While much of the country turned its attention to southern hurricanes earlier this year, wildfires raged across the western U.S. in Montana, Wyoming and parts of Idaho. The Horse Gulch fire, for example, consumed more than 15,000 acres of land but received little primetime coverage, despite widespread evacuations and significant environmental impacts.
Both hurricanes and wildfires spark conversations about man-made climate change, creating a heated debate about the industrialized world’s role in causing this devastation. But these recurring disputes leave an obvious question unanswered: are humans the reason behind this destruction?
In a way, unmistakable. After all, without people there are no natural disasters. Of course there are earthquakes and landslides, hurricanes and tornadoes, but if a tree is burning in the forest and no one is around to see it, that may be natural, but it is not a disaster. Just as National Geographic documentaries can make us feel triumph for the lion or fear for its prey, tragedy needs a human reference point.
This recognition is, I think, missing from much of our thinking about conservation, which requires a human context to be properly understood. It is not enough to leave nature alone or simply minimize our footprint on the planet and criticize ourselves for every last molecule of CO2 that our fellow man exhales. Humans were meant to take care of this planet, but we were also meant to be there. In both respects we must behave accordingly. In both cases we fail.
For the eco-left, environmentalism depends on belief in an innate perfect natural word. This view sees the planet without humans, or at least without industrial humans, as somehow in perfect harmony, undisturbed by the original sins of agriculture, corporatism, or the need for energy. Modern existence is thus the original sin for which we cannot atone, but for which we must regularly repent, usually in the form of performative complaining about our existence. Increasingly, it even means that young people promise not to have children for the sake of the environment.
However, this hands-off ideal for conservation not only ignores the symbiosis that humans and nature should share. It also drives climate fear by viewing human existence as the final diagnosis of the planet.
Human intervention means nothing if its supposed efficacy only means slowing the spread of the cancer it causes. If humans are the cancer, how can we feel anything other than fear about our time here on earth? Self-loathing is the logical, natural conclusion. Perhaps this mentality only exists because it is impossible to test. If we could somehow remove every human being from the planet, suck the excess carbon out of the atmosphere, and painstakingly return every highway, iPhone, and K-cup to its original form, we would still be in sitting in our SpaceX rooms and peering back down. from space to see forest fires and hurricanes.
And yet we would no longer see them as a problem. In the aftermath of Hurricane Helene, evening news channels showed images of flooding next to the highways it had washed away. Without the highway, newscasters risked giving the impression that they were showing normal rivers, even if they were muddy rivers after a storm. Without the highway, that is exactly what the flooding would have been. Even today, the effects of hurricanes are measured in death tolls, an implicit recognition that the impact on human life is the ultimate measure by which crises should be defined.
We can see ourselves as intruders in a landscape that is better off without us, or as a necessary part of it. But we can’t do both. People need to remember that our existence is not a coincidence; this planet is also our home. Not only do we belong here, but we have the ability and responsibility to actively improve our relationship with nature through careful stewardship and intentional care. Man’s desire to ‘keep his dirty hands off the planet’ can even actively hinder this process, by turning pristine nature into an end in itself.
However, this allergy between what calls itself environmentalism and interventionism is not only a harmless counterbalance to overdevelopment; it actively worsens disasters by hampering our ability to intervene. A current example is forest management, the practice of deliberately intervening in a forest ecosystem. Earlier this year, the aptly named “Middleman Project” attempted to implement forest management in Montana’s Helena-Lewis and Clark National Forest, including a combination of logging and controlled burns. Among other wildlife and forest health goals, the project planned to reduce wildfire risk, including by publishing a nearly 600-page, year-and-a-half environmental assessment by the US Forest Service.
Despite the planning and environmental review, the project was eventually abandoned in April this year. Lawsuits from environmental groups celebrating the project’s halt claimed it would negatively impact the habitats of grizzly bears, elk and lynx. In July, wildfires raged in the exact area the Middleman Project had set out to protect, requiring resources from state and federal agencies to tackle the blaze and claiming the life of one firefighter. It seems unlikely that grizzly bears, elk and lynx were actually better off in the 15,000-acre wildfire. Trying to save the animals at the expense of human intervention therefore ended in a loss for people and nature.
It is fair to say that while the left too often falls prey to the feeling of being an intruder in its own home, the right too often feels like a conqueror of it. The anthropocentric “drill, baby, drill” mentality that too often dominates conservatives’ attitudes toward the planet threatens to burn down our own house to stay warm. The left may be too afraid to admit that nature can and should serve humans, but the right too often avoids humanity’s responsibility to protect and manage nature. This stewardship doesn’t have to resemble the environmental politics of the left—for example, there are far better ways to manage time than throwing soup on Van Gogh paintings and lying on the road to stop traffic—but it must prevent environmental considerations from being dismissed as irrelevant simply because they are difficult.
It is arrogant to see ourselves as somehow “outside” the natural world, whether we are apologetic like those who see our existence as a plague, or triumphant like many who see the Earth as an expendable resource. This is our house. Let’s behave like this.
Read more at De Uitzending
The Dispatch is a new digital media company that provides engaged citizens with fact-based reporting and commentary based on conservative principles. Sign up for free.
