Pollen: environmentalists must focus on sustainability, not wilderness
July 1st, 2008 by Jim JustThere’s an interview with Michael Pollen at E360 in which he calls for the environmental movement to move from “wilderness” to “sustainability.” This perspective fits with what we’ve argued before (for example, here, here, and here) – that the environmental movement made terrible scientific and strategic mistakes in focusing on saving isolated bits and pieces of environment rather than on overall ecosystem preservation and health.
I’m going to pull out the relevant bits, but be sure to read the whole interview.
“We’ve had in this country what I call a wilderness ethic that’s been very good at telling us what to preserve. . . Essentially the tendency of the wilderness ethic is to write that all off. Land is either virgin or raped. It’s an all or nothing ethic. It’s either in the realm of pristine, preserved wilderness, or it’s development — parking lot, lawn. . .
“I think most environmentalists have in their minds a belief, and it’s vindicated by a lot of what we’ve seen, that the human relationship with nature is zero-sum — for us to get what we want from the natural world, the natural world must be diminished. But go to a really well run pastured animal farm where they’re rotating crops, rotating species, and you will find a place where a lot of food comes off the land, and the land is improved as a result. That completely flies in the face of our tragic understanding of nature. I think it’s one of the great sources of hope. It suggests that there might be ways that we can figure out how to get what we need and not diminish nature.
“So I think we’re undergoing a sea change. I think that environmentalists are recognizing that as important as wilderness is as a standard, as a baseline, sustainability is a very different baseline. I think our focus is moving from wilderness to sustainability. That’s not to say we have to destroy the wilderness to have sustainability. It’s just that, okay, we did that. That was the project that engaged us for 150 years. The project now is very much more the gardener’s project, or the farmer’s project, which is how to use nature without ruining it.”