Postnaturalism

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Postnaturalism

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For too long, environmentalists and environmental scientists have portrayed humanity as the problem and nature as the solution.  If only humans would just stop their destruction, “nature” would save the day.  Yet scientific evidence shows that virtually all of earth’s ecosystems, at least on land, have been permanently altered by humans long ago.  Nature is now embedded within human systems.  Nature is not a wild thing “out there”, but a close friend, our family, right here. 

We need a postnatural environmentalism that is in tune with the true state of our planet and the breakthrough vision that environmentalism must be about building a positive future for humanity – a far more inspiring, collaborative, realistic and sustainable process than trying to “save nature”.  Postnaturalism is about embracing our human-created nature and loving it just as much as the wild nature that we have influenced the least.  Nature is not going to solve our problems.  The fate of the biosphere and all of its inhabitants is in our hands. Postnaturalism is about managing earth better, not about leaving it alone.  It is no longer meaningful to try to stop human influence on our planet- to do so would abdicate responsibility for the biosphere we have created.

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