Originally published in June 2007
Years ago when Helen & I still lived in Harrogate we went to Knaresborough for the evening and we went to feed the ducks. We went to a little viewing platform dug out of the riverbank along the small waterside road and hunted for hungry looking birds to take the bread we'd brought them. Except we were too late, as it was nearing dusk the ducks had gone to roost for the night and the river was bare. So we contented ourselves with sitting on a bench watching the lazy driftwood float past. We'd been sitting there for a short while when we noticed a mouse sticking it's nose out from a little hole in the wall, so we decided that as there were no ducks to feed we'd feed the mouse. We gently tossed a small piece of bread in the direction of the mouse's hole and after a short while it crept out, picked the bread up and carried it back to it's hole. After repeating the process a couple of times we decided to lay a trail of bread between the mousehole and where we were sitting in order to see how close to us the mouse would dare to come. We watched it come and go fetching chunks of bread back to it's hole and gradually coming closer and closer to where Helen & I were sitting when something unexpected happened. 4 people came down the stairs onto the platform. They were 2 men & 2 women, they looked as if they'd been on a business dinner, but maybe they hadn't. They walked to the far end of the platform, stood for a few minutes (possibly looking for ducks) then turned and went. In their curt businesslike manner they barely acknowledged that Helen & I were on the platform let alone noticed our mouse. They didn't even notice the remainders of the trail of bread and trampled it. After they left the mouse didn't emerge, so we too left and probably went to the pub.
I remember being quite cross about those people and their attitude to nature. They wanted to see ducks, and if ducks weren't there then there was nothing to see, but the more I thought about it the more I realised that it wasn't just their problem.
Ever since Humankind have walked on 2 legs we have invented and developed and improved life for ourselves, over the last 100 years the rate of change has grown exponentially. As time has rolled on we have congregated more and more into towns and cities and distanced ourselves from Nature developing more 'sophisticated' ways of earning a living. Only a minority of people in this country now engage with nature to earn a living, and the majority of those are working in the tourist industry. We have sought to separate ourselves from our planet. We have built concrete cities and industrial sprawl and pushed the natural world so far out of view that the most some of us engage with it is when we reach for the can of flyspray because a wasp's come in through an open window. As we have developed Nature has been something we've needed to conquer. We've needed to work against it to reach our goals and as much as possible we have dominated and altered the environment to suit our ends. We have seen the natural resources that the planet has to offer and we've taken what we need. And now we don't need to give the world we live in a second thought because we live in cities with running water, supermarkets, electric lights and pest control firms. If we want nature we want it on our terms. We can go to the zoo, play golf, go fishing, watch a David Attenborough program or find some ducks to feed.
But this is where we've gone so badly wrong; we've come to believe that we don't need Nature. We live on a planet that we ignore. We've always done as we please with our planet and we will continue to do so, but due to a fast expanding world population & Western consumerism we're beginning to realise that we can't. Our disregard for the planet we depend on for our lives is beginning to bear its bitter fruit. Climate Change is the big problem we now face, but there are many examples of our mis-management of our world that have ended in problems for us; for example at some point in the last 50 years it was decided that instead of feeding cows on grass money could be saved by feeding them the crushed up and processed carcasses of other cows and farm animals. About 15 years ago it was noticed that cows seemed to be suffering from a disease very similar to kuru, which is a disease that was observed in the early 1900's in cannibalistic tribes in New Guinea and in turn is very similar to CJD, which humans can contract by eating meat from cows infected with BSE.
What would happen if you and your family decided that you were no longer going to use the bins in your house? Instead of throwing your rubbish away sensibly you were just going to drop it on the floor, and instead of washing up after a meal you'd just scrape your pots and pans onto a table. What if you decided that instead of using a toilet you'd just do your dirty business in whatever room you happened to be in? How long would it be until your house began to smell? How long until it became uninhabitable? And yet we continue to pollute and deplete natural resources on a global scale. Conservationists have often been seen as wacky sentimentalist hippy tree-huggers, but in the light of the devastation that Climate Change could wreak on the planet there is a quote by Gerald Durrell (who was a famous conservationist even if you've never heard of him) that has new poignancy. He said, "Many people think that conservation is just about saving fluffy animals – what they don't realise is that we're trying to prevent the Human Race from committing suicide."
We need to be very careful about the solutions we pick as we look to tackling Climate Change. Everything we do affects the environment. One solution currently being touted is using Bio-diesel to fuel our cars. On the scale it is currently being used it is making a positive contribution to halting Climate Change, but if we all converted to bio-diesel there wouldn't be enough arable farmland to meet the needs for maize to convert and run our cars. Huge amounts of land currently used for food production would be converted to bio-diesel production and still more land would be needed. Rainforests and ancient woodlands would feel the axe in our quest to keep our cars on the road, releasing millions of tons of CO2 into the atmosphere totally negating the benefits of using bio-fuels.
Unless we change our perspective on Nature we'll continue to lurch from environmental precipice to environmental precipice. We desperately need to re-engage with our planet and view it as a whole – if I stamp on your toe it's your mouth that says, "Ouch!" We need to learn just how much destruction of rainforests on the other side of the planet affects us. We need to learn how to live sustainably, working with Nature so that we can guarantee the health of the planet down subsequent generations. We need to learn to treat the planets riches in a less utilitarian manner – Nature isn't here for our convenience and we aren't separate from it; if the ducks have all gone to bed chances are there'll be something else to enjoy.
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