Environmental News

If we give up urbanized dwelling? Agriculture? Mechanized food production and distribution? Economies?

Well, lots of people die. Natural habitat just can't support as many humans as we already have.

 

Who is the better steward of the earth Humans with all their scientist and modern technology- or- a squirrel who survives on its instincts and during its life will plant hundreds maybe thousands of trees while quietly going about its business?

“None are so old as those who have outlived enthusiasm.” ~ Henry David Thoreau “Nature will bear the closest inspection. She invites us to lay our eye level with her smallest leaf, and take an insect view of its plain.” ~ Henry David Thoreau, Henry David Thoreau quotes on nature “Love must be as much a light as it is a flame.” ~ Henry David Thoreau

By avarice and selfishness, and a grovelling habit, from which none of us is free, of regarding the soil as property, or the means of acquiring property chiefly, the landscape is deformed, husbandry is degraded with us, and the farmer leads the meanest of lives. He knows Nature but as a robber.—Walden

I love Nature partly because she is not man, but a retreat from him. None of his institutions control or pervade her. There a different kind of right prevails. In her midst I can be glad with an entire gladness. If this world were all man, I could not stretch myself, I should lose all hope. He is constraint, she is freedom to me. He makes me wish for another world. She makes me content with this.—Journal, 3 January 1853

 

... written back when forests and wildlife were still seen as effectively infinite, to be harvested at will. More than a decade before the ASPCA was founded. More than a normal human lifetime before the Dust Bowl lead to the creation of the Soil Conservation Service. More than a century before the Clean Water and Clean Air Acts were adopted to stop direct dumping of hazardous wastes into those necessary resources.

Surgeons (or barbers) were still using bloodletting to 'cure' many diseases at that time, a bit different than modern medicine. Things have changed a bit since 1853.

I don't expect the really serious migrations to happen anywhere near that soon.

 

Thoreau's works were not written as technical manuals nor as scientific reports. If you can only read the utility of his literary works as they apply to the technical know-how of the subject then you are missing the whole point of his intention. That would be a "Shallow Ecology" as Næss would call it.

I use to live close to the site Thoreau built the hut and devoted himself to thought experiments to look into himself and beyond to nature in solitude in the woods. His writings and philosophical principles still apply today some 170 years later, such that many of his writings are considered to be a "bible" of sorts by many modern naturalists and environmentalists. Unfortunately, Wolden Pond, today is nothing like what it was 170 years ago. I usually had a hard time even finding a parking spot.

 

I'm well aware that I took it very different that it was intended. But the context around that particular passage, is vastly different today than when he wrote it.

 

won't more electricity in 3rd world countries just encourage more population growth?

 

It is totally fine to be outdated context. It is not the method or practice he wrote that resonated with many modern naturalists and environmentalists. It is his fundamental view of nature and self, and how they intersect and transcend. That is how his work is still relevant today and is being cited in many places. Yeah, the Bible was written a long time ago and may be totally outdated contextually, but it is still being read and referenced today.

 

I suppose encouraging moderated population growth would be a good thing in general, but maybe there's a way to do it without making Malthus play bad cop?

... ideally, with some acknowledgment of the vast differences in context.

 

Have you seen any acknowledgment of the vast differences in context when the Bible is cited?

 

These days, economic growth and education tend to slow population growth, not increase it. Between access to birth control, and economic security not being determined by the number of children one produces, birth rates tend to drop.

I'm not really expecting the developed countries to hold steady on their energy consumption while the undeveloped catch up. Yes, there is massive room to increase efficiency and reduce the energy pollution impacts of what we are currently doing. But there is also huge incentive to do more, to produce and collect ever more economic power. Expanding automation, big data, and AI will demand more energy, even as per-unit efficiency improves. Those who take these paths will wield economic power over those who don't.

Some of the agricultural solutions are also more energy intensive. I don't know which way that industry's energy consumption will end up going.

 

Any? Yes.

But often? Not nearly enough. Especially by those who publicly cite it most frequently.

 

Will you show me a few examples?

 

Among which audiences? There seem to be at least two:

• Folks who regard Walden and The Holy Bible as the same sort of literature, to be studied with the same sorts of scholarly approach, and
• Folks who regard The Holy Bible as something unlike other literature, to which the ways other literature is approached might not apply.

As a first guess, I might expect to see more acknowledgement of differences in context around the Bible within the first group, less in the second. But then. within the second group, different treatment for Walden and the Bible might not seem as surprising, more as expected, even. (They might instead wonder whether you meant to put Walden in the same category. I mean, Thoreau seems like a cool dude and all....)

Might be one of those choose-your-audience kinda things.

 

I decline the invitation to follow that tangent into another deep and time consuming rathole.

Having grown up on a farm-ranch, the item I quoted and responded to, bore little resemblance my experience there. It may well have been the norm when it was written 170 years ago, but human attitudes have been changing, at least in part towards treating Nature not as something to be conquered and quashed and enslaved, but as something to be respected and conserved and allowed to function on its own. Only partially, not completely, but enough to render that passage archaic.

 

Yeah, I am not either of those two audiences. But I don't expect any acknowledgment of contextual difference now and then on quotes from the book Walden. That's probably because I have read the book, and I know it is not a technical manual or a scientific report. And even though I have not read the Bible, I also don't need an acknowledgment of contextual difference now and then if it is quoted in a passage. That's because even though I have not read it, at least I know it is not a technical manual or a scientific report.

 

"archaic" is your choice of word. I would say it is "classic" in a literary sense. It delivers a resonating message that is unaltered by the passage of time. But that all depends on the audience, of course.

 

How can nature-killing agriculture be more sustainable? – DW – 12/16/2022

"The farming system that feeds the world is the biggest killer of biodiversity. It does so by destroying habitats, overusing fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides, and creating vast monocultures. But there are solutions."

"Modern agricultural systems have achieved astounding gains in productivity in the past 50 years, but they have come at an enormous cost to nature.

Farming is responsible for around a quarter of emissions warping the climate. It's also one of the primary drivers of biodiversity loss, responsible for threats to 80% of at-risk species, according to the United Nations."

Agriculture is always a battle against nature 12 December 2022 Free (farmersjournal.ie)

How Thoreau's 19th-Century Observations Are Helping Shape Science Today - Atlas Obscura

See Why Thoreau's Walden Still Inspires (nationalgeographic.com)

Thoreau's Walden Is 156 Years Old Today, but Relevant as Ever - The Atlantic

 

It never occurred to me that technical manuals or scientific reports were the only kind of literature whose context matters.

 

If you didn't you, gas stations can be hazardous waste sites. Bit of a read, but an in depth look at the issue of leaking fuel tanks.

https://grist.org/accountability/gas-stations-underground-storage-tank-leaks-environmental-disaster/