Infinite Nature - Hardcover

Hull, R. Bruce

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0226359441 ISBN 13: 9780226359441

Verlag: University of Chicago Press, 2006

Inhaltsangabe

You would be hard-pressed to find someone who categorically opposes protecting the environment, yet most people would agree that the environmentalist movement has been ineffectual and even misguided. Some argue that its agenda is misplaced, oppressive, and misanthropic—a precursor to intrusive government, regulatory bungles, and economic stagnation. Others point out that its alarmist rhetoric and preservationist solutions are outdated and insufficient to the task of galvanizing support for true reform. 

In this impassioned and judicious work, R. Bruce Hull argues that environmentalism will never achieve its goals unless it sheds its fundamentalist logic. The movement is too bound up in polarizing ideologies that pit humans against nature, conservation against development, and government regulation against economic growth. Only when we acknowledge the infinite perspectives on how people should relate to nature will we forge solutions that are respectful to both humanity and the environment.

Infinite Nature explores some of these myriad perspectives, from the scientific understandings proffered by anthropology, evolution, and ecology, to the promise of environmental responsibility offered by technology and economics, to the designs of nature envisioned in philosophy, law, and religion. Along the way, Hull maintains that the idea of nature is social: in order to reach the common ground where sustainable and thriving communities are possible, we must accept that many natures can and do exist.

Incisive, heartfelt, and brimming with practical solutions, Infinite Nature brings a much-needed and refreshing voice to the table of environmental reform.

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Über die Autorinnen und Autoren

R. Bruce Hull is a senior fellow at the Center for Leadership in Global Sustainability at Virginia Tech. He is coeditor of Restoring Nature: Perspectives from the Social Sciences and Humanities.

R. Bruce Hull is professor of natural resources at Virginia Tech University.

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INFINITE NATURE

By R. BRUCE HULL

The University of Chicago Press

Copyright © 2006 The University of Chicago
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-226-35944-1

Contents

Preface.....................................xi1 Introduction.............................12 Anthropogenic Nature.....................103 Evolving Nature..........................204 Ecological Nature........................375 (In)finite Nature........................576 Economic Nature..........................747 Healthy Nature...........................978 Fair Nature..............................1119 Spiritual Nature.........................12410 Human Nature............................14111 Rightful Nature.........................15812 Aesthetic Nature........................17813 Moral Nature............................192Conclusion..................................209Notes.......................................217References..................................235Index.......................................253

Chapter One

Introduction

Environmental Fundamentalism Unifying Visions of Thoreau and Leopold Pluralizing Nature

Critics say environmentalism is dying; or if it is not dying, then it needs to. Traditional critics repeat well-worn complaints that environmentalism's agenda is misplaced, oppressive, and misanthropic because it produces regulatory bungles, slows economic growth, and delays technological advances that save lives. A newer line of criticism, coming from inside the movement, argues that environmentalism's alarmist rhetoric, polarizing ideology, and preservationist solutions are outdated and insufficient to the tasks of sustaining thriving communities in a humanized biosphere. All these critics are wrong in one important regard: there is not one environmentalism, one environmentalist position, or one environment. Critics know this to be true but still struggle to escape the trap of environmental fundamentalism.

The trap of environmental fundamentalism gets sprung early and often. Environmental issues tend to get framed as either-or, win-lose debates: economy or environment, humans or nature, government regulation or market economy, preservation or development, growth or steady state. Serious public dialogue about desirable future conditions quickly polarizes and degenerates into name-calling, as it did in a recent planning effort for the lands within the Adirondacks' famous Blue Line. Environmentalists were stereotyped as "forest faggots," "nature Nazis," and "watermelons": green on the outside, red (socialist) on the inside. Non-environmentalists were typecast as rapists, destroyers, and greedy exploiters with warped priorities that value the almighty dollar above the Almighty's creation.

Alternative framing of society's social-environmental problems is possible. Biocultural visionaries advocate appropriate technology and social ecology that blend rather than separate environmental and social concerns. They try to advance solutions that benefit both the environment and jobs, human equity and biodiversity, urbanization and ecology, utility and beauty, and thriving and sustainable communities. These attractive visions of the future appeal to people of most political persuasions, broadening and deepening the political will to act. To identify and realize these visions, we need to overcome the polarization caused by environmental fundamentalism. The purpose of this book is to assist in this effort by pluralizing our conception of nature.

UNIFIERS: THOREAU AND LEOPOLD

Early and foundational environmental thinkers such as Henry David Thoreau and Aldo Leopold were unifiers, not polarizers. They were highly critical of economics as the sole criterion for justifying land-use decisions and social policies. However, they were not anti-economic. Thoreau, for example, went to the woods to live deliberately, and his experiment at pond's edge was, in part, economic. The first and longest chapter of Walden is titled "Economy," in which he carefully records expenses and profits down to the half cent. He describes building a house, planting and hoeing a bean field, selling excess beans, and purchasing supplies with the profits. He rejoices in the fulfillment earned through the labor of living frugally, simply, deliberately, and economically.

However, Thoreau also soundly criticized his neighbors for overemphasizing economic values. Their narrow-minded, economic-only accounting of life trapped them in a sad, desperate cycle of toiling at jobs in order to secure the funds needed to purchase the products that others toiled to produce. His neighbors seemed so focused on staying atop the economic treadmill that they forgot to smell the roses and taste the fruits of life. Thoreau was not against labor but thought people sacrificed essential spheres of life-such as self-actualization, community, place, and posterity-by too eagerly selling their humanity as labor. He encouraged people to drive life into a corner and find in it deep meaning, spiritual fulfillment, aesthetic pleasure, ecological literacy, and community vitality. His two-year experiment at pond's edge was an effort to document different ways to understand and value living a simple life near nature.

That was 150 years ago. Today Thoreau might conclude that things have gotten worse. He also might conclude that the environmental movement he unknowingly helped found has failed to offer society a viable alternative. But he might see signs for hope that his agenda will be realized. While writing this introduction, I traveled to Walden Pond in search of Henry's muse. Urban sprawl long ago eroded much of the solitude Thoreau found during his long walks around Concord, Massachusetts. The edge of the famous pond is now badly beaten and bruised by the hundreds of thousands of visitors who frolic there each year. The pond regularly fills with boaters, swimmers, dogs, hikers, deer, and pilgrims such as me.

Extensive efforts are under way to restore functioning ecological systems to the pond's trampled watershed. Steel-wire fences and strongly worded signs direct visitors to narrow trails that ring the pond. Vegetation is being planted by volunteers, and soil has been secured by high-tech landscaping fabric. It is ironic that Thoreau's nightmare of a nature completely defined, dominated, and denuded by humanity occurred at the very place where he wrote some of his most powerful prose warning us of the dangers of an unrestrained instrumental worldview. It is perhaps fitting that restoration efforts are under way to balance the needs of a thriving, creative ecological system with the needs of a thriving, creative human civilization. Perhaps neither nature nor humanity will dominate this new arrangement and both will be better off for the partnership.

Aldo Leopold also was a unifier, appreciating both the economic and cultural harvests of nature. He studied, advised, and advocated hunting, agriculture, and other consumptive economic practices, recognizing that they provide the needed material harvests of food, shelter, comfort, and safety. He strove to harmonize economic practices with the integrity of functioning ecological systems and thus was critical of land management driven exclusively for economic gain. The land, he argued, also generated cultural harvests, providing people with a life as well as a livelihood. In addition to wood and food, the land...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: University of Chicago Press
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2006
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0226359441
• ISBN 13: 9780226359441
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Auflage: 1
• Anzahl der Seiten: 258
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Buchbär; info@buchbaer.de; ; Weberstr. 67; Osnabrück; 49084; Deutschland