that we can eat them, observe them, domesticate them etc. (neglecting here the value we give to them for their dependency relation to other species).
of nature, how it is,
and of nature, how it should be sustained."
We live on an otherwise cold and indifferent planet. As the philosopher Sharon Street argued in her famous paper "A Darwinist Dilemma for Realist Theories of Value", without anyone doing the valuing, there is no value. And it just so happens to be that only a single animal species (yes, that's us, homo sapiens) is capable of attaching value to something as abstract and general as, here we go:
"the long-term sustainability and thriving of one's own or any other species in a stable and diverse ecosystem"
To be honest, I haven't met a single polar bear who gave me his concerns about the impact of dwindling icecaps for his species' long-term survival. Probably because, polar bears do not have the mental capacity to do so. In the same vein, the only value that blue-fin tuna, giant panda's, the woolly mammoth, or the sabre-tooth tiger have or had for us, is purely instrumental, i.e., so that we can eat them, observe them, domesticate them etc. (neglecting here the value we give to them for their dependency relation to other species).
2
Industry is a function of rational thought. There is no rational thought in nature - not as we know it. There maybe an elan vital as described by Bergson, or a sort of natural evolutionary or ecological force that is an outgrowth of the Brahman. But nature does not think itself as we think.
Industry and the exploitation of nature vitiates the natural world. Of course, we need industry to sustain our way of life. But what is absolutely necessary is to govern industry so that it is in more of an equilibrium with the natural world.
Romantic poets, musicians and painters felt a disequilibrium with nature deeply at the birth of the industrial revolution. Artists of the 1960s felt it at the apex of industrial power in the aftermath of WW ll and during the Cold War.
Now that the West has come to a post-industrial period, people seem to be at peace with our alienation from nature. The virtual world brings us closer to rational facts, but removes us from real nature and the peril that comes from its over-utilization.
There is something beyond rational thought and industry and information on a computer screen. Pantheists find the transcendent in nature. Now more than ever we need artists or some sort of heroic individual to define nature, art, industry and the transcendent.
"Man killed the bird, and with the bird he killed the song, and with the song he killed himself." When human beings destroy their environment, they destroy their own nature too.
Industry and the exploitation of nature vitiates the natural world. Of course, we need industry to sustain our way of life. But what is absolutely necessary is to govern industry so that it is in more of an equilibrium with the natural world.
Romantic poets, musicians and painters felt a disequilibrium with nature deeply at the birth of the industrial revolution. Artists of the 1960s felt it at the apex of industrial power in the aftermath of WW ll and during the Cold War.
Now that the West has come to a post-industrial period, people seem to be at peace with our alienation from nature. The virtual world brings us closer to rational facts, but removes us from real nature and the peril that comes from its over-utilization.
There is something beyond rational thought and industry and information on a computer screen. Pantheists find the transcendent in nature. Now more than ever we need artists or some sort of heroic individual to define nature, art, industry and the transcendent.
"Man killed the bird, and with the bird he killed the song, and with the song he killed himself." When human beings destroy their environment, they destroy their own nature too.
Mr. Butman makes some questionable assertions about the effect of humans on the natural world & biodiversity. There are 2 primary hypotheses for the late Pleistocene extinction of megafauna; climate change as the glaciers receded & the world warmed, & the overkill hypothesis of human caused extinction, on all the continents except Africa, which Mr. Butman seems to prefer. There has been a great deal of debate over the importance of climate change or overkill, and it is still far from settled. There also could be an interaction between the two hypotheses, with climate change beginning the extinction & humans finishing them off. I think there is much more evidence for climate change except for insular islands following the arrival of the first modern humans. Unfortunately, Mr. Butman makes it seem the overkill hypothesis is now the consensus explanation, which it is not.
The other quibble I have is his assertion that “the language we use is a barrier to forging a more constructive (or less destructive) relationship with the rest of the natural world.”
This problem with language is semantics, semantics, semantics. This reminds me of the Neocons of the Bush administration who claimed they made their own reality, primarily by the language they used. For them, objective reality was and is fungible. Mr. seems to share this view. Perhaps he should think about a career in advertising or government propaganda.
The other quibble I have is his assertion that “the language we use is a barrier to forging a more constructive (or less destructive) relationship with the rest of the natural world.”
This problem with language is semantics, semantics, semantics. This reminds me of the Neocons of the Bush administration who claimed they made their own reality, primarily by the language they used. For them, objective reality was and is fungible. Mr. seems to share this view. Perhaps he should think about a career in advertising or government propaganda.
1
This is one of the worst essays I have read in the Stone series and it gives philosophical reflection about environmental issues a bad name. There is no need to conceive of sustainability in terms of preserving something "perfect." The author does not seem to grasp the possibility of conceiving of sustainability in terms of safeguarding the capacity of both humans and nonhuman species to attain ecological flourishing. This does not commit us to maintaining the natural world in a pristine or ideal state (even if we could define these terms in this context), but it does commit us to recognizing that there is a fundamental connection between acting justly towards living beings and promoting the continued development (cultural and physical) of humans as well as animals and plants. Indeed, acting justly towards other humans, future generations, and animals and plants is the key to the continued evolution of life (at least in this tiny corner of the universe).
3
The author pulls several fast ones here. He casually equates "sustainability" and "preservation". They are not the same, and an argument that claims they are is suspect.
Later, the assertion that we replace "sustainability" with "adaptability" implies the two are equivalent and in some way mutually exclusive. This is not at all the case. Because natural systems are generally dynamic, maintaining a sustainable fishery or forestry, for example, requires adaptation on our part, and in some cases a good deal of destruction (in the case of invasive species or illegal fishing equipment, for example).
Before one can philosophize in a convincing fashion, one must have some command of the language, and refrain from cynically manipulating it (or unilaterally making it up). It is not clear if the author is just ignorant (of conservation biology for example) or has a more subtle agenda that requires a shell game with words. That is only too popular in the present political climate.
Later, the assertion that we replace "sustainability" with "adaptability" implies the two are equivalent and in some way mutually exclusive. This is not at all the case. Because natural systems are generally dynamic, maintaining a sustainable fishery or forestry, for example, requires adaptation on our part, and in some cases a good deal of destruction (in the case of invasive species or illegal fishing equipment, for example).
Before one can philosophize in a convincing fashion, one must have some command of the language, and refrain from cynically manipulating it (or unilaterally making it up). It is not clear if the author is just ignorant (of conservation biology for example) or has a more subtle agenda that requires a shell game with words. That is only too popular in the present political climate.
2
The environment is not a philosophical discussion (in spite of the impressive collection of names included in this thing). It is a moral and scientific one. Morally, it is reprehensible that one person's enterprising collateral damage is another person's poisonous pollution. Scientifically, we are objectively obliterating the eco-system that sustains us.
1
While there might be no such thing as nature, that certainly doesn't imply that anthropogenic climate change is "natural."
Single-celled bacteria oxygenated the atmosphere, fundamentally altering the planet's geology and life's evolution. Apart from that, no species until now has had the capacity to reengineer the Earth System. When the author calls for "a bustling world of colleagues" this is essentially a call to continue consciously the intervention into the biosphere that has been happening more or less thoughtlessly up to the present. What does it mean to say "yes" to the Anthropocene or to hope for a "good" Anthropocene?
Where does the author stand on geoengineering? Is it "collegial" to spray sulfur into the stratosphere? To seed the oceans with iron? To power our cities with nuclear reactors? Beavers and bees don't make such decisions.
What does "promoting" a black rhino mean? What does "fostering" require? What time frames matter? What populations of humans and non-humans should be considered? What criteria are relevant and cross-culturally applicable here?
Nature doesn't need to be thought perfect to make its being damaged deeply irresponsible. Isn't it tragic that huge swathes of the Great Barrier Reef are bleached and ecologically ruined ? Aren't the oceans' garbage gyres an indictment?
Declaring nature dead while arguing for better planetary stewardship is contradictory and fundamentally anthropocentric. Such human-centeredness must change.
Single-celled bacteria oxygenated the atmosphere, fundamentally altering the planet's geology and life's evolution. Apart from that, no species until now has had the capacity to reengineer the Earth System. When the author calls for "a bustling world of colleagues" this is essentially a call to continue consciously the intervention into the biosphere that has been happening more or less thoughtlessly up to the present. What does it mean to say "yes" to the Anthropocene or to hope for a "good" Anthropocene?
Where does the author stand on geoengineering? Is it "collegial" to spray sulfur into the stratosphere? To seed the oceans with iron? To power our cities with nuclear reactors? Beavers and bees don't make such decisions.
What does "promoting" a black rhino mean? What does "fostering" require? What time frames matter? What populations of humans and non-humans should be considered? What criteria are relevant and cross-culturally applicable here?
Nature doesn't need to be thought perfect to make its being damaged deeply irresponsible. Isn't it tragic that huge swathes of the Great Barrier Reef are bleached and ecologically ruined ? Aren't the oceans' garbage gyres an indictment?
Declaring nature dead while arguing for better planetary stewardship is contradictory and fundamentally anthropocentric. Such human-centeredness must change.
2
Thank you so much for this plain talk. For what it's worth, I believe the author probably agrees. His writing here is simply terrible.
1
A few interesting points but largely an academic essay concerning semantics versus a substantive contribution to the critical discussion re environmental destruction and 'preservation.'
2 significant errors, however:
1. Sustainability is not merely about sustaining nature 'as we humans prefer it.' It's about maintaining a balance and sustaining nature to support a vast range of life forms including but also extending well beyond humans and human preference.
2. There may be a subset of the environmental movement for whom there is a strong element of melancholia connected to 'the death of God' and the Romantic transference of the divine into nature. For many environmentalist-minded, or pro-sustainability, supporters of an extended natural balance (not placing humans and human consumption at the center), God is not dead.
2 significant errors, however:
1. Sustainability is not merely about sustaining nature 'as we humans prefer it.' It's about maintaining a balance and sustaining nature to support a vast range of life forms including but also extending well beyond humans and human preference.
2. There may be a subset of the environmental movement for whom there is a strong element of melancholia connected to 'the death of God' and the Romantic transference of the divine into nature. For many environmentalist-minded, or pro-sustainability, supporters of an extended natural balance (not placing humans and human consumption at the center), God is not dead.
1
The "God is (not) dead" debate is a bit strange in connection with sustainability and our role in nature. You want religion? Here it is: God made mankind the spoecies that would rule over the world and everything in it. Fine. We can all agree on this piece of church dogma. Now comes the next element: If I am the master over something, be it person, bird, animal or plant, I have the duty, as a good ruler, to see that a) none of the goods I have are wantonly destroyed b) nothing is overexploited to the detriment of all. c) I can step before the Lord and state correctly that I have obeyed Him in keeping His Creation intact.
The very idea of endorsing or promoting a given life or biotope is presumptious, top say the least. I am a "Greenie", and am all for keeping as many areas of this world as intact as possible to preserve biodiversity, and in other areas, to decrease the exploitation that is ruining our world.
What I write now may be unpopular, but we are the only species which has freed itself from selectiveprocesses, thus the exponential increase in population. Thus follows that, if we control this increase, we will damage our environment less as our numbers begin to drop after one or two generations.
A bit of advice: don't use fancy words, quotations, impressive references and arguments to support the agenda of the industry - analyse what is really meant, then write a new essay.
The very idea of endorsing or promoting a given life or biotope is presumptious, top say the least. I am a "Greenie", and am all for keeping as many areas of this world as intact as possible to preserve biodiversity, and in other areas, to decrease the exploitation that is ruining our world.
What I write now may be unpopular, but we are the only species which has freed itself from selectiveprocesses, thus the exponential increase in population. Thus follows that, if we control this increase, we will damage our environment less as our numbers begin to drop after one or two generations.
A bit of advice: don't use fancy words, quotations, impressive references and arguments to support the agenda of the industry - analyse what is really meant, then write a new essay.
What an errant premise. The author's strawman is that we all define "sustainability" as being the opposite of "extinction." No one thinks that; how absurd. Why does the NYT waste space on stuff like this which has no connection to reality?
2
'Nature' and 'wilderness' are social constructs. Good luck finding words for those constructs in any indigenous languages. People need to come to grips with the fact that this is our only planet, our only water. Doesn't matter how shiny the plumbing is or how efficient the pumps are at reaching the tops of the highest skyscraper, if the glaciers that feed the rivers have all melted away or if the water table has risen so that even if Florida is not underwater, all it's aquifers are filled with seawater.
3
The thing about philosophy is that it's only interesting to people. Trying to tautologically justify climate change or species extinction probably matters little to those species going extinct, or even to those people most vulnerable to the impacts climate change will have. In all our searching of the stars it should be apparent how unique life is, not arguments. It's ironic that of all the interests of conservatives, the aspect of our lives they are least concerned with conserving is that very climate that allowed humanity and religion and big business to flourish. There exists a world where we can have jobs, eat well, be healthy, not only coexist but promote a diversity of other life, and leave the same for people 1000 years from now. It seems the author chose to focus on the literal root, 'sustain'. Sustainability was never about maintaining the status quo, but creating a society that truly embodies our values, being good towards others (current, future, and non-human) and creating something that lasts.
1
My favorite part of the next generation is how they think they are discovering something everyone else has taken for granted for 50 years. Jeremy, you are just now figuring this out? Now make a video of your thoughts, post it on YOUTUBE, claim it is viral, a crazy solution or the big corporations don't want us to know this. I hope this is nothing more than a Master's Degree and the public isn't paying for this degree. Weak.
I find Butman's argument to be a bit of a straw man, as that I've never heard from the sustainability movement a desire to arrest nature, locking it into a fixed structure. Indeed, even Hobbes did not promote the concept of nature described here. Nature itself was not brutish and short; but humans co-existing in a state of nature (which, by definition, was an existence with others but without government or society) were but self-interested egoists whom could not be trusted without the rule of law (or threat of punishment). Moreover, while nature might list us as animals, we are most certainly separated in kind from other species. As Marx so insightfully wrote, what separates the architect from the bee is that the former conceptualizes in the mind before actualizing through the body, unlike the latter that builds its hive from instinct alone. Tell me of another animal that plans and adapts with the dexterity of homo sapiens.
The point then is that we humans, uniquely, have the capacity to act with foresight, and it is disingenuous to claim that those who seek to sustain nature do so only to preserve it in its current form. Rather, we wish to give nature the chance to be what it always is: a magnificent process, always in motion. It is industry that hopes to arrest nature for continuous exploitation, not those who work to save it from craven human action. Indeed, to sustain nature is to give it the chance to adapt before humans irrevocably undermine its process.
The point then is that we humans, uniquely, have the capacity to act with foresight, and it is disingenuous to claim that those who seek to sustain nature do so only to preserve it in its current form. Rather, we wish to give nature the chance to be what it always is: a magnificent process, always in motion. It is industry that hopes to arrest nature for continuous exploitation, not those who work to save it from craven human action. Indeed, to sustain nature is to give it the chance to adapt before humans irrevocably undermine its process.
16
Mr. Butman:
You seem to be both embracing and rejecting the Enlightenment. Embracing it by accepting as normal mankind's domination of nature.
But you also reject this view by wanting to give something like "rights" to nature, calling for the recognition of multiple interests among the animate and inanimate, flora, fauna and humans.
What is missing is any sort of discussion of balance, harmony or equilibrium. It is not enough to recognize connections, or assert, as so many have before you, that nature is better defined by a bloody claw rather than by a pristine pond at the edge of the forest.
Outside the canon of western philosophy, there do exist philosophical systems that explore concepts of balance and harmony, particularly among Buddhist and Vedic thinkers.
In the Andean region, there is a philosophy known as Sumak Kawsay (which translates from the Kichwa as Buen Vivir in Spanish, or Good Living in English) that explicitly balances the rights of humans and nature. Buen Vivir is now incorporated into the Bolivian and Ecuadorian constitutions. In Ecuador's 2008 Constitution, nature was legally endowed with rights that can be asserted in a court of law.
This discussion of harmony among competing rights, for the animate and inanimate, is lacking in your treatise. Your essay opens the door to some creative thinking but as is, it seems incomplete and potentially dangerous in the hands of climate change deniers and old fashioned modernizers.
You seem to be both embracing and rejecting the Enlightenment. Embracing it by accepting as normal mankind's domination of nature.
But you also reject this view by wanting to give something like "rights" to nature, calling for the recognition of multiple interests among the animate and inanimate, flora, fauna and humans.
What is missing is any sort of discussion of balance, harmony or equilibrium. It is not enough to recognize connections, or assert, as so many have before you, that nature is better defined by a bloody claw rather than by a pristine pond at the edge of the forest.
Outside the canon of western philosophy, there do exist philosophical systems that explore concepts of balance and harmony, particularly among Buddhist and Vedic thinkers.
In the Andean region, there is a philosophy known as Sumak Kawsay (which translates from the Kichwa as Buen Vivir in Spanish, or Good Living in English) that explicitly balances the rights of humans and nature. Buen Vivir is now incorporated into the Bolivian and Ecuadorian constitutions. In Ecuador's 2008 Constitution, nature was legally endowed with rights that can be asserted in a court of law.
This discussion of harmony among competing rights, for the animate and inanimate, is lacking in your treatise. Your essay opens the door to some creative thinking but as is, it seems incomplete and potentially dangerous in the hands of climate change deniers and old fashioned modernizers.
13
An excellent reply and perfectly put.
I'm surprised and disappointed that the Times has given this essay such prominence on the website front page - the very first article you see in the top left corner. To highlight such a poorly argued and fallacious article by a non-expert (don't take my word for it - check out the overwhelmingly negative Readers Picks responses) makes me wonder what the editors are thinking.
2
A close reading of the new Public Editor suggests someone in a high position at then NYT has decided this move away from quality and towards a USA Today mentality is the only way the NYT can survive financially.
She appropriately urges caution and I hope our negative comments are heard.
She appropriately urges caution and I hope our negative comments are heard.
1
Is it your contention that those writing the "overwhelmingly negative Readers Pick responses" are all experts?
Many still know that we that we are of and not in nature. Nature cannot be something separate from us. By thinking that we have no deep connection with nature what we really say is we do not know ourselves.
"Humankind has not woven the web of life. We are but one thread within it. Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves. All things are bound together. All things connect" said Chief Seattle. To answer "Where do we go?" answer "Where are we from?" This existence is more than home, it is that answer.
"Humankind has not woven the web of life. We are but one thread within it. Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves. All things are bound together. All things connect" said Chief Seattle. To answer "Where do we go?" answer "Where are we from?" This existence is more than home, it is that answer.
Yes, Mars is no different from Earth - it is in a constant state of flux - except that life disapperared. What baloney. We are as much part of nature as locusts are part of a wheatfield.
1
Mr. Butman seems unaware or unconcerned about the uses to which philosophy is put. Arguments have real world impact as justifications for choices made. Unfortunately, Mr. Butman's argument is quite friendly to those whose industries are destructive to the environment, or to those who are concerned but don't want the inconvenience of changing their consumption. One upside at least, there may be a fossil fuel endowed chair in Mr. Butman's future.
Industry enablement is not apodictic in Butman's analysis--read again.
1
Mr. Butman- NOTHING is sustainable - neither me nor you nor the planet upon which we live. CHANGE is the only constant - it is what gave rise to us, and will remain long after we, our planet, and our sun are gone. Sustainability, however well-intentioned, is a flimsy band-aid that allows us to believe that we can exist without paying any price for our existence. Years ago we saw our home as limitless and treated it as such to our detriment. Even now we have an entire political party of the most powerful nation on Earth that denies human-caused changes in our environment. Sustainability is just the latest wrinkle in this well-worn anthropocentric discussion.
4
The World Amazes
Underfoot is a corporate takeover
That requires everything to die.
Normal. Memo written on clover.
CCs to four corners, earth, and sky.
A robin is never sad. A guess.
Hard to say. Sadness is so shy.
Pity anything that needs confess.
Hard to pity anything can fly.
You saw the sun today, assumed.
You saw the world work extra hard.
Everywhere a flower fell or bloomed,
Restless earth has left a business card.
--LB
Underfoot is a corporate takeover
That requires everything to die.
Normal. Memo written on clover.
CCs to four corners, earth, and sky.
A robin is never sad. A guess.
Hard to say. Sadness is so shy.
Pity anything that needs confess.
Hard to pity anything can fly.
You saw the sun today, assumed.
You saw the world work extra hard.
Everywhere a flower fell or bloomed,
Restless earth has left a business card.
--LB
This rambling pseudo-intellectual collection of philosophical fragments proves once again that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. Perhaps Jeremy will change his tune when his city apartment, which is less than 30 ft above ocean level, becomes part of the $150 trillion of stranded assets less than 40 ft above sea level in the coming century or so, and when there are many hundreds of millions of climate refugees, not the few million that we can't handle even now. Sustainability is a far better concept than this half-baked collection of faux ideas, most of which miss the forest for all the focus on the trees.
1
Sustaining habitats as they were before humans encroached is a worthy goal, even if it's not the practical form of the concept that's gained mainstream support... and it has nothing to do with god. It has to do with biodiversity, which is a boom to scientific discovery and, potentially, human survival.
We environmental activists knew at the moment the concept of "sustainability" was presented to the world that it would be adapted and used by all to blur the growth that capitalism needs to maintain a viable market.
It was only a matter of time until the continued despoliation of the biosphere let to the suggestion that "Instead of sustainability, we should instead speak of adaptability...."
There's to be rationalization in the obscurantist language of the ideational philosophers - no hint of molecular science to support the argument for surrender - right to the end.
It was only a matter of time until the continued despoliation of the biosphere let to the suggestion that "Instead of sustainability, we should instead speak of adaptability...."
There's to be rationalization in the obscurantist language of the ideational philosophers - no hint of molecular science to support the argument for surrender - right to the end.
2
Infinite growth per industrial model is impossible, but a new model is swiftly evolving...whether we can obviate thermageddon & ecollapse is uncertain...Deus ex Machina is a Trumpish fantasy.
Don, is there a new model evolving? If so, where might we find it? I see infinite growth as the only model being pursued. In fact, without it, we will see a catastrophic collapse. Hence the (not-so-?)quiet desperation to mine the solar system, and to colonize it. Along with, of course, remaking this planet's biosphere and human beings themselves. Transhuman cyborgs and all that jazz.
As I always say, these projects will come in a bit over budget and behind schedule, with a few unforeseen kinks. In other words, they are insane. Still, I don't see any other plans being floated by our fearless political and corporate leaders. Their spectacular shortsightedness, and of course venality, are on display for anyone who cares to look with eyes wide open.
As I always say, these projects will come in a bit over budget and behind schedule, with a few unforeseen kinks. In other words, they are insane. Still, I don't see any other plans being floated by our fearless political and corporate leaders. Their spectacular shortsightedness, and of course venality, are on display for anyone who cares to look with eyes wide open.
I also meant to include this in my reply to Don: We live amid an ongoing catastrophe. The collapse of industrial civilization will no doubt be much worse, yet we need not experience it in order to grapple with the plain fact that industrial civilization is a horror. Right here, right now.
1
There seems to be a basic confusion in this concept of "sustainability." Most users of the term are not talking about "sustaining" nature. They are talking about creating a sustainable relationship between human beings and nature, rather than a zero-sum relationship of wreaking destruction on it for immediate gain which will eventually come back to bite the destroyers (usually, people recognize we can't ultimately either sustain or destroy nature, which is far more powerful than anything humans can do to it). There is also little understanding in this essay of the complexities in British Romantic poets' highly intricate and diverse ideas about nature and human relationship to it. Its particularly bizarre to identify atheist Shelley and his description of nature-in-itself as the destructive processes of Mont Blanc as transferring qualities of the Christian god to nature. Even Wordsworth, the one who portrays nature as most benign, describes a relationship in which humans ultimately come to belief in a deity because of the losses and mortality nature visits on humans. Rather facile.
1
Or, alternatively, (and beyond promotion) is direct help especially using technology to aid and supplement natural process to replenish where humankind have been destructive and thoughtless. One example is with the forage fish collapse and far reaching consequence of food shortages to other fish, seafaring mammals and countless birds because of the industrialization of the industry. Go to www.kepleybiosystems and see technology to help replenish forage fish using novel invention.
Maybe I've been misinformed, but I have understood sustainability to refer to an action taken by humans. In other words, a sustainable lifestyle is one that could continue close to forever in our given environment. Solar energy is not 'sustainable' because it will help us maintain 'nature' in the form we feel it is, but because we can keep collecting it without it running out. The last two sentences were not declarations, but tools to illustrate what I have always thought the definition was. I guess if this isn't the way most people perceive the word, then there can be an argument for trying not to use it. Or the people who use it the way I described could explain what they mean?
1
Am impressed. A graduate student has actually brought The Stone column back to its original status as a platform for independent-minded and innovative philosophical thought on contemporary issues -- after it had become for months little more than an echo chamber for academic twaddle and sociopolitical cliches.
1
Stone is sui generis & worthy.
I have enjoyed reading the comments, most of which trashed this piece. I agree that it is trash. However, I am glad to see this topic discussed. The mass extinction now occurring is getting almost no attention outside of scientific circles. Books like Kolbert's and the more intriguing "Song of the Dodo" are few and far between.
2
"I agree that it is trash."
After that beauty, I cannot possibly disagree with anything else you said.
PERFECT!
After that beauty, I cannot possibly disagree with anything else you said.
PERFECT!
The trash is mostly assertoric--badly written, poorly edited & oft not even germane...Butman's view will be elaborated in his thesis, but there's no final word on matters governed by Chaos, random acts & assorted other phenomena...quant algorithms will optimize management of nature, Man & society alike, pursuant to numbers larger than the sum of all atoms in the visible kosmos...fundamental advances pend likewise in application of groupoids & homotopy types...there'll be no privacy, but civic order w/in & amongst nations, via remote neuro-surveillance of intent...syntels mean mass disployment, but the end of scarcity w/in a century...neither Hillary nor Trumpiston magnavox vulgens is aware of these processes [v. Bostrom, Oxford Institute].
So you do indeed believe we will continue to pursue the path of technics to its logical end. You also appear to celebrate same. Terrifying is your description. It's not an unlikely path, though it will fail even more spectacularly than the crude versions already in place.
I second those commenting that the essay seems blind to the extent to which its "revised language" is friendly to corporatist exploitation. For me the key turn in the essay is the claim that mass extinctions can be catastrophic, but cannot be tragic unless nature is viewed as an unchanging ideal. However, if the essayist wants us to take fellow "actants" in nature seriously, then surely we should see the loss of life and consciousness in mass extinctions as a tragedy from some points of view. After all, some forms of animal consciousness long preceded our first hominid ancestors.
If "there is beauty in this view of life," to echo Stephen Jay Gould quoting Charles Darwin, there is also tragedy, with or without a human presence. To deny that strikes me as speciesism.
If "there is beauty in this view of life," to echo Stephen Jay Gould quoting Charles Darwin, there is also tragedy, with or without a human presence. To deny that strikes me as speciesism.
We do NOT preserve for industry. We sustain the environment so that it will continue to sustain us. There is nothing wrong in doing this.
25
resources energy=products plus air emissions plus water emissions plus solid waste. In a truly sustainable system the left and right hand side of the equation would tend towards zero. The rest is marketing
Unfortunately for this author, due to a powerful coalition of religious and political forces, humans have chosen quantity over quality. This choice is not sustainable.
15
This is true, but the problem goes beyond that. Modern industry (really the economy) is dominated by financial forces, which require constant growth to be stable. A corporation which successfully earns $1 billion each and every year will be judged a failure and hacked up into pieces by financial vultures. It's stock price depends upon profits growing 2, 3, 5, 20% per year, which requires ever increasing output. Sustainability is not consistent with a continuous, exponential growth in population and output. On the other hand, we have not figured out a way to maintain a stable economy without growth. Political stability requires economic stability, so all governments push for fairly rapid growth. Our footprint has grown so huge upon the Earth that sustainability requires a shift to a stasis economy of stable population and no increase in resource consumption. Actually, we need to reduce consumption of some resources like fossil fuels. Those who oppose the very concept of global warming with actual religious fervor, declaring that only God can determine or alter the climate, fear that we don't know how to survive without constant growth. It is much easier to avoid disastrous civil fights over the share of a pie which is growing by 3% per year than it is to avoid a fight over a pie of constant size, especially when people fear that the size of that pie will actually decrea
I kept reading the article, waiting for the term "overpopulation" to appear. We are approaching 8 billion people, and have no predator, other than our fellow man, and we don't seem to be capable, even through war and violence, of bringing human numbers back to reasonable levels, to approximately 1.5-2 billion, which is the number most scientists agree is the ideal number in order for large animals like blue whales, jaguars, lions to survive, as well as keeping our water, air and land pollution-free.
There can be no talk about environmental issues until you discuss providing birth control to women in poor countries. Every other argument is meaningless. With a little planning, we could stop overpopulation, but that would require confronting the Catholic church about their ban on birth control, and they are simply too powerful. Oh, and they get their instructions from God, and how can you argue with that?
There can be no talk about environmental issues until you discuss providing birth control to women in poor countries. Every other argument is meaningless. With a little planning, we could stop overpopulation, but that would require confronting the Catholic church about their ban on birth control, and they are simply too powerful. Oh, and they get their instructions from God, and how can you argue with that?
40
Your point is the most central one, human population growth is driving the depletion of "nature." As countries modernize and adapt a higher standard of living they consume more resources.
However the highest birth rates in world are coming from Africa and the mid-east. So even if the church handed out birth control at mass it wouldn't have a big effect in these countries. In most traditionally Catholic countries the church is no longer the respected institution it once was.
However the highest birth rates in world are coming from Africa and the mid-east. So even if the church handed out birth control at mass it wouldn't have a big effect in these countries. In most traditionally Catholic countries the church is no longer the respected institution it once was.
We do have predators - viruses, bacteria - and they LOVE to find humans living closer and closer together!
1
Aaaaah! - Ocean Blue is my type of person - one who has the fortitude to mention the taboo word 'overpopulation'. In Texas, uncontrolled population growth (i.e. unsustainable) of the cities threatens the groundwater supplies of the rural areas because the "cities" want to make us 'water colonies' whose only reason for existence is to keep the pumps primed. One of my medical students had a great idea for controlling population - she questioned why it took an "active decision" for contraception while conception just came naturally. Her solution was to add a contraceptive agent to the drinking water which would reverse the roles requiring an "active decision" for conception - no more unplanned pregnancies. Even now as I write this note in the beautiful seclusion of my ranch, I feel the wrath of the readers who question if I deserve a place in the world because of my 'different drummer' thoughts.
1
I’m not a philosopher but I understand environmental sustainability. Yes, mass extinctions prior to the advent Homo sapiens were the result of natural disasters and-or environmental change. Yes, humans are part of nature but we can change the environment much faster than nature usually did prior to our presence. Prehistoric humans surely played a role in destroying a valuable food resource, mastodons and the woolly mammoths. They didn’t know any better, but we do today. The Fertile Crescent lost its fertility when humans depleted the soil’s nutrients faster than the soil’s ability to replenish them. Mesopotamians didn’t know any better, but we do today. If we take fish from the oceans faster than their ability to reproduce, one day we will have no more fish to eat. If we burn carbon-based fuels faster than nature’s ability to restock the reserves, no more carbon-based fuels for hundreds of thousands or years after the last flame extinguishes. Terrestrial and aquatic plants are the source of the oxygen we breathe. If we destroy those plants faster than their ability to regenerate to a quantity of biomass required to sustain all living things, then less air to breathe (and less food for all herbivores, not just bipedal ones). Sustainability is about balancing natural resources depletion with the ability of natural resources to replace themselves. We live unsustainably. We may be part of nature, but we’re still doing dumb stuff when we ought to (and do) know better.
31
Adaptability, sustainability, potayto, potahto... Call it what you will, this time around we have the ability to understand our effect on the environment, and to do something about it. Sadly, we seem to still lack the collective will.
16
I think the author is pretending not to know that by sustainability, people refer to energy sources like wind and geothermic and solar. The melancholy feelings people have around this issue are feelings of loss when they see ruined land and they miss the butterflies they used to see, and certain kinds of birds. That's pretty melancholy.
15
Aw, cue the strings.
Amazing. We are so sure we are the apex of the point of the world's very existence that we can't even get out of our own way long enough to parse the logic in this piece. We can't even consider that making the earth unlivable for humans might just be a step in some progression we are only a tiny part of. I don't pretend to know if that progression exists or if it does. what "value" it has, but it was a thoughtful and thought-provoking article. If humans wipe themselves out, is the earth better off? worse off? just different?
15
Yes. Most of the others writing here do not get Butman's point. You do.
1
This argument is quite similar to asserting that killing someone is not immoral because death would occur to that person anyway. just because extinction, which is species-level death, or even mass extinction, are real features of life on the planet, and were long before humans arrived does not make it immoral to effect those things at our whim.
40
This essay is a powerful argument for keeping philosophers out of environmental policy.
105
I drew exactly the opposite conclusion. We need philosophical reflection on the environment, even just to define what we mean by "environment", "nature", and to confront hard ethical questions.
1
It is at best a very weak argument for that conclusion, since this essay is just one instance of environmental philosophy.
You need to read it again Matt. While you conclude that .."we need to do something..," Butman is saying what that thing we need to do is.
3
You need to read it again, Clayton. Butman is by no means "saying what the thing we need to do is." From the oxygen-starved heights of his ivory tower, Butman is merely suggesting a change to our general mindset and the adoption of new terminology.
As accelerating environmental disaster threatens, we need the leadership and ideas of brilliant scientists and courageous, charismatic statesmen. Who has ever run to a philosopher in an emergency?
As accelerating environmental disaster threatens, we need the leadership and ideas of brilliant scientists and courageous, charismatic statesmen. Who has ever run to a philosopher in an emergency?
The author seems never to have taken a class in Ecology. Not the movement. Not the philosophy. Not recycling tin cans. Ecology the science. And it is a science. You can't understand ecosystems and sustainability and population dynamics and evolution etc. without the science. So please get back to us when you understand it as such.
90
Assuming you're right about the author's ignorance of scientific ecology (although I doubt it), exactly what difference would such knowledge make to his argument? None that I can see.
The point is not to make a difference to his argument but to replace it with an ACTUAL argument.
To borrow the words of Wolfgang Pauli:
"What we have here isn't only not right, it isn't even wrong."
To borrow the words of Wolfgang Pauli:
"What we have here isn't only not right, it isn't even wrong."
2
Your declaration is a fallacy. Just because you designate that ecology is a science doesn't necessarily make it so, let alone the actual phenomenon about which the author speaks, regardless of its name.
May "ecology" also be art? Certainly so, if I say so. Which pertains to the author's argument. And what does "taking a class" have to do with it?
"Sometimes music is music, and sometimes it's not." - Dick Higgins
May "ecology" also be art? Certainly so, if I say so. Which pertains to the author's argument. And what does "taking a class" have to do with it?
"Sometimes music is music, and sometimes it's not." - Dick Higgins
1
I gave up on "sustainability" a long time ago -- because it was co-opted by greenwashers; because what we really mean by it is sustaining human dominance and comfort; and because in fact we're not actually going to sustain much of anything over the long haul. The best we can do is slow the rate of decline.
Butman writes: "Mass extinctions ... are only tragic if nature is viewed as something perfect that we are destroying." Whether nature is perfect or not, we *are* destroying it. Yes, mass extinctions are part of the flux of deep time - but humans are killing off other species in a relatively short period of geological time. And to suggest that somehow it's not tragic is cavalier.
It's well and good to say "humans are a part of nature" but what we don't grasp at a deeper is that we are one kind of mammal among many -- a"bustling world of colleagues" -- but that humans do not have more value than other life forms.
Butman writes: "Mass extinctions ... are only tragic if nature is viewed as something perfect that we are destroying." Whether nature is perfect or not, we *are* destroying it. Yes, mass extinctions are part of the flux of deep time - but humans are killing off other species in a relatively short period of geological time. And to suggest that somehow it's not tragic is cavalier.
It's well and good to say "humans are a part of nature" but what we don't grasp at a deeper is that we are one kind of mammal among many -- a"bustling world of colleagues" -- but that humans do not have more value than other life forms.
35
The philosopher engages in grandiose thinking and loses track of the obvious: the opposite of "sustainable" is "unsustainable", and thus, if we do not seek sustainability, we will achieve an unsustainable state, one where our current way of life - or human civilization - cannot be sustained. It is not hard to imagine massive crop failures in the planet's mid-section in the coming decades, with millions of displaced people pressing North and West. The migration of 2M Middle-Eastern people is shaking Western Europe and may well break up the European Union and/or change its open, democratic character as far-right parties come to power. What would happen if there were 100M displaced people, with thousands dying every day?
The need is much more immediate, and dire. It is not some "Romantic transference" nonsense - it is about the survival of the species.
The author should put down the philosophy books for a moment and brush up on current events, domestic and foreign.
In the mean time, "sustainability" perfectly describes what we need.
The need is much more immediate, and dire. It is not some "Romantic transference" nonsense - it is about the survival of the species.
The author should put down the philosophy books for a moment and brush up on current events, domestic and foreign.
In the mean time, "sustainability" perfectly describes what we need.
105
The third world's population has tripled in the last 60 years and in some places, such as sub Saharan Africa, quadrupled to quintupled. Those are stupendous rates of increase that are unprecedented in human history anywhere in such a short period of time. And it hasn't suddenly stopped. That's what is immediately unsustainable.
Nature is indifferent to "human civilization." It's just another temporary phenomenon of the mutable natural world.
1
I'm not sure you and the author are really disagreeing here. When you say the opposite is unsustainable, you go on to specify that the thing that is unsustainable isn't the planet but ***our current way of life- or human civilization.*** I think most environmentalists would agree that our current way of life, or our *current* definition of human civilization, ARE unsustainable. This doesn't mean that the planet is...It just means that we all have to learn to live in it and relate to it differently. Human civilization can be sustained while also adapting.
1
Sustainable to me means we are not overusing our resources or destroying our habitat. Adaptability has to do with flexibility and resourcefulness so that we can survive in a variety of circumstances. A sustainability outlook tends to be more proactive, adaptability tends toward reactive.
Certainly we need both qualities. But when it comes to the current climate circumstance, we should realize that dumping fossil fuels is our first and most important adaptation. If we can't make that adaptation, the rest don't matter much.
Certainly we need both qualities. But when it comes to the current climate circumstance, we should realize that dumping fossil fuels is our first and most important adaptation. If we can't make that adaptation, the rest don't matter much.
4
Very sensible!
I am impressed that New School permits independent thought. A step forward.
I am impressed that New School permits independent thought. A step forward.
5
Butman points to a very real choice we have about how we think and therefore act in relation to the natural world. I applaud and share his idea that if we were to change our language to eliminate the false dichotomy between us humans and the rest of the planet's inhabitants we will be able to act differently than our current linguistic frame allows. As Wittgenstein demonstrated language matters in how we think about ourselves and our world. As with the current changes in addressing humans in terms of gender and sexual preference we can evolve our language to better express and relate to our eco-companions.
7
Well said.
For my own tastes I have become accustomed to thinking in terms of the husbandry of nature. This gives a sense of agriculture and/or the sponsorship of animals (using Butman's suggested language). I mention this because Butman provides the grounds for someone to argue that as humans we are only interested in sponsoring or fostoring or promoting only those aspects of the natural world that we directly value. To often though we humans are usually short term, usually economic and usually self-serving.
We need to argue that it is our obligation and long-term self-interest to husband all of nature, perhaps even to particularly foster, promote and sponsor those parts for which we currently have little to no understanding of their role in the environment or the importance of their role in the pageant of the natural world. In this regard, it bears reading Rachel Carson again...
For my own tastes I have become accustomed to thinking in terms of the husbandry of nature. This gives a sense of agriculture and/or the sponsorship of animals (using Butman's suggested language). I mention this because Butman provides the grounds for someone to argue that as humans we are only interested in sponsoring or fostoring or promoting only those aspects of the natural world that we directly value. To often though we humans are usually short term, usually economic and usually self-serving.
We need to argue that it is our obligation and long-term self-interest to husband all of nature, perhaps even to particularly foster, promote and sponsor those parts for which we currently have little to no understanding of their role in the environment or the importance of their role in the pageant of the natural world. In this regard, it bears reading Rachel Carson again...
2
..and E.O. Wilson and many other current scientists.
For a number of reasons, tribalism being just one, our species will claim the "prize" of shortest lived. We have been around some 200,000 years with our oversized and underused brains.
Dinosaurs, with their tiny brains and huge bodies survived for 150 million years. We will be lucky if we make it another 150.
Dinosaurs, with their tiny brains and huge bodies survived for 150 million years. We will be lucky if we make it another 150.
6
Instead "Against Sustainability" retitle "For Dynamic Sustainability" = "dynamic efficiency" for heritage, health and livelihoods.
We are either part of nature, or we are not. It doesn’t make sense that we all of a sudden drank of the grail or ate the apple and transformed into something between an animal and a god. The laws of physics and nature were not suspended for humans. The nonsense about nature being somehow static and pure is easily disproven by the fossil record (and common sense). Populations rise, evolve, species go extinct. What we are experiencing now as an extinction event is an extreme swing of ‘the natural’, but it is still natural if we evolved as part of nature. It is a phenomena of degree not kind.
I don’t understand why so many people attacked the author - his is not so much an argument as it is a potentially helpful conservation perspective. The thesis is constructive. All means of holier-than-thous seem to be forcing it into an argument. Can’t we agree that we favor conservation, that we are losing that battle, and that other perspectives, such as Butman’s, might be helpful? Anyone who has tried to protect resources or habitat and has lost to capitalism knows the pain; we need conservation results, not moral high ground.
My beef with the author is that he left Emily Dickinson off the list of transcendental poets.
I don’t understand why so many people attacked the author - his is not so much an argument as it is a potentially helpful conservation perspective. The thesis is constructive. All means of holier-than-thous seem to be forcing it into an argument. Can’t we agree that we favor conservation, that we are losing that battle, and that other perspectives, such as Butman’s, might be helpful? Anyone who has tried to protect resources or habitat and has lost to capitalism knows the pain; we need conservation results, not moral high ground.
My beef with the author is that he left Emily Dickinson off the list of transcendental poets.
8
"lost to capitalism"?!? Consider the Soviet bloc---when it dissolved, carbon dioxide emissions fell. It left behind the word's filthiest waste sites.
2
Fancy but foolish thoughts. Things change, but within some sort of equilibrium. Until there isn’t. Good luck with your optimism. And spell ”its” correctly.
8
Very thought-provoking. One thought I would add is that sustainability must be the preferred language when it comes to energy resources, because fossil fuels are finite, and are in process of becoming fully depleted. As fossil fuels also provide plastics, chemicals and many other commodity products, we must also use "sustainability" to refer to how we can maintain these aspects of the human world.
3
If you found this thought provoking, how did you completely miss the author's point?
Not to worry. "Nature" will survive in some form or another. No guarantee about humans however.
8
This sort of obtuse philosophical argument is the last thing that voters are interested in for election 2016.
3
Not so. This kind of argument is beneficial to my understanding of issues.
Really? Are you so shortsighted?
Our melancholic distaste for the death of "nature," whether the nomenclature is theological or secular-romantic, may be an adaptation for species survival in that
it has the potential to mitigate our prowess at procreation and food consumption.
it has the potential to mitigate our prowess at procreation and food consumption.
3
"When we talk about sustainability, then, what is it that we hope to sustain? We certainly do not sustain nature “in itself.” Rather, we sustain nature as we humans prefer it. More precisely, we preserve the resources needed for human consumption, whether that means energy consumption or aesthetic consumption. In one sense, we preserve nature for industry."
...No, we do not "preserve nature for industry" but to maintain the resources we need to live. At a time when dire environmental action is needed to protect the public health, the author corrupts, distorts and equivocates, all for the sake of his own "industry." No wonder he sees things so.
...No, we do not "preserve nature for industry" but to maintain the resources we need to live. At a time when dire environmental action is needed to protect the public health, the author corrupts, distorts and equivocates, all for the sake of his own "industry." No wonder he sees things so.
7
I believe "industry" refers to the "resources we need to live", if I understand the author's quote you include above.
1
Reading many of the comments, it seems clear that many have misinterpreted Butman's central argument--many of us (including myself at first) have jumped to berate Butman's article because we have concluded that he was an apologist for heavy-industry or perhaps is neglecting the pertinent issue of sustainability. However, upon a third reading, Butman is simply stating that our rhetoric for dealing with sustainability and environmentalism should change or 'adapt,' in his words, in order to present a clearer definition that takes into account the unified existence of nature and humankind as one entity. In Pope Francis's recent encyclical, he draws upon a very similar idea of a united ecosystem.
That being said, however, this argument is rather lackluster and, more importantly, it doesn't amount to anything. What does it matter that we use 'adaptability' in place of sustainability? It simply neglects the main issue at hand and further even deludes the general public about the Anthropocene: that humankind's ecological footprint has deliberately damaged the earth and will continue to do so for the sake of profit and personal comforts. So, sure we can invoke the term 'adaptability' to 'promote' our ecosystems--either way we need to do something about it and not continue to dabble on the rhetoric!
That being said, however, this argument is rather lackluster and, more importantly, it doesn't amount to anything. What does it matter that we use 'adaptability' in place of sustainability? It simply neglects the main issue at hand and further even deludes the general public about the Anthropocene: that humankind's ecological footprint has deliberately damaged the earth and will continue to do so for the sake of profit and personal comforts. So, sure we can invoke the term 'adaptability' to 'promote' our ecosystems--either way we need to do something about it and not continue to dabble on the rhetoric!
15
I agree. Another instance of "dabbling in rhetoric" that comes dangerously close to avoiding all responsibility as a member of our species for having anything to do with the degradation of our living spaces. To use a crude metaphor, are we to assume that graffiti vandals who, because of a lack of civic pride coupled with hormonal changes, and who go about heedlessly defacing their environment, are to condoned for following their natural urges?
5
And what exactly is Butman's "central argument"? If this is supposed to be an essay, what is the thesis? Butman doesn't even understand the word "sustainability". He repeatedly equates it with "preservation", but the two are quite distinct concepts. And one cannot help but hear an echo of that fellow philosopher, George W. Bush, who recommended that we "adapt" to global warming rather than make any change in our (unsustainable) fossil fuel consumption.
If the story about Romanticism has been repeated "ad nauseum," so has the author's narrative.
14
Really? Links?
1
No matter how many philosophical or literary references you make, this is a decidedly absurd proposition. Who decides what we shall to adapt to – perhaps Mr. Butman? Nature did not develop from the profit motive - so let's not let a bunch of MBA hucksters determine our future. Should we adapt to having food made in factories, having everyone on multiple prescription drugs, having everyone 100 pounds overweight, having everyone unable to walk around the block, having everyone deep in debt? Mr. Butman’s “Adaptability” sounds suspiciously like surrender to what ever the Military, Industrial, Pharmaceutical, Financial, Media. etc Complex happens to roll out on any given day.
5
This is bassackwards in my opinion. "Sustainability" is about sustaining a planet that can support human life - not sustaining ecosystems because God made them , or any such romantic notion. This is all about over-population and possible extinction of our species, and has nothing whatever to do with philosophers.
5
I agree with the author that language is influences our relationship with the natural world, but I find the author's word choices to be rather strange. It seems that where he says sustain he often means preserve. We do not 'sustain nature as we prefer it'. When is there ever agreement on what we prefer? I'm not sure whether the author intends to suggest that nature should be as a tended garden; that is the way it comes off. Some certainly prefer such a vision of nature. I would like a world with some wilderness still left in it. That is not to suggest that there is a wilderness free from all human impact - no such place exists. And although I understand it is useful to sometimes try and put an economic value on wilderness, the phrase 'aesthetic consumption' has really put me off my lunch.
4
I disagree with this analysis. When we fight to "sustain" nature, the goal is not (or should not) be to preserve the natural world as one would preserve a fly caught in amber--something perpetual and unchanging. Rather, one seeks to sustain the dynamic equilibrium and self-correcting feedback loops of a healthy ecology. For example, even though Venus is nearly the same size as the earth, its temperature is significantly hotter because of a runaway greenhouse effect that it now has no hope of escaping. When I donate money to environmental groups, I'm hoping that they will work toward the goal of keeping carbon dioxide levels low enough to mitigate damage to the biosphere as whole--both "natural" ecosystems as well as the infrastructure and economy of mankind's global footprint, as both are at risk.
Of course, sustaining an ecology is a tall order, but in many healthy ecologies there may be just a handful of systems that are critical, or critically at risk. Identifying these and "sustaining" them is important, just as certain stones in a building (such as a key stone) may be more critical than others at supporting the whole edifice.
In other words, just because a conservationist is looking at a very specific target doesn't necessarily mean that he/she is trying to "sustain" a snapshot of nature. He or she may be trying to identify the weakest links in the ecosystem and do what one can to shore those up; i.e., to "sustain" it.
Of course, sustaining an ecology is a tall order, but in many healthy ecologies there may be just a handful of systems that are critical, or critically at risk. Identifying these and "sustaining" them is important, just as certain stones in a building (such as a key stone) may be more critical than others at supporting the whole edifice.
In other words, just because a conservationist is looking at a very specific target doesn't necessarily mean that he/she is trying to "sustain" a snapshot of nature. He or she may be trying to identify the weakest links in the ecosystem and do what one can to shore those up; i.e., to "sustain" it.
6
As a philosopher, Butman must surely recognize the tautology in his statement "The fact that [certain extinctions] are traced to the behavior of an individual species only makes them particular, not in some way "unnatural." Encompassing everything by the word "nature” allows Butman to claim that nothing can be unnatural. This is hardly interesting.
He goes on: "Mass extinctions are no doubt catastrophic, but they are only tragic if nature is viewed as something perfect that we are destroying, rather than as a state of flux in which we are participating."
Every human life ends in death. Those deaths are considered tragic, not if the lives were perfect, but if the deaths are "unnatural" - premature, senseless, or caused by malevolent forces. While extinction is the fate of species, the mass extinction now under way is not "natural" – unlike all previous such cataclysms, this one is being caused by a species with moral faculties. As moral beings, it is our responsibility to examine our actions for their motivations and consequences. We do not get a free pass as mere agents of all-encompassing “nature.”
He goes on: "Mass extinctions are no doubt catastrophic, but they are only tragic if nature is viewed as something perfect that we are destroying, rather than as a state of flux in which we are participating."
Every human life ends in death. Those deaths are considered tragic, not if the lives were perfect, but if the deaths are "unnatural" - premature, senseless, or caused by malevolent forces. While extinction is the fate of species, the mass extinction now under way is not "natural" – unlike all previous such cataclysms, this one is being caused by a species with moral faculties. As moral beings, it is our responsibility to examine our actions for their motivations and consequences. We do not get a free pass as mere agents of all-encompassing “nature.”
3
The author states that some claim nature is perfect, do not know of any such person of significance to make a claim like that, the only exception may be those who believe in a supernatural being. thus mistakes are impossible-- that orientation is delusional at a minimum, was appreciative the author mentions non human animals of which humans have and continue to carry out uncountable atrocities in most cases without moral or survival needs of the human primate, can we truly consider ourselves civilized?
3
A true brave attempt that makes sense towards a precarious acceptance the wide variety of perceptions about the where from and towards which future expresses the tragedy of loss,loss of importance...in other words paradise lost .
1
Interesting take on the present Environmental movement. We've always adapted and now it seems it's natures turn to try and adapt to us or not. I'm afraid we are now pushing the limits of nature in the short term. If forced too far, It will adapt by getting rid of us.
2
"Sustainability" had never been about sustaining nature. It's about sustainable practices, that is, practices which can be repeated ad infinitum without accumulating negative consequences or decimating finite resources. Current commercial farming practices are not sustainable, because they they result in fertilizer run-off that sustains toxic algae blooms in the Gulf of Mexico that destroy not only the natural ecosystem of the Gulf, but perhaps more to the point, destroy vital fisheries and compromise human habitats and recreational opportunities. So, I'm afraid this article may have missed the point entirely.
5
I think we're confusing what we mean when using the word "nature" and "sustainability". In fact, I think we're confusing ideas when implicitly correlating the two without definition or explanation. Perhaps nature is historically associated with Romanticism and divinity but maybe a different word is necessary to describe that which naturalists seek to preserve. I'll use the word "wilderness" as a less loaded alternative. By wilderness, I mean the absence of anthropocene influence. Humans are of nature but not of wilderness. Wilderness is where humans are not. The desire to preserve these spaces is a recognition that humans should not influence everywhere universally. This is despite of our near unconquerable impulse to the contrary.
Sustainability is quite different. Sustainability implies continuance with indifference to humanity. At the very least, sustainability can operate on different levels of context. Your career or diet may be locally sustainable but globally unsustainable. You can pay the grocer even if the food industry is destructive to an ecology. A social, local, or global system can be both sustainable and unsustainable by position and degree. Humanity is relevant to sustainability only as it relates to the encouragement or detriment of any given system's continuance. As a species, we're generally most callus when we express indifference to the sustainability of systems we don't fully understand. That's the point where the two terms begin to overlap.
Sustainability is quite different. Sustainability implies continuance with indifference to humanity. At the very least, sustainability can operate on different levels of context. Your career or diet may be locally sustainable but globally unsustainable. You can pay the grocer even if the food industry is destructive to an ecology. A social, local, or global system can be both sustainable and unsustainable by position and degree. Humanity is relevant to sustainability only as it relates to the encouragement or detriment of any given system's continuance. As a species, we're generally most callus when we express indifference to the sustainability of systems we don't fully understand. That's the point where the two terms begin to overlap.
1
Instead of speaking of sustainability we should be speaking of adaptability…? What? What about survivability? Adaptability sounds like nature has to acquiesce to our preferences. Unfortunately, life doesn’t work that way. Yes, all life needs to adapt but when you are the environments top predator the tendency is to exceed your resources. For proof just look around you. Is air quality or water pollution adapting? Obviously not. It’s only getting worse and rapidly. How long can we play this game? It might be more constructive to talk about the underlying problems. Lack of critical resources like clean air and water will never “adapt”. It’s time to look for some real solutions.
1
Several ad hominem attacks on the author, which is sad to see. Most comments appear to miss his point, which, as I take it, is that we should stop viewing humans, and their consequences, as apart from nature, and instead view them as included in the natural world. Hence, "it might be that the truest meaning of human being, from the perspective of planetary history, is that we are a mass extinction event." That is heavy stuff, and folks might be bummed to hear themselves thusly described, but in this way, Mr. Butman appears to share the pessimistic perspective of Rust Cohle ("human consciousness is a tragic misstep in evolution"), and that our perception of being apart from nature, (and therefore needing to take steps to "sustain" nature from ourselves), is itself destructive. It seems that the logical conclusion of Mr. Butman's argument would be, bring on climate disaster and self-initiated extinction of the human species as fast as possible, and hope that nature doesn't make the same mistake again. Take that for what it's worth, but it is at least an interesting perspective, and is one definitive solution to the sustainability problem.
6
The fact that there have been five mass extinctions over the course of half a billion years of evolution does not entail that they are an acceptable natural event and that the causes need only be resisted if you believe in nature as perfection. Biology has followed rules partially identified by Darwin. One is that there are an oversurplus of young. This is a basic rule of evolution and if we want to break it by ensuring the survival of as many young as possible, then we need to employ reasonable limits to overpopulation and over consumption. If adaptation means that Earth should be modified to maximize human population, then that adaptation will result in mass extinction, including our own. Adaptation will be a understood as code for continuing the wreckage of industrial civilization to the bitter end. Sustainability and resilience require our living within limits, not our pushing past overshoot, resulting in inevitable collapse. The diminishing returns of technology are no panacea unless guided by sustainability first. This writer misunderstands all the most important issues.
2
Alexander Humboldt in the late 18th century warned against the effects of commerce on the natural world which he studied extensively. The same Humboldt for whom the Humboldt current was names and whose works influenced the transcendentalist as well as Darwin. He was celebrated for his writings on the environment into the late 19th century. He did not see nature as just another commodity.
4
This is a particular shoddy piece of thinking. Our writer asks, "When we talk about sustainability, then, what is it that we hope to sustain? " How about life on Earth for a start? The choices right now are getting a bit stark. We can either ignore what science is telling us and turn the land into deserts and the oceans into dead bathtubs, or we can make a concerted effort at stewardship, which is to preserve as much of the diversity of life as we can. Species diversity is maximal in rain forests, coral reefs and other such places. As the apex species on the planet, it is our responsibility to sustain such places. Or else everything dies. If you think sustainability is a romantic fantasy, try dining out on Mars, my friend.
7
Your piece would be much better if you didn't make the assumption that all readers accept the premise that we alone are killing the planet. I find it difficult if not impossible to follow your point after the 6th extinction paragraph. I have to remind myself how "perfectly overpowering" our species is. You are so full of ourselves (i.e. we are so self important, aren't we NOT, fools...)
"What is given less consideration is the way that, as the Christian God retreated after Descartes, the attributes traditionally ascribed to Him — goodness, perfection and permanence — were in different ways transposed onto the body of nature."
OTOH, this is the same god who is supposed to have given us utter dominion over nature, a belief occasionally used by bullies and others to justify irresponsible behavior. (Irresponsible to ourselves, our progeny, and other animals who may have emotions.)
OTOH, this is the same god who is supposed to have given us utter dominion over nature, a belief occasionally used by bullies and others to justify irresponsible behavior. (Irresponsible to ourselves, our progeny, and other animals who may have emotions.)
1
The author writes as if nature is a thing outside of ourselves. We are dependent on nature - we are integrally incorporated within it. It's survival is our survival. The mass extinction of nature will ultimately be the mass extinction of ourselves.
5
I thought the author's final point was that we must see ourselves as part of nature, in treating the world as filled with our "olleagues, both human and nonhuman, animate and inanimate".
1
Humbug and hogwash!
Adaptability requires TIME. Big TIME for evolution to replace lost species. The person writing this essay has zero knowledge of biology and biological evolution and it is an embarrassment to host such nonsensical pseudo-arguments in a paper that supposedly represents a scientific view of the world.
Are you aware Mr. Butman that at the current rate of extinctions we are fast barreling towards a totally lifeless planet or at best one inherited by jellyfish and cockroaches and other such hardy forms of life?
It is this low level of discourse that makes a Trump candidacy possible.
Adaptability requires TIME. Big TIME for evolution to replace lost species. The person writing this essay has zero knowledge of biology and biological evolution and it is an embarrassment to host such nonsensical pseudo-arguments in a paper that supposedly represents a scientific view of the world.
Are you aware Mr. Butman that at the current rate of extinctions we are fast barreling towards a totally lifeless planet or at best one inherited by jellyfish and cockroaches and other such hardy forms of life?
It is this low level of discourse that makes a Trump candidacy possible.
10
Could you not also have written that a low level of discourse is what made Ms. Clinton's candidacy possible? These two candidacies taken together are symptomatic of the mess in which we are. Those who are interested in keeping the planet hospitable for human habitation should check out an alternative to these two candidates, neither of whom will pursue policies friendly to the continuation of humans on the planet.
1
You are totally missing his point. Try to read it again. Slowly.
1
TOTALLY off subject. And BTW, only one of the candidates believes that global warming and climate change and overpopulation are myths of the liberal media.
Nietzsche's 'Death of God' {GS Aph 125} was never about the death of God.
Jeremy, you might want to summer in Texas, or parts of the middle east, before you start philosophizing. 2016 is blowing heat records away, and it's just going to get worse - and all so Exxon and BP can keep filling their coffers. We are going to see human suffering - that's actual human beings, just like you, in great suffering - on a scale that is frankly unimaginable. When it starts to affect you personally, or your kids, let's see how philosophical you are.
11
This says much more about sustainability than Mr Butman can even seem to imagine.
www.populationmedia.org
Today is Earth Overshoot Day -- the date when humanity's demand for ecological resources and services in a given year exceeds what Earth can regenerate in that year. Earth Overshoot Day is hosted and calculated by Global Footprint Network, an international think tank that coordinates research, develops methodological standards and provides decision-makers with a menu of tools to help the human economy operate within Earth's ecological limits.
Human Consumption of Earth's Natural Resources Has Tripled in 40 Years
See: http://www.ecowatch.com/humans-consumption-of-earths-natural-resources-t...
www.populationmedia.org
Today is Earth Overshoot Day -- the date when humanity's demand for ecological resources and services in a given year exceeds what Earth can regenerate in that year. Earth Overshoot Day is hosted and calculated by Global Footprint Network, an international think tank that coordinates research, develops methodological standards and provides decision-makers with a menu of tools to help the human economy operate within Earth's ecological limits.
Human Consumption of Earth's Natural Resources Has Tripled in 40 Years
See: http://www.ecowatch.com/humans-consumption-of-earths-natural-resources-t...
6
You're talking about conservation, not sustainability. It seems like you go out of your way to avoid that word. One does not "sustain" nature. Sustainability is about whether nature can continue to support a specific human practice into the future (i.e. sustainable logging vs. deforestation).
It's easy to be "Against" an idea that you don't bother to properly define or understand. And I guess it will be printed so long as the editors care more about how many clicks a headline gets than if it makes any sense.
It's easy to be "Against" an idea that you don't bother to properly define or understand. And I guess it will be printed so long as the editors care more about how many clicks a headline gets than if it makes any sense.
6
The two competing ideas here, as I see it, are a nature/industry dichotomy that insists on natural purity and human corruption, and the integrated nature+technology matrix of beneficial human influence. These ideas manifest in two very different kinds of conservation activities: the first resulting in wilderness preserves and the second in reclamation and restoration of polluted areas. Ecologically, both provide unique benefits that the other does not.
This recalls an unsettled debate in my courses (as a student of Environmental Science and English at the University of Washington) between so-called "land sharing" and "land sparing". Land sharing is the idea that humans can and should use more land less intensively, i.e. shade grown coffee. Sparing, on the other hand, is the inverse: use as little land as possible as intensively as possible with other land set aside, i.e. New York City and the Adirondacks.
Neither set of issues is settled, and neither should be settled. When attempting to deal with a system as complex as nature, a solidified philosophy will always fall short. Just as nature adapts to the present challenges, so must our conservation strategies. Preserves can't save a polluted river, but 'restoring' Yosemite is nonsensical. Butman's argument falls short, as does Earth First!'s, The Sierra Club's, and a climate change denier's arguments do. They all pretend that nature and conservation abide by philosophy.
There is no silver bullet, only silver buckshot.
This recalls an unsettled debate in my courses (as a student of Environmental Science and English at the University of Washington) between so-called "land sharing" and "land sparing". Land sharing is the idea that humans can and should use more land less intensively, i.e. shade grown coffee. Sparing, on the other hand, is the inverse: use as little land as possible as intensively as possible with other land set aside, i.e. New York City and the Adirondacks.
Neither set of issues is settled, and neither should be settled. When attempting to deal with a system as complex as nature, a solidified philosophy will always fall short. Just as nature adapts to the present challenges, so must our conservation strategies. Preserves can't save a polluted river, but 'restoring' Yosemite is nonsensical. Butman's argument falls short, as does Earth First!'s, The Sierra Club's, and a climate change denier's arguments do. They all pretend that nature and conservation abide by philosophy.
There is no silver bullet, only silver buckshot.
1
Sustainability is not the same as conservation - it is about putting into place those practices that assure following generations access to the same "renewable" resources that we have. The science of sustainability looks at the essence of our practices in commerce, life, and activities as a measure of how we can make sure those practices can be supported (through use of resources) and continued into future generations. Conservation looks at slowing the use of resources but nevertheless moving towards depletion, and preservation is the setting aside resources with the intention that their use may be restricted and prescriptive and, importantly, protected from depletion. If we look at nature preserves (e.g., wilderness and national parks), these may be set aside from development to an extent, but our activities (e.g., pollution, climate change) may still cause their effective depletion regardless of those protections.
5
There are lots of interesting issues here. A central one revolves around how we conceive environmental goals: Many prescriptions, it seems, aim to preserve, and so, assume that what we are preserving is in something like an ideal state, and that human interaction thus can only interfere with, and undermine this ideal state. (The author conflates perfection with ideals, which can include notions such as optimal carrying capacity, given the limits of a system.) The nature of the goal changes as soon as we start viewing nature, and its ecosystems as in flux, as moving from semi-stable equilibrium to semi-stable equilibrium, where none stays around long enough to count as the relevant optimum, the one to be preserved.
Beyond bringing up this conceptual problem, the bulk of this article is irresponsible. The arguments given by Butman are little more than chest-thumping ipsi dixits that attack what more than a few commenters have rightly called out as straw men. And Butman seems to argue not as if he is in philosophy class but in a literary criticism class, where most of the assertions concern thematics and narrative overlays - in other words, fictions that we can help ourselves to - where disputes devolve into which games we'd rather play, and whose feathers are more impressive. Lit-crit style musings have their place, but float free of the kinds of well-grounded reasoning traditionally required of a treatise before it counts as philosophy.
Beyond bringing up this conceptual problem, the bulk of this article is irresponsible. The arguments given by Butman are little more than chest-thumping ipsi dixits that attack what more than a few commenters have rightly called out as straw men. And Butman seems to argue not as if he is in philosophy class but in a literary criticism class, where most of the assertions concern thematics and narrative overlays - in other words, fictions that we can help ourselves to - where disputes devolve into which games we'd rather play, and whose feathers are more impressive. Lit-crit style musings have their place, but float free of the kinds of well-grounded reasoning traditionally required of a treatise before it counts as philosophy.
this sounds like the sort of thing argued by those who support the killing of whales because of "cultural" preservation. human culture is short lived, and no philosophical or "religious" system rivals even the meal worm in terms of wonder and elegance. Of course, it makes good apologetics for the gop.
1
Conflating mass extinctions initiated by giant meteor impact with mass extinction initiated by mindless capitalist consumption and disregard for the environment is ridiculous reasoning.
Get over it and adapt, is the tacit message. For those who can't afford to adapt to a hotter world, such as the billions living in the tropical zones of the developing world, the tacit message to them: you don't matter.
The Times, by publishing this nonsense reaches a new low.
Get over it and adapt, is the tacit message. For those who can't afford to adapt to a hotter world, such as the billions living in the tropical zones of the developing world, the tacit message to them: you don't matter.
The Times, by publishing this nonsense reaches a new low.
6
The author does not consider the many factions of the human population that chose to evolve simultaneously with our current consumerist trajectory in harmony with nature. Rather than sitting around theorizing the various concepts that exist in premise rather than reality, there are those that choose to be a part of "nature". There is a point where one sees enough of a situation that is so bleak that hands are thrown up in resistance, and an intelligent decision to alter the course is made. It is not a return to nature, but a conscience decision to be a part of it.Science can meld with this approach, but it can not dominate.
The problem is that those that choose to live this way have no way of altering the juggernaut that is the consumerist model of existence. They are seen as fringe members of a society that long ago made a ubiquitous choice for all human kind. When faced with evidence that so much of what we do here is to our detriment, we see no other option but to carry on with the hopes that our intelligence will find solutions.
There is so much reading this young turk either has yet to discover, or has turned a blind ear to. Either way, everyone should consider that alternatives to our current endeavors exist. We need only to choose them, and recognize that there are alternatives. The future is worth the fight. Simply because when you experience nature as part of it, the beauty is overwhelming.
The problem is that those that choose to live this way have no way of altering the juggernaut that is the consumerist model of existence. They are seen as fringe members of a society that long ago made a ubiquitous choice for all human kind. When faced with evidence that so much of what we do here is to our detriment, we see no other option but to carry on with the hopes that our intelligence will find solutions.
There is so much reading this young turk either has yet to discover, or has turned a blind ear to. Either way, everyone should consider that alternatives to our current endeavors exist. We need only to choose them, and recognize that there are alternatives. The future is worth the fight. Simply because when you experience nature as part of it, the beauty is overwhelming.
1
I've always felt our impulse to "save the planet" arrogant. The planet will go on long after we are gone. We are sustaining nothing but our hubris if we imagine that we, not nature, are the ultimate influencers.
If we deny that we humans are at this point "influencing" nature in a way that will ultimately prove deadly to ourselves and many other living things, we are sustaining nothing but a destructive delusion.
3
The primary problem with Mr. Butman's Article is its stunning lack of depth of intelligence. We are destroying the roots of human intelligence as we over-populate the planet and destroy the biosphere which is essential for our living existence. Too much ingrown thinking of this sort and not nearly enough deep observation of actual life on Earth has caused us to become so infantile that we have lost the perspective, humility and respect to be able make a true place for ourselves in the real fabric of life.
We have lost any distinction between appetite and hunger and instead allowed ourselves to become mere consumers.
I suggest to Mr. Butman that he spend at least one month alone in the wilderness and then try to grow up and start over.
We have lost any distinction between appetite and hunger and instead allowed ourselves to become mere consumers.
I suggest to Mr. Butman that he spend at least one month alone in the wilderness and then try to grow up and start over.
12
This is an example of the lack of a consensus definition of "sustainability." The consensus definition of "sustainable development," as stated by the World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED) in 1987, better known as the Brundtland Commission, “development that meets the needs of present generations without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs.”
To define sustainability we need to differentiate between at least three forms of capital (wealth): natural wealth, technical wealth, and social wealth. Natural wealth refers to the stock of renewable and non-renewable environmental assets. Technical wealth refers to structures and equipment used in the production and distribution of goods and services. Social wealth is the set of economic, political, and social institutions that define property rights (e.g., all forms of financial capital) and facilitate the formation of human capital, including “intellectual capital” and tacit knowledge. The problem with Butman's essay is that it assumes that there is only one type of sustainability, i.e., natural wealth, or "nature."
It has been almost 30 years since the Brundtland Commission report and we still do not have a consensus definition, but 50 shades of, "sustainability." As a graduate student, I'd suggest writing a dissertation that attempts to create a consensus definition of "sustainability" or at least to sort the various shades.
To define sustainability we need to differentiate between at least three forms of capital (wealth): natural wealth, technical wealth, and social wealth. Natural wealth refers to the stock of renewable and non-renewable environmental assets. Technical wealth refers to structures and equipment used in the production and distribution of goods and services. Social wealth is the set of economic, political, and social institutions that define property rights (e.g., all forms of financial capital) and facilitate the formation of human capital, including “intellectual capital” and tacit knowledge. The problem with Butman's essay is that it assumes that there is only one type of sustainability, i.e., natural wealth, or "nature."
It has been almost 30 years since the Brundtland Commission report and we still do not have a consensus definition, but 50 shades of, "sustainability." As a graduate student, I'd suggest writing a dissertation that attempts to create a consensus definition of "sustainability" or at least to sort the various shades.
Dear Jeremy Butman,
Enjoyed your article. I like your focus on language as the shaper of our vistas. Also, enjoyed your reminder about the relationship between man and nature. Distinctions between man and nature would be laughed out of the room if we only stopped to think what we're saying. It's obvious man is part of nature, we all understand that, I think. But I would add, properly understood, there is no nature without us, without a conscious witness.
Enjoyed your article. I like your focus on language as the shaper of our vistas. Also, enjoyed your reminder about the relationship between man and nature. Distinctions between man and nature would be laughed out of the room if we only stopped to think what we're saying. It's obvious man is part of nature, we all understand that, I think. But I would add, properly understood, there is no nature without us, without a conscious witness.
"properly understood, there is no nature without us, without a conscious witnes"
The last word in Cartesian arrogance.
The last word in Cartesian arrogance.
1
TThis is an odd piece. The thinking is muddled and the conclusions . . . unsustainable. First, our graduate student philosopher makes multiple references to God. He writes that we need new language to "allow us to see the planet not as a video-game landscape, programmed by God." Well, we already have that language, and it was provided by Darwin. Most of us who are worried about conservation and sustainability see the natural world as the product of Darwinian evolution by natural selection, not programming by god.
He also makes the ridiculous assertion that "Mass extinctions are no doubt catastrophic, but they are only tragic if nature is viewed as something perfect that we are destroying, rather than as a state of flux in which we are participating." That's like saying, "Deaths by HIV/AIDS are no doubt catastrophic, but they are only tragic if public health is viewed as something perfect that we are destroying, rather than as a state of flux in which we are participating." Do public health measures that prevent the spread of diseases "save lives" or "promote life"? This guy seems to think the language matters. Out here in the real world, we want to get about the business of saving wildlife habitat and endangered. For the author, I feel nothing but . . . . melancholia.
He also makes the ridiculous assertion that "Mass extinctions are no doubt catastrophic, but they are only tragic if nature is viewed as something perfect that we are destroying, rather than as a state of flux in which we are participating." That's like saying, "Deaths by HIV/AIDS are no doubt catastrophic, but they are only tragic if public health is viewed as something perfect that we are destroying, rather than as a state of flux in which we are participating." Do public health measures that prevent the spread of diseases "save lives" or "promote life"? This guy seems to think the language matters. Out here in the real world, we want to get about the business of saving wildlife habitat and endangered. For the author, I feel nothing but . . . . melancholia.
7
If the language of preservation and sustainability morphs into advocacy and promotion, nostalgia might disappear (which I think would be fine), but we'd also risk losing a sense that nature's forces are not completely in our control. The "more constructive" discourse that admirably reveals our accountability could also hubristically run roughshod over any acknowledgement that what we need to cultivate in our relationship with nature -- and our understandings of nature altogether -- are undergoing just as much chaos and uncertainty as nature itself. Maybe "nature knows" better than "we" do what the needs & relationship could be. Plus I'd rather avoid seeing nature becoming yet another ad campaign, rife with competition. Must all trees and animals get framed in terms of a capitalist system of human consumption? What would socialist consumption look like, or a baseline agreement that sometimes nature must simply remain free (from us)?
Please, Mr. Butman, read the definitions of "sustainability"! You're not even close to correctly portraying the fundamental concepts behind it. There's certainly no mention of natural "perfection" anywhere to be found in these definitions, and the core concept is one of utilizing resources to indefinitely "sustain" human life on our Earth.
6
"Mass extinctions are no doubt catastrophic, but they are only tragic if nature is viewed as something perfect that we are destroying..."
Extinctions are also tragic even if you just view nature as something beautiful and old that you are destroying. Straw man there.
Extinctions are also tragic even if you just view nature as something beautiful and old that you are destroying. Straw man there.
2
A title meant to titillate! Sustainability may mean different things to different people and cultures, but the most common understanding is anthropocentric. The largest factor in human sustainability is population growth; the time factor is extremely short; and philosophical, moral and ethical constructs, while fine fantasies, act largely to take people off the earth. Suddenly. So we try to feed too many, bring medicine to too many, provide energy to too many, and are forced to make mass alterations to land, air and water. All this is sustainable in no definition. Maybe this is what Butman is saying, but still he comes across as a potential copywriter for the unsustainable party.
2
God saw how wicked humans had become and ordered Noah to build an arc. . . and start over. As the flood waters and temperatures rise the planet may just shed itself of its most parasitic and destructive species, homo sapiens, and return to the balance it once enjoyed.
Planets are not capable of enjoyment.
Instead, why don't we humans, who are capable of such experiences and states, try at long last to learn to control ourselves?
Instead, why don't we humans, who are capable of such experiences and states, try at long last to learn to control ourselves?
2
I agree that the notion of extricating humans from nature is silly and unproductive. I also agree that "adaptability" needs more play.
However, sustainability is a useful concept for those of us in business sustainability (such as environmental, social and governance risk intermediaries in finance). Some of us use thinking from The Natural Step which defines sustainability in operational terms.
To put it simply: sustainability of an aquifer means considering both the inventory of water, and the change of throughput for what goes in and what goes out. It also involves the amount of pollution added in relation to the ability of natural capital to process it into an input we desire - if pollution input outstrips nature's ability to process it, then pollution inventory goes up as does the industrial cost to clean it.
These points of view are firmly in the realm of business; they simply account for all forms of capital that act as inputs to economic processes (including human capital and natural capital).
In my opinion, just as sustainability makes sense to a foundation that spends some interest on programming but does not dip into the principle amount in order to sustain the spending indefinitely, sustainability - as a concept - makes more and more sense to business leaders around the world.
However, sustainability is a useful concept for those of us in business sustainability (such as environmental, social and governance risk intermediaries in finance). Some of us use thinking from The Natural Step which defines sustainability in operational terms.
To put it simply: sustainability of an aquifer means considering both the inventory of water, and the change of throughput for what goes in and what goes out. It also involves the amount of pollution added in relation to the ability of natural capital to process it into an input we desire - if pollution input outstrips nature's ability to process it, then pollution inventory goes up as does the industrial cost to clean it.
These points of view are firmly in the realm of business; they simply account for all forms of capital that act as inputs to economic processes (including human capital and natural capital).
In my opinion, just as sustainability makes sense to a foundation that spends some interest on programming but does not dip into the principle amount in order to sustain the spending indefinitely, sustainability - as a concept - makes more and more sense to business leaders around the world.
4
There are at least two howlers in this article that leapt out at me. First, the suggestion that "If a perfect form were to change, it would necessarily become imperfect." The argument seems to assume its conclusion: there's only one perfect form, so no system of multiple forms can be perfect. Tell that to the perfect caterpillar that turns into the perfect butterfly.
Second, the notion that "our products differ in degree, not kind, from those of beavers, bees and spiders." That's true for poop, but not for industrial products. The beaver kills individual trees to build dams, and the local ecosystem adapts, almost inevitably to support a larger variety of life. We destroy whole ecosystems with oil spills, industrial waste, and concrete dams, leaving them supporting a much more restricted variety of life. To a native speaker of English like myself, that's a difference in kind: beavers' products increase the variety of life, ours (all too frequently) decreases that variety.
Second, the notion that "our products differ in degree, not kind, from those of beavers, bees and spiders." That's true for poop, but not for industrial products. The beaver kills individual trees to build dams, and the local ecosystem adapts, almost inevitably to support a larger variety of life. We destroy whole ecosystems with oil spills, industrial waste, and concrete dams, leaving them supporting a much more restricted variety of life. To a native speaker of English like myself, that's a difference in kind: beavers' products increase the variety of life, ours (all too frequently) decreases that variety.
10
The article is pointless, in practical terms, without the consideration that we humans generally desire to survive. We need to "sustain" the environment to maintain its ability to allow for our survival. We need to "adapt" ourselves in consideration of the ability of the natural and partially-controlable environment to continue to support us. Perhaps the most obvious aspect that should be under our control is the ability to limit human population growth to a level that does not exceed (yes) the carrying capacity of our planet. We haven't had much luck with that as a shared goal.
The "environment" is incredibly adaptable. Even a full-scale nuclear war or global warming of tens of degrees Celsius over current limits would not erase all life on earth, but it's unlikely any of what would be left would be human. A biome, an ecology, would probably survive and thrive somewhere, for a suitable definition of "thrive."
There is nothing "perfect" about anything - ecology, civilization, or rules of a sport. A philosopher must recognize that perfection is relative to one's expectations or desires.
A philosopher must also recognize a tautology when he writes one.
The "environment" is incredibly adaptable. Even a full-scale nuclear war or global warming of tens of degrees Celsius over current limits would not erase all life on earth, but it's unlikely any of what would be left would be human. A biome, an ecology, would probably survive and thrive somewhere, for a suitable definition of "thrive."
There is nothing "perfect" about anything - ecology, civilization, or rules of a sport. A philosopher must recognize that perfection is relative to one's expectations or desires.
A philosopher must also recognize a tautology when he writes one.
1
I wonder how the argument would translate into economics: "Economic crises happen, so we should not worry or try to change our policies if we realized that they indeed promote recessions and depressions. Just let's keep doing the same thing, only giving it a different name."
The level of ignorance on which this article is based is mind-blowing. The author supports its views with a couple of popular dissemination books. The problem is that Ecology and Management Ecology happen to be not philosophical currents or fades, but natural sciences, and discussing them requires at least a minimum training and knowledge of the field. As Wolfgang Pauli used to put it, Dr. Butman is not even wrong.
The level of ignorance on which this article is based is mind-blowing. The author supports its views with a couple of popular dissemination books. The problem is that Ecology and Management Ecology happen to be not philosophical currents or fades, but natural sciences, and discussing them requires at least a minimum training and knowledge of the field. As Wolfgang Pauli used to put it, Dr. Butman is not even wrong.
4
Jeremy Butman has a bright future in public relations ... provided there is such a thing as 'public relations' or firms to make use of it when Butman has finished his schooling. Making things extinct is something industrial finance capital does best, with a certain je ne sais quoi. Extinction -- a bagetelle for Butman -- has to include Schumpeter's 'creative destruction' of defunct firms, obsolete processes and insolvent systems ... as well as the ordinary variety of 'destruction' which we see in Syria and Venezuela.
Destruction isn't picky, and extinction -- despite the heroic Butman effort to glamorize it or reduce its potency -- is forever. The one trillion-plus barrels of petroleum our precious auto industry has rendered extinct well never return. Never is a long time = plus 100 million years. Keep in mind, the conditions that created the petroleum in the first place, the productivity of photosynthesis 100 million years ago and the envinronment that sustained that productivity are not to be repeated. They simply do not exist.
And what do we have to show for 100 million years of capital squandered? What is the collateral behind the 'claim' that the 100 million years' capital represented? Some potholed freeways and a bunch of rusty used cars!
Glamorize that, Butman! God is dead, killed by the printing press in 1450 but so is industrialization, murdered in 1998 by its own success and that of its PR departments.
Destruction isn't picky, and extinction -- despite the heroic Butman effort to glamorize it or reduce its potency -- is forever. The one trillion-plus barrels of petroleum our precious auto industry has rendered extinct well never return. Never is a long time = plus 100 million years. Keep in mind, the conditions that created the petroleum in the first place, the productivity of photosynthesis 100 million years ago and the envinronment that sustained that productivity are not to be repeated. They simply do not exist.
And what do we have to show for 100 million years of capital squandered? What is the collateral behind the 'claim' that the 100 million years' capital represented? Some potholed freeways and a bunch of rusty used cars!
Glamorize that, Butman! God is dead, killed by the printing press in 1450 but so is industrialization, murdered in 1998 by its own success and that of its PR departments.
3
what's lacking here is an engagement with a certain "realness" as if by changing a word here or there we become "colleagues" with animals. Just like with people we can engage in ways that are mutual and reciprocal or exploitative and damaging so we engage with inanimate objects in a similar. Extraction of resources from the earth does not mean a rape of resources. We are all damagers and we do some damage in the process of extracting our needs, that is the condition of the world. but that doesn't mean we set out to do damage.
Buddhism makes it very simple: There is no hierarchy of life (with humans at the top and other sentient beings lower.). The first vow of Buddhism is a vow to "Save all beings" which includes all living systems.
1
"We sustain nature as we humans prefer it." No, I think "sustainability" means sustaining nature in a way that is compatible with the survival of human civilization and progress toward a more peaceful world. This means trying to maintain an environmental steady state that permits us to grow food to survive. We do not know just what components of the vast web of species on this planet are critical for food production, so we must be very careful in how we tear away at that web, less we destabilize it in a way that undermines food production.
In a similar vein, we want to avoid the contamination of our environment with toxins that adversely affect human health and reverse the progress we have made in increasign the quality and length of human life. And of course, we don't want to fill up the atmosphere with enough CO2 and methane to heat up the climate beyond the point we can tolerate (see: Venus). When cyanobacteria invented photosynthesis and filled the atmosphere with toxic oxygen, it led to a crisis that threatened all other life, which had to deveop new biochemical methods to adapt. Can we do the same in response to a major shift in our environment?
There are not sentimental or romantic conceits. These are real concerns about the human quality of life on this planet.
In a similar vein, we want to avoid the contamination of our environment with toxins that adversely affect human health and reverse the progress we have made in increasign the quality and length of human life. And of course, we don't want to fill up the atmosphere with enough CO2 and methane to heat up the climate beyond the point we can tolerate (see: Venus). When cyanobacteria invented photosynthesis and filled the atmosphere with toxic oxygen, it led to a crisis that threatened all other life, which had to deveop new biochemical methods to adapt. Can we do the same in response to a major shift in our environment?
There are not sentimental or romantic conceits. These are real concerns about the human quality of life on this planet.
2
Definitions and the word-games need not have anything to do with the real world. Such arguments make Philosophy the discipline look silly and useless. This article is an embarrassment. Go outside and do the math. How many humans is enough? When a species goes extinct, how long will it be gone? How many species does it take to make a robust environment? Do you care if the planet warms because of human actions? What can be done about it?
Here is my own question - why did the NYT print an article from a lowly graduate student? There are many fine professors and professionals with deep experience and understanding willing to have their say. Please, let the adults speak.
Here is my own question - why did the NYT print an article from a lowly graduate student? There are many fine professors and professionals with deep experience and understanding willing to have their say. Please, let the adults speak.
6
“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms.”
Inspired me as a teenager and still does to this date.
So get out there, don't be afraid and vote for Jill Stein, the one David Henry Thoreau would vote for.
Inspired me as a teenager and still does to this date.
So get out there, don't be afraid and vote for Jill Stein, the one David Henry Thoreau would vote for.
7
"Don't be afraid" and "vote for Jill Stein" (or any other quixotic candidate) do not pair well in times like these.
3
A vote for Jill Stein may help elect crooked Trump who if willing to incinerate our planet.
Vote for Hillary Clinton if you care for nature as you say.
Vote for Hillary Clinton if you care for nature as you say.
1
Vote for Clinton? Nature? Have you paid attention to her record? Are you aware that she is a supporter of techno-industrial capitalism? That she gives supportive speeches to the financiers of same? That she is indeed their candidate?
Voting will do exactly nothing to change any of this, but to suggest that Clinton is the nature candidate is shockingly myopic.
Voting will do exactly nothing to change any of this, but to suggest that Clinton is the nature candidate is shockingly myopic.
4
To add to thought on this topic, please consider getting the free download of Jeremy Griffith's Freedom: The End of the Human Condition.
I do appreciate the long-view approach to putting the human animal in context, but having the point of view that whatever happens is what was bound to happen seems to give tacit approval to those that would gleefully push consumption and waste production to the max. While some animals, and plants, have been shown to work in a concerted effort it cannot be argued that the human animal intervenes in the course of natural as nothing, short of natural hazards, has the power to do. However we, unlike any other item on the planet, can adapt our actions to fit our situation and as moral beings I would still suggest we are compelled to do so by a concern for those that will surely follow us onto this stage.
1
When it comes to the environment there are large high level issues which you touch on here: the sixth extinction, Descartes and such but there are also the more practical sides of environmentalism which are wanting to drink clean water (Flint Michigan), wanting to the eat the fish we catch in streams and lakes, the desire to not have occurrences like Love Canal change our DNA and a laundry list of issues humans have created. I want to take hikes and enjoy our 47 National Parks. I realize we may not be able to stop an asteroid from altering our planet for thousands of years, but humans can choose to take care of what we have and not always put profit over quality of life. For me that is the debate. Who cleans up the garbage my product creates should be part of any product launch and it needs to be part of the PLM (Product Lifecycle Management) by all who seek profit. Pushing the cost of toxic cleanup to the taxpayer for the sake of fewer regulations to make more money is an obscenity that effects our future grand children.
1
"Instead of sustainability, we should instead speak of adaptability, a term that skews away from the idea of a perfect,"
Adaptability seems like a better idea, but we are litigious, argumentative, win-lose bunch. We can turn the most reasonable presumptions into the most heated and unsolvable controversies. One side's "adaptability" based action becomes the other side's blow to humanity as we know it.
It all boils down to the substance of our actions. Right now we're like two surgeons arguing over which brand of sutures to use while the patient bleeds out.
Adaptability seems like a better idea, but we are litigious, argumentative, win-lose bunch. We can turn the most reasonable presumptions into the most heated and unsolvable controversies. One side's "adaptability" based action becomes the other side's blow to humanity as we know it.
It all boils down to the substance of our actions. Right now we're like two surgeons arguing over which brand of sutures to use while the patient bleeds out.
This is an excellent essay and it is unsurprising that some readers find offense in its challenge to piously held beliefs about the environment and our responsibility to "save" it. Having grown up learning that earth's earliest atmosphere was a toxic brew of methane and ammonia, and that the land mass I grew up on - Long Island - was formed thousands of years ago by the retreat of glaciers that once covered the hemisphere, it has been easy to wonder why continued atmospheric changes and global warming are now precipitating a cultural crisis. It is further easy to wonder if many of us simply need a looming catastrophe to renew and reinforce chronic feelings of anxiety stemming from childhood. We've moved from nuclear armageddon to calamitous overpopulation to crime driven civic breakdown to apocalyptic climate change. What's next?
There may be a self hatred expressed by those who see uncontrolled greed and rapacious consumption in our culture while sipping lattes in their fossil fueled homes and otherwise relying on carbon based systems of food production and transportation. And there's a longstanding arrogance operating in those who insist on distinguishing between what is human and what is natural. We simple animals cannot save a planet when we can almost never satisfactorily manage our own lives or families. And, like the essayist said, all we are really trying to do is save our precious notions of what constitutes our version of human life. The planet will be fine.
There may be a self hatred expressed by those who see uncontrolled greed and rapacious consumption in our culture while sipping lattes in their fossil fueled homes and otherwise relying on carbon based systems of food production and transportation. And there's a longstanding arrogance operating in those who insist on distinguishing between what is human and what is natural. We simple animals cannot save a planet when we can almost never satisfactorily manage our own lives or families. And, like the essayist said, all we are really trying to do is save our precious notions of what constitutes our version of human life. The planet will be fine.
What precious nonsense.
For some of us, "our version" of human life includes the prospect actual life for future generations of humans, and in a non-hellscape.
For some of us, "our version" of human life includes the prospect actual life for future generations of humans, and in a non-hellscape.
3
The fly in the ointment in this piece is the unstated assumption of human transcendence over the natural. The author treats human-induced changes in the natural world as fluctuations that our species simply rides out, as though our own adaptability is infinite.
What shapes modern environmentalism isn't the image of the pristine wilderness, or the apex predator in a natural habitat, or even burning rivers. Instead, we are confronted with two facts that have become increasingly apparent over the past 30 years or so: 1) people's impact on environmental systems has become global in scope; and 2) for many of the world's people, that impact is already threatening our very survival.
For leading environmental thinkers today, "sustainability" reflects our hope and fear of whether we are capable of reeling back our impact to ensure a planet where our own survival is sustained.
What shapes modern environmentalism isn't the image of the pristine wilderness, or the apex predator in a natural habitat, or even burning rivers. Instead, we are confronted with two facts that have become increasingly apparent over the past 30 years or so: 1) people's impact on environmental systems has become global in scope; and 2) for many of the world's people, that impact is already threatening our very survival.
For leading environmental thinkers today, "sustainability" reflects our hope and fear of whether we are capable of reeling back our impact to ensure a planet where our own survival is sustained.
6
I think the story Butman says is taught ad nauseum in philosophy classes was fabricated by Butman to make a feeble point. It consists in trying to depict the environmental movement as a refuge for melancholy and nostalgia (for the old order, God, and all that traditional stuff) rather than a thoughtful response to revelatory emotions. Philosophers like Schelling and Nietzche—drawing on the Romantics—sought to deepen insight into our categories of “God” and “nature,” and like modern environmentalists were inspired by a new vision of the nature of things and the place of human beings in it. Especially off-target is Butman’s mischaracterization of Aristotle’s principle of nature, change. For Aristotle what changes is not fully “real,” hence disposable, unlike the Unmoved Mover (God). Cartesian physics is just a grandchild of this doctrine, and we are all still Sunday-schooled in the benevolence of the mathematical idea. (It is no accident that Fundamentalists worship a "designer" God.) Modern environmental philosophy and politics is strong and intellectually sound and will survive Butman’s peevish attacks.
9
"More precisely, we preserve the resources needed for human consumption, whether that means energy consumption or aesthetic consumption. In one sense, we preserve nature for industry."
Not necessarily. The National Parks are NOT consumed except visually for the most part. If there is any industry involved, it would be the birds, and beetles doing what they do, and the plants growing and dying. Leaving the Parks alone is in fact sustaining them without an ultimnate industrial use.
If the human animal were gone tomorrow, "nature" would still be here and it would be as sustainable as nature is in itself. Trees grow, die and in a normal sequence, and spread seeds for more trees to grow etc.
It is the consumption of everything in the path of humans that works against nature. farming for consumption is not the same as a field of wheat growing on its own. We HAVE set aside areas to sustain so clearly we see a difference between INDUSTRY and nature. We ARE preserving nature for itself despite the constant threat of the industrialists. Tree huggers will always be around.
Not necessarily. The National Parks are NOT consumed except visually for the most part. If there is any industry involved, it would be the birds, and beetles doing what they do, and the plants growing and dying. Leaving the Parks alone is in fact sustaining them without an ultimnate industrial use.
If the human animal were gone tomorrow, "nature" would still be here and it would be as sustainable as nature is in itself. Trees grow, die and in a normal sequence, and spread seeds for more trees to grow etc.
It is the consumption of everything in the path of humans that works against nature. farming for consumption is not the same as a field of wheat growing on its own. We HAVE set aside areas to sustain so clearly we see a difference between INDUSTRY and nature. We ARE preserving nature for itself despite the constant threat of the industrialists. Tree huggers will always be around.
"Goodness, permanence and perfection"-what god are you talking about? Not the god of the bible.
Taking the universal view of change is all well and good, but the author writes as if humans are a "mass extinction event" for unnamed others. In fact, "Nature" and the planet will do just fine without us, but we're in real danger of killing ourselves along with much of the other complex life on earth.
In that context, which is entirely missing from the article, the focus on "sustainability" seems perfectly logical, and hardly some vestigial Christian-romanticism. The idea is that we need to do the best we can to make sure this planet is habitable a hundred generations from now.
"Adaptability," by contrast, is a double-edged sword, because too many people already think in terms of adapting nature to our short-term needs, values, or desires. "Saying yes to the Anthropocene," as the author put it, means different things to different people. For instance, the consumer capitalism that is nothing if not adaptive and drives un-sustainablity is unworthy of the Nietzschean invocation. It isn't good for us and we can say no to it.
On the other hand, not very many people think we can just "let Nature be," and everyone who's thought about these topics understands that humans are animals dependent on their own actions within an interconnected natural world. So the author is quibbling with a straw man, while the real world burns.
God may be dead, but mortals still like to try out His perspective when they want to rationalize their follies.
In that context, which is entirely missing from the article, the focus on "sustainability" seems perfectly logical, and hardly some vestigial Christian-romanticism. The idea is that we need to do the best we can to make sure this planet is habitable a hundred generations from now.
"Adaptability," by contrast, is a double-edged sword, because too many people already think in terms of adapting nature to our short-term needs, values, or desires. "Saying yes to the Anthropocene," as the author put it, means different things to different people. For instance, the consumer capitalism that is nothing if not adaptive and drives un-sustainablity is unworthy of the Nietzschean invocation. It isn't good for us and we can say no to it.
On the other hand, not very many people think we can just "let Nature be," and everyone who's thought about these topics understands that humans are animals dependent on their own actions within an interconnected natural world. So the author is quibbling with a straw man, while the real world burns.
God may be dead, but mortals still like to try out His perspective when they want to rationalize their follies.
7
The more nuanced the portrait we can paint of a particular environment the greater the probability to preserve it. If you expand the vocabulary of the specific environment you create better opportunities to preserve it. When you look at a seemingly barren piece of land a wanted for some extractive industry development, the corporation will portray it as a terra nullius, of no particular concern or value to anyone. If opponents study the flora and fauna and human geography of the area, in great detail and can picture the cappllary like connections to the whole ecosystem, they have a better chance to halt the enviroment. Nuance is the enemy of power whether it be enviromental or political. Expand the vocabulary and referent points and increase the freedom to preserve it.
1
I thought this was good article. It was well written, the ideas culminating nicely in the concept of "promotion" of ecosystems and animal populations.
1
"Mass extinctions are no doubt catastrophic, but they are only tragic if nature is viewed as something perfect that we are destroying, rather than as a state of flux in which we are participating."
Mass extinctions are tragic if they include us. That's the nub which the author seems to miss. Human beings need nature in order to live.
Sustainability derives from Malthus. Increasing use of resources will eventually destroy the ability of nature to provide those resources, because resources are finite. At some point humans need to stop increasing the use of nature. One can only argue about where the point is - whether it's in front of us, behind us, or right here.
Mass extinctions are tragic if they include us. That's the nub which the author seems to miss. Human beings need nature in order to live.
Sustainability derives from Malthus. Increasing use of resources will eventually destroy the ability of nature to provide those resources, because resources are finite. At some point humans need to stop increasing the use of nature. One can only argue about where the point is - whether it's in front of us, behind us, or right here.
25
Interesting argument. Industrialization's co-product, the large city, is often invoked in distinction to nature. For those who find transcendent values in nature, the city can then be seen as godless and another evil twin. Yet if nature is God's creation, so are cities and the culture that resides in them -- because they are the products of human intelligence, theoretically a God-given gift.
Fascinating discussion about this around a famous book in which the first chapter damned the modern city and its industrialized nature in juxtaposition to the chapters on God-created nature that were the meat of the book. Most memorable was the person who spoke elegantly and feelingfully about his/her experience of nature on a trip to remote Pacific islands. The transportation that s/he took was an industrialized product and the money that made it possible was divorced from our industrial and post-industrial state.
Fascinating discussion about this around a famous book in which the first chapter damned the modern city and its industrialized nature in juxtaposition to the chapters on God-created nature that were the meat of the book. Most memorable was the person who spoke elegantly and feelingfully about his/her experience of nature on a trip to remote Pacific islands. The transportation that s/he took was an industrialized product and the money that made it possible was divorced from our industrial and post-industrial state.
1
what book?
1
GOP platform, 2016: "Climate Change is a hoax" GOP platform, 2036: "Coral is a hoax". I'm joking, but once 'reality denial' becomes an option, where does it draw the line? There's a Universe of things out there whose existence can be denied. So, how we respond to Nature is perhaps less important than that we not disengage from these issues. That we pray for the soul of the chicken before we eat it. And know that denying the moray eel, we may end up denying Miami.
This essay brings to mind a homespun saying often repeated by long-dead grandmother, the uneducated (but very smart) daughter of immigrants:
"That man is way too smart to be wise."
"That man is way too smart to be wise."
33
God and philosophy are nice ideas, but will never be able to save the natural world. Only science can do that. But, after the science is applied, it will be fine if we just enjoy the beauty of what we've saved, even be spiritual about it, if we want. Magical thinking will still be a very mean trick of perception.
7
To everyone who is concerned with climate change or global warming, I would ask you to read the synopsis of research done on Antarctic ice core samples obtained in 1999. (link below) They record the carbon dioxide levels for our planet over the last 400K years. They clearly show 5 previous peaks and valleys that end in the present day, our so-called "crisis." Actually we are in the peak of a normal pattern, probably exacerbated by our burning of fossil fuels, but normal nonetheless.
http://www.daviesand.com/Choices/Precautionary_Planning/New_Data/
The graph shows sharp peaks followed by equally sharp declines, all of which happened before humans were adding our carbon to the mix. There appears to be an, up until now, unknown planetary mechanism that reverses global warming and strips carbon out of the atmosphere, plunging the planet into a new ice age. We have evidence of this happening 5 times in our recent past, all without the help of humans.
So relax, the universe is unfolding as it should. If you are worried about rising oceans, move inland to elevation. If you are worried about massive human disruption across the globe, so be it. I agree with the author, " we are a mass extinction event." Our present circumstances are not sustainable and we are in for a rude awakening.
http://www.daviesand.com/Choices/Precautionary_Planning/New_Data/
The graph shows sharp peaks followed by equally sharp declines, all of which happened before humans were adding our carbon to the mix. There appears to be an, up until now, unknown planetary mechanism that reverses global warming and strips carbon out of the atmosphere, plunging the planet into a new ice age. We have evidence of this happening 5 times in our recent past, all without the help of humans.
So relax, the universe is unfolding as it should. If you are worried about rising oceans, move inland to elevation. If you are worried about massive human disruption across the globe, so be it. I agree with the author, " we are a mass extinction event." Our present circumstances are not sustainable and we are in for a rude awakening.
2
99% of climate scientists say that humans are causing climate change.
Mr. Trout tells us that humans are not causing climate change.
Whom to believe?
I think I'll have to go with the climate scientists.
Mr. Trout tells us that humans are not causing climate change.
Whom to believe?
I think I'll have to go with the climate scientists.
2
You may want to notice that in the 400,000 year record you are referencing CO2 levels were never above 300 ppm. We are now over 400 ppm, far outside the 'normal pattern' in the ice core data.
1
You miss two points.
1) the rate of change is much higher than it has been before.
2) The worry is not that climate change will destroy all life. the worry is that it will make the glove a very unpleasant place for human beings. I'm not worried about the cockroaches. They'll do fine.
1) the rate of change is much higher than it has been before.
2) The worry is not that climate change will destroy all life. the worry is that it will make the glove a very unpleasant place for human beings. I'm not worried about the cockroaches. They'll do fine.
1
To expand on the cancer analogy, if we are like a cancer growing out of control, we can decide whether to become benign, or we can continue our growth until we kill off the host. But the analogy breaks down here; something of nature will survive us, even if rat, roaches, and ants become the dominant species. The questoin for me is whether we can adapt our culture to preserve enough of the natural world that it remains a pleasant place where humans can enjoy a reasonable life. It's a work in progress, and the outcome is in doubt.
5
Sustainability, in its deepest etymological sense is about being held from below. It implies rootedness and connection. To discard it and replace it with adaptability reinforces the fundamental driver of ecological and cultural collapse, the attribution of the ontological separation of the individual as the real state of affairs.
49
"When we talk about sustainability, then, what is it that we hope to sustain? We certainly do not sustain nature 'in itself.' Rather, we sustain nature as we humans prefer it. More precisely, we preserve the resources needed for human consumption, whether that means energy consumption or aesthetic consumption. In one sense, we preserve nature for industry."
Excuse me, have you ever been to a national park? Or the "forever wild" portions of the Adirondack State Park (larger than any of our national parks)? Teddy Roosevelt did not hatch his genius idea of setting aside lands to preserve natural treasures, in order to assure a supply of grizzly bears to sell to circuses, or pronghorn antelope to butchers, or centuries-old redwoods to loggers. Rather, he and his influential friends (among them John Muir) conceived the idea to REMOVE humans and their destructive influences from certain designated areas, so that they would remain, "pristine," for as long as possible.
So yes, many of us do believe in trying to sustain Nature "in itself." One doesn't need to be a philosopher to enjoy immersing oneself in a vista untouched by the hand of man. And surely we can leave religion out of this discussion. Leaves have been rustling in the wind long before human ancestors began climbing down from the trees. The world was not "made" for us; it predates us by billions of years, and will be here for billions more, long after our species is forgotten.
Excuse me, have you ever been to a national park? Or the "forever wild" portions of the Adirondack State Park (larger than any of our national parks)? Teddy Roosevelt did not hatch his genius idea of setting aside lands to preserve natural treasures, in order to assure a supply of grizzly bears to sell to circuses, or pronghorn antelope to butchers, or centuries-old redwoods to loggers. Rather, he and his influential friends (among them John Muir) conceived the idea to REMOVE humans and their destructive influences from certain designated areas, so that they would remain, "pristine," for as long as possible.
So yes, many of us do believe in trying to sustain Nature "in itself." One doesn't need to be a philosopher to enjoy immersing oneself in a vista untouched by the hand of man. And surely we can leave religion out of this discussion. Leaves have been rustling in the wind long before human ancestors began climbing down from the trees. The world was not "made" for us; it predates us by billions of years, and will be here for billions more, long after our species is forgotten.
55
Well-said, & irrebuttable.
Nice thoughts, and a continuation of the romanticism the author mentions in the first sentence. That said, there is no place on the planet that is untouched by human activities. Maybe, there's not been a literal human hand present in a particular vista, but our activities have left no place "pristine."
Hubris is not new to the human species, it is just that we have some how begun to think that our consciousness is supreme, superior, elevated above that of the whole of creation. And this article makes a huge leap of faith that has no basis in history, and that is we can overcome our destructive force and actually just adapt to the changes we are creating. This is a case of ego thinking it is immortal and not at risk from its creative, extractive, destructive, individualistic line of praxis. Yes, this article seems to come from the perspective of a child at play without a thought of real consequences.
13
Nature is already rebutting praxis--comeuppance is ineluctable...survivor cohorts of 600 breeding pairs should be installed across Colonia Martialis, at our early inconvenience [v. Hawkins].
Thank you, Tim. Brilliantly put.
Mr. Butman should do a bit of homework on tipping points at the ecological system level. Getting to no usable water, soil, etc is a process and can accelerate. Over population needs to be honestly approached (also by the Vatican).
Ultimately Mother Nature doesn't like our destructive human impulses.
Ultimately Mother Nature doesn't like our destructive human impulses.
8
Mr. Butman: "Instead of sustainability, we should instead speak of adaptability"
Those who blithely trust that "we" can adapt to the relentless conversion of natural capital to private wealth, need to ask themselves who "we" really are. Is it really necessary to point out that while populations may adapt, individuals will suffer?
Despite optimistic predictions of poverty's end, millions of people today live so close to disaster that any change in their environment will push them over the edge. When their water is polluted, those without access to clean supplies will sicken and die. When their seas are over-fished, families who can't afford to buy protein will go without. While anthropogenic global causes the seas to rise, crops to fail and forests to burn, millions who don't have the resources to "adapt" face the loss of their homes, their livelihoods and their lives. Will they accept their fates meekly, or will they adapt by seizing the resources they need from their neighbors? Can anyone afford to be complacent?
Sustainability isn't just about our personal relationship with a reified Nature. Human society can't survive if *we* don't acknowledge the Tragedy of the Commons, and cooperate to avert it.
Those who blithely trust that "we" can adapt to the relentless conversion of natural capital to private wealth, need to ask themselves who "we" really are. Is it really necessary to point out that while populations may adapt, individuals will suffer?
Despite optimistic predictions of poverty's end, millions of people today live so close to disaster that any change in their environment will push them over the edge. When their water is polluted, those without access to clean supplies will sicken and die. When their seas are over-fished, families who can't afford to buy protein will go without. While anthropogenic global causes the seas to rise, crops to fail and forests to burn, millions who don't have the resources to "adapt" face the loss of their homes, their livelihoods and their lives. Will they accept their fates meekly, or will they adapt by seizing the resources they need from their neighbors? Can anyone afford to be complacent?
Sustainability isn't just about our personal relationship with a reified Nature. Human society can't survive if *we* don't acknowledge the Tragedy of the Commons, and cooperate to avert it.
15
So, who is going to get to the carry the Human Species forwards once the consequence of the age of over abundant humans ends when resources will not support all the people? As Gore put it, and inconvenient truth.
4
Sorry, but if I was grading this paper I wouldn't give it very high marks. The argument is that we're using the wrong word to describe how we need to act in our environment. But the word is the correct word... We must act in a sustainable way. We must consume within our means to replenish, or else we risk starvation. This is sustainable consumption. The only way I can see this paper sustaining its argument is to say that common use of the term "sustainable" has drifted into unclear usage. Because Mr. Butman doesn't make this argument, he just gives us yet another example of how the term is used incorrectly.
13
Won't repeat all the good, lucid comments already submitted criticizing the piece. It appears Mr. Butman ought to seek another course of study as he appears ignorant of philosophy's basic rules of argument
13
We have begun to grasp the magnitude of the changes we have wrought, and awareness of our inability to rein in our exuberance dawns. "Against 'Sustainability'" is itself part of that phenomenon. But we should make every effort to resist the progression: innocence -> sustainability -> adaptation -> survival. The prospect of a future with more, poorer humans eking out a living in an impoverished, grim landscape largely of our own making should make everyone - even philosophers - recoil.
4
I've been peripherally involved with environmentalist causes for years, and I find Butman's description of how environmentalists frame the world utterly alien and frankly simplistic – essentially a paper tiger. Granted that my experience is largely in the Southeast where perhaps have a more practical bent than in some quarters, but I think the author is quick to throw all environmentalists under the bus in the interest of his "why can't we all just get along" efforts at peacemaking.
Sustainability as I have heard the term used has nothing to do with preserving an imagined romanticized version of nature but instead refers to being careful not to change the natural world that evolved us so that we are no longer compatible with it. The idea that we have free reign to impose changes on the planet without limit belies our history of unanticipated consequences and our lack of complete understanding of the interdependencies of the complicated systems that comprise life on earth.
Sustainability, as the people I work with use the term, really just means "long-term survivability".
Sustainability as I have heard the term used has nothing to do with preserving an imagined romanticized version of nature but instead refers to being careful not to change the natural world that evolved us so that we are no longer compatible with it. The idea that we have free reign to impose changes on the planet without limit belies our history of unanticipated consequences and our lack of complete understanding of the interdependencies of the complicated systems that comprise life on earth.
Sustainability, as the people I work with use the term, really just means "long-term survivability".
29
It seems to me that this ongoing intellectual angst concerning the term “sustainability” is just a deep search for a means to give humanity a sense of absolution for wrecking the Planet and cheating the future.
Let’s just be intellectually honest for once and go one step further than “adaptability” and get to the real definition of what we humans are doing, intellectually: Capitulation. We are desperately searching for a legitimate means to justify our capitulation to our inability to deal with systemic global problems that we humans ourselves have created.
We are knowingly robbing from the future to support our material wants of today—simple as that. No philosophical wrangling needed, unless we are looking for a way to absolve ourselves of responsibility.
Let’s face it: We are a clever species that uses our intellect in ways that are unwise and for the moment only—or we would not be facing the huge legacy of past blunders while piling on new ones for the future to deal with.
Nature does not need to be promoted. Nature does not care for the Human. Nature can get along with or without the Human. The real problem that we dishonestly avoid in our intellectual discourse is that the converse is not true.
Michael Bain
Glorieta, New Mexico
Let’s just be intellectually honest for once and go one step further than “adaptability” and get to the real definition of what we humans are doing, intellectually: Capitulation. We are desperately searching for a legitimate means to justify our capitulation to our inability to deal with systemic global problems that we humans ourselves have created.
We are knowingly robbing from the future to support our material wants of today—simple as that. No philosophical wrangling needed, unless we are looking for a way to absolve ourselves of responsibility.
Let’s face it: We are a clever species that uses our intellect in ways that are unwise and for the moment only—or we would not be facing the huge legacy of past blunders while piling on new ones for the future to deal with.
Nature does not need to be promoted. Nature does not care for the Human. Nature can get along with or without the Human. The real problem that we dishonestly avoid in our intellectual discourse is that the converse is not true.
Michael Bain
Glorieta, New Mexico
19
As an environmental activist I am driven every morning to do everything I can to increase the long term capacity of the earth to sustain human civilization. That is what sustainability means.
Do I sometimes wish that humanity would be more willing to adapt its habits to tread a bit more lightly? Why, yes. But rather than focus on a melancholy longing for an Eden, I satisfy myself with a clear-eyed goal of working with the universe and humanity I have.
My fondest wish is that 2000 years from now humans will still be doing all the same stupid, greedy, irrational crap they have done for millions of years.
Do I sometimes wish that humanity would be more willing to adapt its habits to tread a bit more lightly? Why, yes. But rather than focus on a melancholy longing for an Eden, I satisfy myself with a clear-eyed goal of working with the universe and humanity I have.
My fondest wish is that 2000 years from now humans will still be doing all the same stupid, greedy, irrational crap they have done for millions of years.
3
Terrible misleading headline. This is an excellent article.
Genesis started us off on regarding earth as a thing to exploit, loot, burn, tame, what have you. Some call it "cheap nature". To cheap nature has recently been added, for the haves, cheap labor. The looting classes have come to regard it as their right to continue without regard to others or to the future.
This is now, with a rapidly expanding population on a finite planet, and without an overhaul of how we power ourselves, building enormous trouble. We were at two and a half billion in 1950. The Dow was at 1000 at the beginning of Reagan. If you want a cauld grue, think about acceleration in the context of those numbers!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population#/media/File:World-Populat...
Mounting news of extreme weather worldwide, the melting of the Arctic, the rising of seas, the extreme weather of every kind not only taking lives but housing and livelihoods everywhere you look, are all too obvious. It is sad that we Americans are so insular, because that evidence includes a lot of other places on the globe, the recent flooding in China and northern India and Nepal, for example.
All these disasters cost a lot of money, but we look the other way, ignoring that prevention is cheaper than cure. This is exacerbated by the nature of the change, which is a delayed effect. What we are doing to ourselves now will have consequences for centuries and certainly be obvious in a couple of decades.
Genesis started us off on regarding earth as a thing to exploit, loot, burn, tame, what have you. Some call it "cheap nature". To cheap nature has recently been added, for the haves, cheap labor. The looting classes have come to regard it as their right to continue without regard to others or to the future.
This is now, with a rapidly expanding population on a finite planet, and without an overhaul of how we power ourselves, building enormous trouble. We were at two and a half billion in 1950. The Dow was at 1000 at the beginning of Reagan. If you want a cauld grue, think about acceleration in the context of those numbers!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population#/media/File:World-Populat...
Mounting news of extreme weather worldwide, the melting of the Arctic, the rising of seas, the extreme weather of every kind not only taking lives but housing and livelihoods everywhere you look, are all too obvious. It is sad that we Americans are so insular, because that evidence includes a lot of other places on the globe, the recent flooding in China and northern India and Nepal, for example.
All these disasters cost a lot of money, but we look the other way, ignoring that prevention is cheaper than cure. This is exacerbated by the nature of the change, which is a delayed effect. What we are doing to ourselves now will have consequences for centuries and certainly be obvious in a couple of decades.
7
In theory, this argument is correct, but the author fails to take rhetoric into account. His rhetoric will be quickly adopted by climate change deniers, who will now be able to stop denying and start saying, it's just natural change, why worry?
27
That is a stock denier argument already. "Natural variability," it's called.
A rule of thumb in America and its 'adjuncts' is; 'nothing is done until there are bodies in the streets'. What will qualify? An obscure animal will die off (bee) and agriculture will lose 30% of its productivity overnight. The West Antarctic Ice Sheet will collapse leading to an instant 1m rise in ocean levels. The denial will end and the hunt for scapegoats will commence.
Environmentalists and 'outsiders' = more bodies in the (underwater) streets.
A rule of thumb in America and its 'adjuncts' is; 'nothing is done until there are bodies in the streets'. What will qualify? An obscure animal will die off (bee) and agriculture will lose 30% of its productivity overnight. The West Antarctic Ice Sheet will collapse leading to an instant 1m rise in ocean levels. The denial will end and the hunt for scapegoats will commence.
Environmentalists and 'outsiders' = more bodies in the (underwater) streets.
1
It's just a matter of time before the laws of thermodynamics end our species and our planet. So time is of the essence. Most of us value our lives and those of our families, but not always. Without the myth of eternal life it is all coming to an end. So the real choice is to choose our end. What do we want it to look like? The life of a suicide bomber or of a healthy old person smiling at the dawn of a new day. We can't choose not to die, but only how we live each day. So being sustainable is to have more goods and less bad days for each of us.
6
If you're primary concern are the laws of thermodynamics, why do you say time is of the essence? In that case, it seems we have plenty of time.
When I think of sustainability, I think of using and preserving natural resources in such a way that we can sustain human and animal life on the planet. We have used more natural resources in the past 40 years than in all years previous. If all people on earth lived and ate like Americans we'd need nine planets to sustain us. We are drastically altering the chemical makeup of our atmosphere and oceans.
We may have unwittingly come to this place, but we must not be so witless going forward. Going forward, we clearly must protect our air and water, conserve our resources, preserve more natural habitats, etc., in order to sustain biodiversity and avoid mass extinctions, including ourselves.
We may have unwittingly come to this place, but we must not be so witless going forward. Going forward, we clearly must protect our air and water, conserve our resources, preserve more natural habitats, etc., in order to sustain biodiversity and avoid mass extinctions, including ourselves.
21
Any species so greedy as to consume all that upon which it depends is not meant long for this world. The author would do well to replace a few philosophy books with biology.
47
Thank you, kibbylop. This essay is just sophist blather. Apparently the author slept through Biology class and never opened a textbook on the science of Ecology. It appears he doesn't even know Ecology IS a science.
4
Population is mentioned nowhere in this piece. The curious notion that a change of terminology might somehow mitigate the great extinction currently underway due to habitat loss, habitat fragmentation and climate change resulting from increased human population and industrialization is beyond astonishing.
74
While this nuanced approach appeals to how we might be better motivated to take action - the article's premise assumes that whatever changes 8+ billion humans make to the atmosphere and to the land can be adequately handled by nature alone to ultimately keep things in better balance, so that human life can continue for billions of additional years. Given what I understand about the laws of thermodynamics - that premise is false.
An interesting opinion for sure. For those who study Environmental History, nature has been a loaded word, pliable for sure. In addition, one of basic ideas is that Environmental History is not the study of plants and animals, but the study of how humans interact with what humans deem as natural. Thus, humans are in the middle of the story. I was told that climate change is not about how the earth will survive, but about how humans will survive changes on the earth. Sustainability, in may ways, is the ability to sustain humans.
4
There are too many facts about the human impact on nature--and benefits from nature--for a wholly philosophical treatise to hold much relevance on the subject. Enlightened self-interest suggests 3 research-supported goals in the environmental wars:
1) Mitigating the effects of global warming to keep the planet habitable;
2) Reducing carcinogens and other toxins in the environment to improve human health, especially environmentally-related epidemics like cancer, lung disease (from poor air quality), and birth defects (from mercury and local chemical leaks).
3) Saving nature to save humans. A large body of research carried out by newer science departments at universities around the world show the striking importance of nature to maintaing human mental and physical health--to helping us learn, concentrate, heal, and avoid mental illness. The World Health Organization, for example, has declared noise pollution to be an epidemic threat to human health.
1) Mitigating the effects of global warming to keep the planet habitable;
2) Reducing carcinogens and other toxins in the environment to improve human health, especially environmentally-related epidemics like cancer, lung disease (from poor air quality), and birth defects (from mercury and local chemical leaks).
3) Saving nature to save humans. A large body of research carried out by newer science departments at universities around the world show the striking importance of nature to maintaing human mental and physical health--to helping us learn, concentrate, heal, and avoid mental illness. The World Health Organization, for example, has declared noise pollution to be an epidemic threat to human health.
6
All this can be done but not with cars.
The cars to or we go and the cars with us; that's the choice.
The cars to or we go and the cars with us; that's the choice.
1
Is this writer kidding?
"What is it that we want to "sustain" when we talk about sustainability" !?!
The musings of Descartes notwithstanding, how about conditions on earth that allow for the ongoing existence of humans and a goodly variety of other interdependent life forms? And not in a post-apocalyptic hellscape?
PS:
Note to philosophy grad student and unintentional humorist Jeremy Butman: If the academic career doesn't work out, consider applying to the PR department of Exxon or Charles Koch's Georgia-Pacific. They are in great need of creative thinkers like you.
"What is it that we want to "sustain" when we talk about sustainability" !?!
The musings of Descartes notwithstanding, how about conditions on earth that allow for the ongoing existence of humans and a goodly variety of other interdependent life forms? And not in a post-apocalyptic hellscape?
PS:
Note to philosophy grad student and unintentional humorist Jeremy Butman: If the academic career doesn't work out, consider applying to the PR department of Exxon or Charles Koch's Georgia-Pacific. They are in great need of creative thinkers like you.
70
I strongly suspect that this article WAS his application to Exxon. And I have no doubt he gets the job.
When I saw that this was written by a graduate student at the New School, I was not surprised. As other readers have noted, it's a shallow exercise in contrarianism, full of straw men and superficial arguments. The Times could do much better than this.
23
yes sustainability is a total fantasy creation of humans.
but to exchange it for "adaptability"?
that steels a very exact and well defined (and used-up) term from biology.
We do not adapt anymore it has gone still. unless you speak of genocide or epidemics.
How about "elaborate". that is what we do.
but to exchange it for "adaptability"?
that steels a very exact and well defined (and used-up) term from biology.
We do not adapt anymore it has gone still. unless you speak of genocide or epidemics.
How about "elaborate". that is what we do.
Yes, Mr. Butman is right to say that talking about Nature as an unchanging, perfect entity that exists apart from human beings is now a tired Romantic idea. As he points out, Nature is in a state of constant flux that includes even notions of chaos, and talking about it as if its about permanence is highly misleading.
That said, to entirely abandon the very ancient Greek idea that Nature has an underling order to it that we humans, in our puniness, cannot grasp or penetrate, is an invitation for us to continue to disrupt natural order and balance with indifference. Not that all our disruptions are bad things. But if we are at the point in history where we are in an anthropocene age, our first order of business is to know and understand our impact on our planet.
Mr. Butman's proposal that we change the words we use in talking about Nature by using such words as "promote," "foster," "advance," "endorse" or "advocate" strikes me as profoundly misguided. This kind of language is the language of communications people in public relations firms, or worse, politicians. Dragging it into talk about the most astonishing and profound part of existence--Nature itself--is more than a tad ridiculous, or even arrogant. People understand full well that Nature is always changing without having to talk like wonks.
That said, to entirely abandon the very ancient Greek idea that Nature has an underling order to it that we humans, in our puniness, cannot grasp or penetrate, is an invitation for us to continue to disrupt natural order and balance with indifference. Not that all our disruptions are bad things. But if we are at the point in history where we are in an anthropocene age, our first order of business is to know and understand our impact on our planet.
Mr. Butman's proposal that we change the words we use in talking about Nature by using such words as "promote," "foster," "advance," "endorse" or "advocate" strikes me as profoundly misguided. This kind of language is the language of communications people in public relations firms, or worse, politicians. Dragging it into talk about the most astonishing and profound part of existence--Nature itself--is more than a tad ridiculous, or even arrogant. People understand full well that Nature is always changing without having to talk like wonks.
14
It is human nature to think it should rule over the natural world. But nature has ultimate rule and generally rids the planet of those species who step over the line between symbiosis and plunder. Long term survival requires heterogeneity - living as one among many. Hegemony by humans is the logic of a looming black hole. At a certain point in our invasion, we are pulled across an event horizon, without recourse, and are dragged inexorably to a self- inflicted demise.
5
Dear Professor Butman,
Yours is a tautological argument - humanity is part of the natural world - and I agree with it as far as it goes. And yet how far does it go? We discover with each passing day as we send our probes into deeper and deeper outer space that life here on earth is as rare as a clear-headed statement from Donald Trump.
All the oxygen we'll ever have disappears past twenty-five thousand feet, leaving the thinnest of bands between us and oblivion, and yet we thrust endless amounts of pure poison into that band, thinking that maybe "nature" will just keep recycling it.
We've nearly wiped out every last large mammal on land and we're rapidly emptying the oceans of aquatic life and we're clear cutting our way through the last of the jungles and we've turned almost every river into a living sewer, and so I guess my parting thought and question is...
...at this point, where is the evidence that humanity has the will or the desire to "promote" anything in the world beyond its own wretched excesses?
Cordially,
S.A. Traina
Yours is a tautological argument - humanity is part of the natural world - and I agree with it as far as it goes. And yet how far does it go? We discover with each passing day as we send our probes into deeper and deeper outer space that life here on earth is as rare as a clear-headed statement from Donald Trump.
All the oxygen we'll ever have disappears past twenty-five thousand feet, leaving the thinnest of bands between us and oblivion, and yet we thrust endless amounts of pure poison into that band, thinking that maybe "nature" will just keep recycling it.
We've nearly wiped out every last large mammal on land and we're rapidly emptying the oceans of aquatic life and we're clear cutting our way through the last of the jungles and we've turned almost every river into a living sewer, and so I guess my parting thought and question is...
...at this point, where is the evidence that humanity has the will or the desire to "promote" anything in the world beyond its own wretched excesses?
Cordially,
S.A. Traina
224
You are soooo right :-)
1
I agree. It seems to me that Professor Butman is using "adaptability" as a shield behind which humans can make any sort of destructive decisions they want to--since after all, humans are "natural" too--so how can we help it? His argument is a logical and ethical cop-out.
In fairness, the author of the article is a graduate student, not a professor.
It is pretty arrogant to assume that just because man has be raping the earth for centuries that that is the correct state of things. Mass extinction caused by man are tragic because those species had no less right to exist than man. The real lacking of sustainability has always involved human population growth. The fact that few people of from either side of the political spectrum will acknowledge that fact makes most talk of sustainability a fool's errand but that fact doesn't make this piece any more valid.
16
But if these ecologist transferred the divine into nature, then it follows that others may have transferred God into, for example, the free market ideology. They might find in the free market the complex and dynamic movements that transcend human understanding. (Or, at least, these are machinations in which humans arrogance--read government control --have no place for its apparent randomness reveals to those believers the intimations of its higher power).
Mr. Butman's argument is centered on the word perfection, and that, according to him, must be unchanging. Why does he insist on that? Sustainability does not imply some nostalgic, Edenic static but rather homeostasis. When we binge eat mastodons, we canibalize ourselves.
Mr. Butman's argument is centered on the word perfection, and that, according to him, must be unchanging. Why does he insist on that? Sustainability does not imply some nostalgic, Edenic static but rather homeostasis. When we binge eat mastodons, we canibalize ourselves.
10
Entropy-indifferent, max-thruput 'growth' is being repudiated by forces majeures naturelles--our survival is not germane.
Whether God "died" or not (or whether He was ever "alive" or not) is irrelevant to the discussion. God was never anything more than a way for men to subjugate women...and other men.
During the 20st century three main godless religions took the stage in the human theater: Capitalism, Communism and Fascism.
But as the 21st century arrived, Capitalism has become the dominant feature of this trinity (having subsumed important aspects of Communism and Fascism).
And Capitalism was described perfectly by Edward Abbey when he wrote "Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of a cancer cell."
But in a lot of ways humans ARE like sheep, who if left alone with a shepherd in a fenced pasture will eat, procreate and defecate...until almost but the most adaptable die. I.e., most humans have no more vision for the future than does a domestic farm animal.
It is not an accident that the Good Shepherd held up the lowly sheep to His flock as the example of godly human behavior.
During the 20st century three main godless religions took the stage in the human theater: Capitalism, Communism and Fascism.
But as the 21st century arrived, Capitalism has become the dominant feature of this trinity (having subsumed important aspects of Communism and Fascism).
And Capitalism was described perfectly by Edward Abbey when he wrote "Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of a cancer cell."
But in a lot of ways humans ARE like sheep, who if left alone with a shepherd in a fenced pasture will eat, procreate and defecate...until almost but the most adaptable die. I.e., most humans have no more vision for the future than does a domestic farm animal.
It is not an accident that the Good Shepherd held up the lowly sheep to His flock as the example of godly human behavior.
10
Our culture may value "no more vision for the future than a domestic farm animal." Some indigenous cultures lived deeper, considering the effects of their actions on even seven generations out. Literally.
We can learn much from Native cultures especially regarding God in nature.
We can learn much from Native cultures especially regarding God in nature.
4
There are more issues intertwined in this topic than written. It's enmeshment of cosmos, consciousness and God, and all of the unanswered questions, into one idea - humanity - and our interaction with and impact upon our environment.
Whether on this planet, or some other that presumably we will colonize, we must reconcile our need for consumption, dominence, and all other human 'needs' with our impact upon that environment.
Agency ensures we will behave in pursuit of self interest. Inevitably, consciousness and diety will factor into those decisions. Cosmos - or at least the fundamental physics of it, are unchanging. Our understanding of those ideas is what changes.
I have some doubt about this piece due to its reliance on very dated thinkers. While valid to a point, and offering meaningful contex, ideas and information, it's incomplete and doesn't reflect contemporary understanding.
The fact that we are sentient demands we consider our impact on the environment and it's flase to suggest that we aren't accelerating the change to the net detriment of all. Tragedy of the Commons is real, whether money is involved or not.
The term sustainability is not preferred to promotion. Promotion more precisely reflects agency in the zeitgeist, and it is no small leap of moralism to suggest to onesself that minimizing our individual impact on envirnment is a moral good, while disregard of this is a moral evil.
Whether on this planet, or some other that presumably we will colonize, we must reconcile our need for consumption, dominence, and all other human 'needs' with our impact upon that environment.
Agency ensures we will behave in pursuit of self interest. Inevitably, consciousness and diety will factor into those decisions. Cosmos - or at least the fundamental physics of it, are unchanging. Our understanding of those ideas is what changes.
I have some doubt about this piece due to its reliance on very dated thinkers. While valid to a point, and offering meaningful contex, ideas and information, it's incomplete and doesn't reflect contemporary understanding.
The fact that we are sentient demands we consider our impact on the environment and it's flase to suggest that we aren't accelerating the change to the net detriment of all. Tragedy of the Commons is real, whether money is involved or not.
The term sustainability is not preferred to promotion. Promotion more precisely reflects agency in the zeitgeist, and it is no small leap of moralism to suggest to onesself that minimizing our individual impact on envirnment is a moral good, while disregard of this is a moral evil.
5
As I see it, the issue is that humans continue to think, speak, act as if there is a duality: "nature" and us. Michael Pollan helped me begin thinking differently when he argued that "domesticated" species - both plant and animal - could be seen as using humans to pass on their genes. Just as certain plants and pollinators are codependent, so humans and various other species are codependent.
The issue becomes even more interesting when considering how viruses and bacteria act upon humans as humans attempt to manage them.
A holistic view undermines our hubris. "Nature" will survive, of course. Whether it includes our species or not is something over which we have only partial control. One of our adaptive traits is a certain kind of intelligence. Will that intelligence be enough to preserve the human species or not?
The issue becomes even more interesting when considering how viruses and bacteria act upon humans as humans attempt to manage them.
A holistic view undermines our hubris. "Nature" will survive, of course. Whether it includes our species or not is something over which we have only partial control. One of our adaptive traits is a certain kind of intelligence. Will that intelligence be enough to preserve the human species or not?
5
Too many mistakes in this thinking ....but the one that renders it close to useless is his making the completely unsustainable assumption (definition?) about sustainability. Sustainability is NOT preserving nature for industry. Further, in no sense is sustainability about extinction, either on purpose or by unintended consequences. Sustainable is about the ability to continue an action at a certain level.
Mr. Butman's argument is not sustainable - it can not be maintained or defended. His last paragraph shows that he is thinking about something else....adaptability. Perhaps he is promoting the impermanent, or maybe he is just an apologist for destructive industry.
Mr. Butman's argument is not sustainable - it can not be maintained or defended. His last paragraph shows that he is thinking about something else....adaptability. Perhaps he is promoting the impermanent, or maybe he is just an apologist for destructive industry.
55
Yeah - we don't sustain nature, nature sustains us. I'm sure the author has good points and ideas, but I kept waiting for some understanding of the single word this entire piece is about.
Lou H,
Good analysis. I'm glad you responded as you did, because I was hoping it wasn't just me. This essay didn't make any sense. And from reading the comments on it, I notice that people's gripes are all over the map. Clearly Mr. Butman was unsuccessful in his ability communicate. But all is not lost. He's apparently a grad student (with connections).
As a teacher, I'd politely ask for a rewrite. I'm a bit surprised his advisor didn't help out with a little editing. ... OK, a lot of editing.
Good analysis. I'm glad you responded as you did, because I was hoping it wasn't just me. This essay didn't make any sense. And from reading the comments on it, I notice that people's gripes are all over the map. Clearly Mr. Butman was unsuccessful in his ability communicate. But all is not lost. He's apparently a grad student (with connections).
As a teacher, I'd politely ask for a rewrite. I'm a bit surprised his advisor didn't help out with a little editing. ... OK, a lot of editing.
1
We have a major political party representing tens of millions of people denying that human actions are causing climate change. Butman's straw man festival--which notably quotes not a single actual activist, writer, philosopher, etc--is a distraction from the important work of trying to limit the very real damage those people are bringing to people around the world.
That it pretends to be the first time someone has put forth the "humans are a part of nature! so nana nana boo boo!" line is just straight up embarrassing.
That it pretends to be the first time someone has put forth the "humans are a part of nature! so nana nana boo boo!" line is just straight up embarrassing.
97
No, the question is not whether we are 'actants' or whether we should use the terms 'promotion' or 'adaptability' instead of sustainability.
The issue is whether humans can manage their insatiable appetite for wealth and power that is causing the next extinction - which is likely to include us. Can we, unlike lemmings, control our urge to leap?
The ability to reign in our base instincts is something that a philosopher should be particularly well prepared to understand.
The issue is whether humans can manage their insatiable appetite for wealth and power that is causing the next extinction - which is likely to include us. Can we, unlike lemmings, control our urge to leap?
The ability to reign in our base instincts is something that a philosopher should be particularly well prepared to understand.
78
The ability to reign in our base instincts is something...
Sorry, but did you mean to say 'rein in...' or 'reign in...'?
Which would 'a philosopher should be particularly well prepared to understand'?
Sorry, but did you mean to say 'rein in...' or 'reign in...'?
Which would 'a philosopher should be particularly well prepared to understand'?
UH wrote, "Can we, unlike lemmings, control our urge to leap?"
What a depressing question.
What a depressing question.
while much of the analysis and prescription for the future is worthwhile, the idea that change is only tragic if the original was perfect is ridiculous. When something goes from good to bad, that is also tragic as is a change that benefits new people or groups instead of the ones benefitting prior to the change. At least it is tragic to those losing out. Which brings me to the major weakness in the article which is trying to treat humanity, or the environmental movement, as a monolith and ignoring the myriad of competing interests and preferences.
5
Beyond false dilemmas like human culture v the natural world, and critical review of "sustainability" and "the idea of nature", is the call for protecting half the planet (cf "Half Earth: Our Planet's Fight for Life" by Edward O. Wilson) from further human-caused biodiversity loss and disruptions of the complex ecosystems, developed over millions of years, on which all current lifeforms depend. We cannot hope to successfully sustain, adapt, or promote without adopting this version of the precautionary principle, funding naturalists, and closing our massive ignorance deficit.
30
Indeed - the article's author doesn't seem to realize that " sustainable" means avoiding having the human race become part of the massive extinction event now under way, and also conforming our systems with the physical laws of the universe. The law of conservation of mass/ energy tells us that there's a finite amount of matter available. Thus, a philosophy that ignores sustainability ignores reality. Sooner or later, ignoring reality results in unpleasant consequences.
61
We are well beyond the point where nature's influence on us equals our influence on nature. We have changed nature in ways unprecedented in the geologic record and at a pace to which most species cannot adapt, thus leading to the 6th mass extintion Kolbert warns us about.
We have made ourselves, for better and mostly worse, the caretakers of the world's various ecosystems. As we cannot expect nature to adapt to us, we therefore need to sustain those ecosystems, which in turn, sustain us.
Bottom line - this author's philosophical opinion flat out wrong.
We have made ourselves, for better and mostly worse, the caretakers of the world's various ecosystems. As we cannot expect nature to adapt to us, we therefore need to sustain those ecosystems, which in turn, sustain us.
Bottom line - this author's philosophical opinion flat out wrong.
129
There is a huge body of philosophy about biocentric ethics. The author is at best negligent, if not deceitful, to ignore all that, and pretend that environmental ethics is a confused romanticism. This piece is full of false dilemmas and straw men (such as "Mass extinctions are no doubt catastrophic, but they are only tragic if nature is viewed as something perfect", which is provably false and is an attack on a straw man--no philosopher defending the view that other organisms deserve some respect does so on the grounds that nature is perfect).
144
Yes indeed. That asteroid that hit 65 million years ago should have shown the dinosaurs some respect!
cd, you are absolutely correct. Negligent and full of straw men - that sums up this article well. Only someone who is a complete novice to the subject would be misled into thinking that this is an insightful article. The idea of "Nature as perfect artifice to be preserved" has been outdated for many, many decades. The conversation has long since moved on.
The author fails to recognize that humans are the first species to acquire the capacity to destroy our environment. Sustainability should be interpreted as the goal of reducing man's impact on the environment so that it is much smaller than that of natural forces.
16
Freespirit: "humans are the first species to acquire the capacity to destroy our environment."
I suspect we share many of the same values, but your facts are incorrect: in the history of life on Earth there are multiple examples of species "destroying" their environment.
For example, during the first billion years or so after life originated, all organisms were anaerobic, and free oxygen was a lethal poison. The rise of cyanobacteria ("blue-green algae"), which produce "free" (i.e. not chemically bound) oxygen as a byproduct of photosynthesis, led to the build-up of free oxygen in the environment, and all other organisms adapted or died. Today free oxygen abounds in the oceans and the atmosphere, and anaerobic organisms, all single-celled, survive only in environments where free oxygen is absent.
Biologists call that period of Earth's history the "Oxygen Catastrophe". Whether you call it a tragedy, I suppose, depends on which former anaerobes you descended from. Our own ancestors survived by evolving aerobic respiration, i.e. the ability to use free oxygen to extract more energy from their food.
I suspect we share many of the same values, but your facts are incorrect: in the history of life on Earth there are multiple examples of species "destroying" their environment.
For example, during the first billion years or so after life originated, all organisms were anaerobic, and free oxygen was a lethal poison. The rise of cyanobacteria ("blue-green algae"), which produce "free" (i.e. not chemically bound) oxygen as a byproduct of photosynthesis, led to the build-up of free oxygen in the environment, and all other organisms adapted or died. Today free oxygen abounds in the oceans and the atmosphere, and anaerobic organisms, all single-celled, survive only in environments where free oxygen is absent.
Biologists call that period of Earth's history the "Oxygen Catastrophe". Whether you call it a tragedy, I suppose, depends on which former anaerobes you descended from. Our own ancestors survived by evolving aerobic respiration, i.e. the ability to use free oxygen to extract more energy from their food.
10
Not quite true. The oxygen producing plants killed themselves off and set the stage for us. Maybe they didn't think about it.
1
Semantic problem, simple solution:
Humankind is the earth's biggest predator.
This "first" argument is ahead of itself and confusion, as so few people know much about the actual history and timeline of life on earth (not just human life).
Humankind is the earth's biggest predator.
This "first" argument is ahead of itself and confusion, as so few people know much about the actual history and timeline of life on earth (not just human life).
>>>>
"We can try sustainable development and renewable energy, and we can try geoengineering to help the Earth self-regulate. We can do these things with the same certainty that our eighteenth-century ancestors had about the power of mercury, arsenic or blood-letting to cure their diseases. Just as they failed utterly, so I think we also are not yet clever enough to handle the planet-sized problem and stop the Earth from over-heating".
James Lovelock
"Today’s Darwinists will tell you that the task of humanity is to take charge of evolution. But ‘humanity’ is only a name for a ragtag animal with no capacity to take charge of anything. By destabilizing the climate, it is making the planet less hospitable to human life. By developing new technologies of mass communication and warfare, it has set in motion processes of evolution that may end up displacing it".
John Gray
"There is one kind of toy which has been on the increase for some time, and of which I have neither good nor bad to say. I refer to the scientific toy".
Charles Baudelaire, ‘The Philosophy of Toys’
"We can try sustainable development and renewable energy, and we can try geoengineering to help the Earth self-regulate. We can do these things with the same certainty that our eighteenth-century ancestors had about the power of mercury, arsenic or blood-letting to cure their diseases. Just as they failed utterly, so I think we also are not yet clever enough to handle the planet-sized problem and stop the Earth from over-heating".
James Lovelock
"Today’s Darwinists will tell you that the task of humanity is to take charge of evolution. But ‘humanity’ is only a name for a ragtag animal with no capacity to take charge of anything. By destabilizing the climate, it is making the planet less hospitable to human life. By developing new technologies of mass communication and warfare, it has set in motion processes of evolution that may end up displacing it".
John Gray
"There is one kind of toy which has been on the increase for some time, and of which I have neither good nor bad to say. I refer to the scientific toy".
Charles Baudelaire, ‘The Philosophy of Toys’
4
>>>
For those that like to question the Titan as to why all the quotes?
"Enough has been written"!!
Otto Rank
For those that like to question the Titan as to why all the quotes?
"Enough has been written"!!
Otto Rank
2
Algorithms & computational power are underway that should permit fine-tuned geogineering [last-ditch if solar-aeolian is subverted by Heidelbergs on the Hill].
@Bronkema
"In this light, human progress is shown to be an ironic symptom that our downfall into extinction has been progressing nicely, because the more things change for the better, the more they progress toward a reliable end".
Thomas Ligoitti
Progress, instrumental reason and science have bought us to the sad point we're at, yet like a fanatical religious person you cannot stop believing in it. “Faith", says Nietzsche, "means not wanting to know what is true.”
Send me a postcard and let me know how that works out for you.
"Immune to the blandishments of religions, countries, families, and everything else that puts both average and above-average citizens in the limelight, pessimists are side-liners in both history and the media. Without belief in gods or ghosts, unmotivated by a comprehensive delusion, they could never plant a bomb, plan a revolution, or shed blood for a cause."
Ligotti
When optimism finally fails you give the philosophy of pessimism a try.
"In this light, human progress is shown to be an ironic symptom that our downfall into extinction has been progressing nicely, because the more things change for the better, the more they progress toward a reliable end".
Thomas Ligoitti
Progress, instrumental reason and science have bought us to the sad point we're at, yet like a fanatical religious person you cannot stop believing in it. “Faith", says Nietzsche, "means not wanting to know what is true.”
Send me a postcard and let me know how that works out for you.
"Immune to the blandishments of religions, countries, families, and everything else that puts both average and above-average citizens in the limelight, pessimists are side-liners in both history and the media. Without belief in gods or ghosts, unmotivated by a comprehensive delusion, they could never plant a bomb, plan a revolution, or shed blood for a cause."
Ligotti
When optimism finally fails you give the philosophy of pessimism a try.
3
Butman's analysis, while astute in many ways, could equally lend itself to a justification of the environmental movement or to a defense of those interests who seek to exploit our planet's resources without regard for the consequences. The first group would focus on the argument that we need to 'promote' not 'sustain' those features of the current environment which benefit humanity, directly or indirectly.
The Koch brothers, on the other hand, could point to the dramatic changes that have shaped earth's history and stress our need to 'adapt' to further such alterations, even if we cause them. If island nations disappear and sharp increases in pollution force us to build domes over our cities, no matter. We are a resilient species, and we can adapt.
An analysis which, whatever its author's intentions, can provide support for two such contradictory visions of earth's future, is not very helpful.
The Koch brothers, on the other hand, could point to the dramatic changes that have shaped earth's history and stress our need to 'adapt' to further such alterations, even if we cause them. If island nations disappear and sharp increases in pollution force us to build domes over our cities, no matter. We are a resilient species, and we can adapt.
An analysis which, whatever its author's intentions, can provide support for two such contradictory visions of earth's future, is not very helpful.
7
I get it. Human beings act as if they are paternalistic caretakers of a perfectly balanced natural ecosystem. But that ecosystem is not static, it is dynamic.
The author says we should be adaptable. Is the take-away that we should just react to changes and not attempt to guide nature (us included) to an environment that is healthy for human beings?
I agree. We do ourselves damage by acting paternally. But we appear to be driving the negative changes to our environment vis-a-vis our ideas about what is positive. We invent all sort so things to help with our existence. The irony is that our more recent inventions are made in order to repair the solutions that we previously thought were beneficial.
I don't think we can be so blasé as to just adapt to the changes we have wrought. But I also don't think our only alternative is to fight fire with fire–new tech to fight old tech. So far our batting average in fixing the world technology that we broke with technology is not so good. I would argue that much of this is not so much caused by the technology, but technology driven by profit.
We are in the driver's seat, whether we like it or not. We need to quit producing macho "STEM" technophilic capitalists, and start bringing more nuanced philosophical/ethical perspectives into the conversation. Descartes is a symptom not a cause.
The author says we should be adaptable. Is the take-away that we should just react to changes and not attempt to guide nature (us included) to an environment that is healthy for human beings?
I agree. We do ourselves damage by acting paternally. But we appear to be driving the negative changes to our environment vis-a-vis our ideas about what is positive. We invent all sort so things to help with our existence. The irony is that our more recent inventions are made in order to repair the solutions that we previously thought were beneficial.
I don't think we can be so blasé as to just adapt to the changes we have wrought. But I also don't think our only alternative is to fight fire with fire–new tech to fight old tech. So far our batting average in fixing the world technology that we broke with technology is not so good. I would argue that much of this is not so much caused by the technology, but technology driven by profit.
We are in the driver's seat, whether we like it or not. We need to quit producing macho "STEM" technophilic capitalists, and start bringing more nuanced philosophical/ethical perspectives into the conversation. Descartes is a symptom not a cause.
15
LBJr~ would an example of new tech beating old tech be along the lines of a big reflective blanket placed on the calving edge of glaciers to slow melting. Is this what yo mean by nuanced/philosophical?
Sure. A giant reflecting blanket to protect glaciers is a good example of fighting the results of past tech (fossil fuel damage) with new tech (a giant blanket).
I don't mean to suggest that we don't make a giant mylar blanket, but that we need to stop and thing about blowback from any technology we employ... especially large scale stuff. What does the giant reflective mylar blanket do to sea life? Does it snag penguins or destroy mating grounds? Instead of making decisions because Dupont suggests to congress that studies show (studies funded by Dupont) that a giant mylar blanket (made by Dupont) will solve the problem. The problem isn't really melting glaciers. That's a symptom. The Dupont blanket is super expensive bandaid. Dare I suggest a better solution might look like a carbon tax.
I don't mean to suggest that we don't make a giant mylar blanket, but that we need to stop and thing about blowback from any technology we employ... especially large scale stuff. What does the giant reflective mylar blanket do to sea life? Does it snag penguins or destroy mating grounds? Instead of making decisions because Dupont suggests to congress that studies show (studies funded by Dupont) that a giant mylar blanket (made by Dupont) will solve the problem. The problem isn't really melting glaciers. That's a symptom. The Dupont blanket is super expensive bandaid. Dare I suggest a better solution might look like a carbon tax.
1
The natural world I want to preserve or promote is one where, as much as possible, changes take place in the absence of human influence.
As a matter of practical public policy this entails maintaining, promoting and rebuilding wilderness areas free of roads, pipelines, transmission wires and poachers. It means allowing the Cape Cod National Seashore to erode. And it means taking steps to mitigate climate change.
If using the term "promoting" enables wilderness areas to flourish, then please use that term.
As a matter of practical public policy this entails maintaining, promoting and rebuilding wilderness areas free of roads, pipelines, transmission wires and poachers. It means allowing the Cape Cod National Seashore to erode. And it means taking steps to mitigate climate change.
If using the term "promoting" enables wilderness areas to flourish, then please use that term.
37
The term sustainability has been widely misused, but this doesn't authorize a superficial critic. Jeremy Butman here is criticizing a caricature of that concept (can't help thinking about Eric Cartman hippies), which makes his narrative slippery and dangerous. The adjective "sustainable" has been derived from the ecological concept of carrying capacity, literally meaning the capability of maintaining the carrying capacity of Earth in the long term. In French, sustainable development is translated as 'developpement durable', stressing the idea of iteration, of long-term capacity. The ideas of promotion, evolution and the central position of human cultural/technological evolution are indeed foundational in the concept of sustainability (see Georgescu Roegen, Herman Daly, etc.). Mass extinctions are indeed part of nature, but millions of years are needed to re-build the lost biodiversity and carrying capacity. If we do not consider this, we are on the perfect path of hubris. The Permian extinction wasn't tragic, it becomes tragic because of articles like this.
83
Despite Mr. Rosini's criticism, what he says doesn't seem contrary to what Mr. Butman says about humans using nature. Valuing diversity per se can be rationalized either by idolizing what is non-human or by trying to make sure that the benefits of nature for humans endure. Both Mr. Butman and Mr. Rosini seem to be saying the latter.
One way of confronting this question of attitude would be to consider replacing the term "organic" with the phrase "all inputs acquired by killing plants and animals."
One way of confronting this question of attitude would be to consider replacing the term "organic" with the phrase "all inputs acquired by killing plants and animals."
I am hardly religious, but support sustaining and even allowing nature to recover from the depredations forced upon it by humans. We know so much more now than ever in the history of mankind and our predecessors, how interconnected with our natural surroundings we are, how we rely on nature for our own survival as a species.
As nature suffers, so do we, and not just metaphorically. If we continue in the selfish ways begun during the last century, continuing into this one, I've no doubt the earth itself will survive and regenerate - once we've caused our own extinction and that of other living species in the process.
In December of 1972 we all marveled at the first photo of our planet in whole, taken from space by the Apollo 17 crew. It was then that the protection of our environment entered the conscious of the public, began to become mainstream. For the first time we were collectively allowed the view of "the big picture" Let's not lose sight of it to our own peril and that of the other species with which we share this Big Blue Marble.
As nature suffers, so do we, and not just metaphorically. If we continue in the selfish ways begun during the last century, continuing into this one, I've no doubt the earth itself will survive and regenerate - once we've caused our own extinction and that of other living species in the process.
In December of 1972 we all marveled at the first photo of our planet in whole, taken from space by the Apollo 17 crew. It was then that the protection of our environment entered the conscious of the public, began to become mainstream. For the first time we were collectively allowed the view of "the big picture" Let's not lose sight of it to our own peril and that of the other species with which we share this Big Blue Marble.
10
A point I neglected to mention is the explosion of the population, worldwide, that creeps close enough to, as well as into, and destroys habitat of the other species. That is something that is not sustainable.
14
The earth is a large garden, and we are the gardeners. We will keep some areas to do their own thing and be overgrown, cunningly imitate the overgrownness in other areas, as we did in New York City's Central Park, and use other areas for our own benefit.
We are the gardeners of the whole earth because only we can see the whole earth. Our present task is to figure out how to preserve the fertility of our garden so that it does not wither and make mankind wither with it.
We are the gardeners of the whole earth because only we can see the whole earth. Our present task is to figure out how to preserve the fertility of our garden so that it does not wither and make mankind wither with it.
13
Gardening is not love of nature, but love of landscaping. That's fine, but it is what it is.
10
Like it, or not, the entire planet is now a garden -- see McKibben's "The End of Nature," or Marris', "Rambunctious Garden". The only question remaining is, is that garden vernacular, or designed?
2