Many Americans enjoy health, wealth, and convenience exceeding our ancestors’ wildest dreams, living better than royalty did just a few generations past. These achievements were not cheap; in fact, they consumed much of our inherited natural capital. Now we are questioning whether we can sustain this trajectory towards affluence or whether we are exceeding Earth’s capacities to sustain these lifestyles into the future. Given the benefit of hindsight, some of our past decisions that put us in this bind were immature and perhaps irrational. I’d like to focus on some of the reasons we made the decisions we did, in the hopes that we can make better decisions in the future.
Fear: Early settlers and pioneers died of famine, cold, injury and disease. One of the first European efforts to settle in North America, the “lost” colony of Roanoke, disappeared in the time it took supply ships to return. Jamestown, famous because it persisted, still lost half its people during the first year. Nature was something to be fought and fenced out. Kill it or it killed you. Tame it our tame your aspirations. We still justify actions because we fear famine, exotics, and change.
Ambition: The riches of our inheritance seduced us: clean water, plentiful game, fertile soil, tall forests, ample minerals … all endlessly abundant and there for the taking. Early government policies encouraged exploiting natural resources to fuel the economy on which a nation could be built. It was our Manifest Destiny to harness this natural capital and ensure the success of democracy. Waste, exploitation, and greed were good. Today, we continue to embrace these values by promoting economic growth above most other national goals.
Ignorance: We don’t see the intricate ecological systems supporting our lives and livelihoods. When we flip the light switch, we receive no feedback that connects us to removal of mountain tops, burying of streams, and sickening of children with asthma. When we buy the latest gadgets, we don’t see what it took to gather the materials, transform them into products, wrap and ship them to our stores, and bury them when discarded. We attend, instead, to blaring messages promoting consumerism, career advancement, personal hygiene, and sexual prowess. We live in blissful ignorance, feeling no shame for the harm our actions cause.
Protectionism: Putting nature on a pedestal, wrapping it in the protective cocoon of public ownership and conservation easements, distracts us from the challenge of living sustainably. Preservation ignores the struggles of life, the mutualism of a nurturing relationship, the give and take of partnership. It separates people from nature rather than teaching us how to construct a sustainable lifestyle in nature.
Faith: We dismiss reports about a dangerously degraded biosphere because of faith that God or the market will provide: blind faith that solutions to environmental problems will appear when needed, either through miracles or though technological innovations and free market efficiencies. Environmentalists are alarmists with misplaced priorities, so this reasoning goes, because they lack faith. Rather than follow their recommendations to sustain environmental systems, America should instead focus its energies on strengthening markets, developing technologies, reducing poverty, and saving souls.
The challenge of the 21st century is to move beyond fear, ambition, ignorance, protectionism, and blind faith to construct an honest and mature relationship with nature. We need a new definition of progress, and a new understanding of the good life—one based on respect, compassion and love. We need to commit to the land like we commit to a family, making positive contributions for the generations that follow. Sustainability comes from responsibility born of love. It requires human creativity to improve, refine, and enhance the land community. It requires responsible citizenship in the biotic community. We must do unto others as we would have them do unto us.