The Irony of the Blame Game

For most of the existence of our species, homo sapiens, we have lived in harmony with Nature. Before the 19th century when the self-engrossed industrial revolution blindly moved into high gear and started polluting the rivers and the atmosphere, conservation was a matter of common sense, even among European tenant farmers and peasants. Of course there were intermittent examples through time of agricultural societies across the world collapsing because they had depleted their soil through mono-cropping, overgrazing and deforestation, but the land recovered once it was left alone, and the descendants of those erring cultures incorporated principles of conservation into their native wisdom and spiritual taboos. Just read the folklore and folktales collected by ethnologists from the world's cornucopia of nature-based cultures, and you will discover a love of the land, the flora and the fauna that is profoundly intimate and full of awe. The observations of nature are so keen and sensitive in this oral literature, and these have been married to an utterly fascinating human imagination. Before the arrival and imposition of the institutional religious faiths, human beings from every quarter of the globe cultivated a lore of accurate understandings of Nature while endowing these practical perceptions with mythic meaning which enriched the people's experience of life, sanctifying all with which they coexisted, and creating mysteries that maintained a balance of respect and gratitude. Now overpopulation and global warming (factors inescapable to the awareness of anyone living on the Earth's Southern Hemisphere) are unraveling both the natural biosphere, ancient traditional cultures and human existence itself. Some biologists, dismayed that corporations will do nothing to reverse the technological trends creating global warming, dismayed that religious fundamentalist groups are forming a political blockade on birth control, dismayed that tribal people desperately hang on to now impracticable ways of life by continuing to farm marginal lands that are now becoming desert, dismayed that first world people are putting greater demands on the energy grid, are now mounting an intellectual attack on the human race itself: human beings are causing the yearly extinction of thousands of irreplaceable species that belong to a fine ecological web of inter-species reciprocity; we simply do not deserve to be here any more. So I ask, does this include the scientists, who are themselves human beings, who depend on high technology to learn and practice their craft? Is the human race "evil" in the sense that we are a mere plague on the environment, nothing better than ecological parasites? Should we be exterminated? Where are we supposed to go? Mother Nature reared us no less than She did our biological cousins, such as the noble orangutans, and even in our sophisticated clothes, we are animals no less than the dwindling snow leopard. Vaccines and modern agricultural science drove up the survival rate of human babies born to this world, and the population consequently has grown to proportions never before possible. To whom would you deny the simple joy and fulfilling purpose of raising a family? Most people have no animus in their hearts toward Nature. Those that do have undergone ideological brainwashing, usually by parents bent on destroying sympathy for Nature because they derive their wealth or living from unmitigated economic exploitation of natural resources. It is not natural to the human psyche to be at odds with the Natural world. Every child instinctively responds to Nature as a source of joy and wonder. Even kids raised in a city have an eager curiosity to go out into the countryside at the first opportunity and explore its graces and mysteries. Population growth is something we must accept, and we must accept that we owe it to every human being to try to provide them with a life free of unrelieved poverty and travail. That takes organized mobilization of resources and infrastructure. No one has the right to decide who gets to live and who must be processed out by eugenics, even when the survival of other species is at stake. There are ways to responsibly use energy resources and the raw materials that sustain a safe and a reasonably comfortable existence. There are ways for human beings to live in harmony with other living things-- we've been doing just that for 99% of our species's history on this planet. Blaming the poor and working people for the degeneration of the biosphere is not a constructive answer and is a waste of precious time for real problem-solving. Those who control the capital of our world need to be targeted for relentless and spirited re-education. They need to be taught that they, despite all their wealth, are as vulnerable to the effects of environmental degradation as the person working all day in the factory or the tribal person trying to farm a wasteland with a digging stick. Once you convince the powerful they are capable of changing the way they use the Earth's resources and adopt clean efficient f0rms of energy without losing their pride of place, then you will truly slow down the process of environmental and atmospheric degradation and one day bring it to a halt. In the meantime, birth control practices can be re-established through respectful, discrete and gender-sensitive education of the poor by the concerted efforts from an alliance of religious and secular organizations, and this will come most effectively by accompanying these efforts with political policies which accord more educational and employment opportunities for girls and women. Social equality is the answer -- not scientifically rationalized bigotry hiding under the name of "meritocracy". Bringing the wealthy back into the fold of a balanced human community is the other half of the solution.