Confessions of a Recovering Environmentalist

I had to keep checking that I hadn't misread "Orion" for "Onion".

Me too.

I always check for length before I read. It didnt look like satire, and the length made me go back and look at the mast.

• True

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Thanks for the article, mmphosis.  It was a long read, and I'm not sure what I think of it, but I found it interesting.  I enjoyed the personal narrative and didn't mind the length of the article, although I did read it in two sittings.

What hit home with me was what he had to say about people he had observed who are very concerned about the environment, but don't really have any connection to nature.  That would be me - I recognized myself in his description, although I won't generalize about anyone else.  He seemed pretty scornful about "ecosocialism" and about connecting environmental issues to social and political and economic issues, and I don't share that scorn at all.  I think it's very important.  But so is a real connection to and love for nature, which I think many of us (particularly those of us who live in cities) are losing, if not lost already.  I think he's right to some degree about the disconnect between environmentalism and nature itself with many people.  (If you're reading this and you're not one of those people, then I'm not talking about you, so don't get defensive. :) )

I don't know whether his decision to simply withdraw from it all and go for a long distance nature walk is constructive or not.  Probably not.  But I also think he has raised a question, which is whether anything constructive is happening at this point.  And whether any environmental movement that focuses almost exclusively on human dividends and incentives is constructive.  I don't know the answer to any of those questions, and it seems that neither does he.

BTW, wouldn't this have gone well in the environmental justice forum?

Michelle wrote:

He seemed pretty scornful about "ecosocialism" and about connecting environmental issues to social and political and economic issues, and I don't share that scorn at all.  I think it's very important.  But so is a real connection to and love for nature, which I think many of us (particularly those of us who live in cities) are losing, if not lost already.  I think he's right to some degree about the disconnect between environmentalism and nature itself with many people.  (If you're reading this and you're not one of those people, then I'm not talking about you, so don't get defensive. :) )

I agree that it is important to make connections between forces - on all sides of a situation. 

On the other hand, I do have a problem with those who claim that one and only one thing is responsible. At that point it is no longer a case of making connections, but denying them. 

And I agree regarding the disconnect. Arguments like ending agriculture, ending animal husbandry, going back to hunter-gathering, may seem good on paper, but are woefully naive. Same for the notion that we are in any way in control - of anything other than destructive forces, that is. The best we can do is to reduce the amount of damage we are doing. We cannot "save the planet".

The fact is we have had a major effect on the earth for the past 30,000 years. To talk about going back to a natural state is begging the question. The fact is sloths and mammoths are not coming back.

I get some of the author's points, but I disagree that it is a foregone conclusion that anything we do will be "same old same old" . There are in fact problems that have been dealt with without it meaning just feeding the same machine.

What I see in the article is someone's romantic notions running headlong into the fact that practical solutions aren't always what they seem, aren't always quite so black and white, and are usually complicated by other factors.

Good article, if a bit prosaic. And actually I was joking about the length. My reticence has to do with the fact that we have discussed some of these issues before.

That's very thoughtful Michelle, on many dimensions.

But I'll take this one.

Michelle wrote:

What hit home with me was what he had to say about people he had observed who are very concerned about the environment, but don't really have any connection to nature.  That would be me - I recognized myself in his description, although I won't generalize about anyone else. 

I guess I would be the pretty connected to nature kind- though that is not something I would ever say. And there is validity in being concerned about the environment but not particular;y connected to 'nature'. Nor is it necessarily as 'human centric' as the autjor makes it out to be.

I've lived everywhere and gone full circle. I grew up rural/exurban, able to just walk off into the widerness for hours or a couple days... and I spent quite a bit of my teen years tromping through the wild and rugged landscape on my own. But I always knew I was going to go live in 'the city'... and left home at 17 because I was getting too itchy and not liking the local culture I had grown up in [which liked me even less].

So I did my city thing for a few years. And I left. I didnt HAVE to get away, and I still love cities, I just left... voted with my feet for the kind of surroundings and neighbours I prefer to have. Long ago, i grew EXPECT to have the beautiful vistas, the space, and the peace.

But to my mind, this is only a personal choice thing. And I don't enjoy any more than the 'deep greens' like the author, the dotting of all the hilltops. But I also don't really have a place for romanticism. More precisely- that much romanticism.

There's a paradox here. Because the term romanticism is used as a put down. And I really do not mean it that way. For one thing, I feel that part of the way I live my life, the choices I make, is a 'real time expression' of the romanticism of nature.

What do the deep green thinkers say that was not said by Blake?

They have a hell of a lot more words. And there is an analytical shape to it. There is more moaning to it. And instead of the lost golden age, it is the primacy of the santicty of the planet and all of its beings.

But I dont really see any difference.