Western anti-Nature prejudice can be transformed
“O ruin’d piece of nature, this great worldShall so wear out to naught.” William Shakespeare, The Tragedy of King Lear When in 1951 Rachel Carson published her extraordinarily popular book The Sea Around Us, which galvanized huge interest in the oceans, she was not overly optimistic concerning humanity’s ability to be an engaged steward and partner to these vast and rich biologically endowed marine regions of the Earth. She said: “There has long been a certain comfort in the belief that the sea, at least, was inviolate, beyond man’s ability to change and to despoil. But this belief, unfortunately, has proved to be naïve.” Seventy years ago people thought the ocean was pristine, but in the intervening years it has lurched from one crisis to another. Carson amplified her urgent call to protect life on Earth with her revealing book Silent Spring, for she wished to whittle away a dangerous collective prejudice that has increasingly wrought havoc. Adding to the growing destruction of the fantastically fecund coral reefs brought on in large part by climate warming and the insatiable demand for the sea’s marine bounty, including its minerals, the newest concern is the level of plastics found in the ocean. June 5 is World Environment Day, and this year its focus was on the ending of plastic pollution. Now, at last, a UN treaty on global plastic pollution based on the full life cycle of plastics is going ahead, with the details to be finalized by the end of 2024. We all know that there is great beauty, creativity—imagination, if you will—and intelligence in all sentient life forms. There are groups of people throughout the world who are striving to address an embedded ignorance of Nature, as there are also millions who share the recognition that the Earth’s biodiversity is unique in the universe. As we know, the prospects for the future on this planet grow dimmer with each year as biodiversity is lost, nuclear threats grow, and climate action never seems to take hold fast enough to hold off the sheer madness of a fossil-fuelled, irresponsible and unethical growth economy that is surely epitomized by gross domestic product (GDP). That homage to capitalism at its worst doesn’t care whether this growth economy encompasses the production of more armaments or the financing and reckless forging ahead with artificial intelligence. Nature is now given a price, but such intangibles as the inalienable right for humans and animals to have a healthy quality of life is looked upon askance and often shrugged off as some utopian pipe dream. Yet there is never a lack of ways for a person to wake in the morning and not feel beauty, even though the west would like to requisition it all by refusing to stop its extractive neo-colonial obsessions. In place of that unbridled greed courage, determination and education are fertile soil for a sense of agency that can grow vigorously. The David Suzuki Foundation announced recently that a long overdue overhaul of the Canadian Environmental Protection Act is finally