The Blackberry Walk

I accidentally took another environmentalist propaganda module at uni. This is pretty frustrating, because each and every year, this has happened; they don't offer much choice, it's as if you're bottlenecked into picking one. But alas, here I am again, learning about scientific eschatology and how the Earth is dying- But it isn't. Nature and the Earth aren't going anywhere. Sure, species are becoming extinct, but does anyone in their right mind think that life itself is going anywhere? It's survived so many extinction events before - what'll make this one any different? What makes it different is that we are in trouble this time. Instead of trilobites in Permian rock samples, this time it's man in the here and now which faces trouble. What frustrates me so much about environmentalists, is this patronising attitude towards nature, as if we're divinely appointed gardeners to make nature just how it should be, when in reality the only reason we care about nature is: firstly, for ourselves; and secondly, out of a kind of mothering pity. The former we see from the greenhouse gas lobby, insisting that the Earth is soon to become inhospitable, arid, and all the major cities will have sunk. Oh no, poor nature? No. Man has the problem here - nature is absolutely fine and will go about its day as normal. During the carboniferous period, the world was much hotter - the world was a dense jungle of huge plants and foot long dragonflies. Life can adapt at a rapid rate - it's man that'll be struggling. The latter is most commonly seen with animal conservation. Oh no, the pandas who refuse to fuck, or the koalas who refuse to eat any other kind of leaf are going extinct. Sure, they're cool - I want to see a cool koala, or a fat panda - but the argument most commonly raised is, "we have a responsibility to protect them." Do we? Sure we've removed their habitats, ruining their lives, but is it our responsibility to protect them in the same way colonial powers did to African tribes? The part which ticked me off most about the first lecture of the module, was the intro. They showed us this image: And said, "When we first saw this picture, man realised that the Earth was small and something to protect." What? The Earth clearly is not small - it's massive. The rest of space is irrelevant since we can't go there - for all intents and purposes it doesn't exist. All that exists, all that we have, is the Earth - how can it be small? And the Earth is surely not something that needs us protecting it. The Earth is a stable system which since the dawn of time hasn't needed divine gardeners to cultivate nature based on man's notions of equality for endangered animals or of beauty when picking which plants should propagate. The Earth as a dynamic system is forever changing and now is no different. It isn't man vs. nature, it's man as a small part of nature. Sure we're raping and pillaging our rival plants and animals, thieving minerals which were once communal, but man will pay his price for cheating at the game. The king of kings can't reign forever; man will one day not be the Earth's colonial power with dominion over all of nature. To reiterate, I'm not saying that the science is wrong, or that we shouldn't produce less waste. The environmentalists have got their data. What I am saying is that their philosophy is unsound - their cries to protect the Earth is selfishness veiled in selflessness, as so much today is. The Earth can only be saved once we realise that we aren't trying to save nature, but rather we're trying to save ourselves from nature.