I found it interesting that we were asked to write an ‘environmental autobiography.’ I don’t think I’ve ever thought of myself as having a relationship to the environment before. When I laid it all out there I was slightly disappointed that I’ve lost my bond with nature. As a kid, I found to be very ‘in touch’ with nature. I threw myself into it, the dirt, the bugs, the sunshine, the snow. At this point in my life, I avoid the outdoors as much as possible. I don’t know why or how that happened, but it did. I think I know where I fit in with the environment now. Its something I do not immerse myself in like I once did, but it remains to be something I greatly appreciate.
After my own personal account of the relating to the environment, it is important to understand that there are many ways of approaching the environment. There are environmentalists who are very critical of mainstream practices. For example Rachel Carson is an activist who claims that there are truly negative effects of pesticides and herbicides. Essentially the argument is that we have been exposed to chemical elements from the time of conception and will be exposed to chemicals until the time of death. Everything from the vegetables we eat to the air we breath it to some degree poisonous and these chemicals are negative long term health effects. To simplify, chemicals are inherently causing cancer in our generations.However, there are many criticisms of this approach because it is a one sided argument.
McKibben analyzes the the social approach to the environment in his book “The End of Nature.” He does not necessarily pin point causes for the state of the environment but speaks of our mentality toward the planet. He uses phrases it as our, “reassuring sense of a timeless future, which is drawn from that apparently bottomless well of the past, is delusion.” What I take from this is that our sense of time is so skewed. The dawn of time and the beginning of civilization are intangible concepts. We are unable to understand the slow process of how the world came to be and therefore where its going. The idea that the world planet won’t last forever, that all things die, does not really resonate with us when discussing nature.
I think this comments on how my generation approaches the environment. We think we have all the time in the world, that there will never be an ‘end’. But it is a fact that although we cannot see the impact of human influence within the ecological domain, that it IS happening, maybe just at a slower pace than we would expect.
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