No, it isn’t a typo. Invironment is a new term to encapsulate a few different ideas you’ve probably heard before and perhaps a few you haven’t. The concept goes something like this, “Nature and culture have grown less distinct and are now part of the same whole. Our species has arrived at a point in human evolution we are close to only letting nature exist where we allow it to do so.”
Some aspects of this theory can strike one as negative or disheartening, such as thinking of national forests as just larger Central Parks surrounded by urbanization and highways. Other aspects might spur on ideas for betterment and hope, such as rooftop gardens and replacing vacant lots with small areas where some wildlife can still exist.
But is the concept a useful one?
If it helps people wrap their heads around humans, other animals, and plants all belonging to the same interrelated system which needs to cooperate to keep our planet healthy, I believe it is. The theory points out that long gone are the days when people can pretend there is a huge world out there and we can barely scratch the surface of the endless wilderness existing beyond our cities. Yes, those days are indeed gone, very long gone. One could easily point out the effect over-harvesting their farmlands by the Sumerians had upon the hundred generations which followed them. Some archaeologists speculate their poor farming practices caused salt to leech into the fields and rendered them lifeless over 5,000 years ago. Currently, the Sumerians, who invented agriculture and the use of wheat, have left their ancestors required to import 1.4 billion dollars of wheat into their country because of this ecological disaster which happened thousands of years before the founding of Athens.
Since humans control how the world is divided and destroyed, we also need to accept the responsibility of managing the Earth and its resources, unless you want to ask a giraffe to do it.
Invironmentalism also asks us to act now, today, and more next weekend. Instead of thinking a politician or scientist will somehow come up with a plan to fix everything, the rain forests will regrow themselves, and cities will magically shrink and create new wetlands, humans should be working with what we have and what we could have in the future.
This might involve hard choices and rethinking your own personal environment. Should you rake up all those leaves which will decompose and provide nutrients to future plants, homes to insects, and replace a natural ground cover with a lawn? I guess it’s okay if you want to go to sleep knowing you did your part to make the earth just a little more dead. We all need to look in the mirror and say to ourselves, “Am I even really trying to be an environmentalist or am I just another criminal putting my needs, social standing, and comfort above the health of my planet and future generations?”
A lot of people claim to be Environmentalists, and I’m certainly not there myself, but the only true Environmentalists I see are the homeless. They might not be perfect, but they are certainly better than you and I. I’m going to toss up a quick list, more to get the point across more than to provide a complete spectrum of non-environmental practices. This is more of a ‘get you to double think,’ your lifestyle.
If you do/have any of these things, you really don’t care about the environment more than yourself and aren’t an environmentalist.
- Drive when you could have walked or ridden a bike
- Fail to make a garden in your yard if you can do so
- Have a lawn on your yard
- Order from Amazon more than once a month
- Fail to make a compost pile
- Order delivery more than twice a month
- Throw more than 10% of your food into the landfill
- Remove native plants from your yard
The list could obviously continue, but I’m sure you get the idea. Environmental choices aren’t easy and might not make you popular. Things like letting your ‘weeds’ grow might not make your neighbor happy but is ten times better for the environment than his gravel covered, dead yard, which does its fair share to increase global warming. The important thing about Invironment is the concept that, even though things are tough, we humans, animals, plants are in this all together. If technology has given us the ability to destroy so much of what is precious on our planet it’s time to use technology to save animals.
Can we recycle junk which would have produced greenhouse gases in a landfill and instead use it for bird houses? Will my compost pile help some of the little mammals and insects survive in the food desert of my expanding city? We need to embrace the idea of helping animals and plants survive within our cities and industrial areas, because when 2 billion more people are going to be city dwellers by 2050, we’re going to have cities covering a lot more of our planet.
Lastly, our modern farms are really another example of food deserts. We removed all other forms of plants, drained the earth of almost all its nutrients and must replace it with industrial fertilizer. Animals have a hard time surviving on this monolithic landscape and when things like insects try to eat a little of the growth because we have destroyed everything else in the area they used to eat, their reward is being poisoned by the insecticide we spray over the crops.
Again, I’ll end on a positive note. Think of things not as a disaster but as an opportunity for you to be a great citizen of the earth every day. How can you grow your own food? Can you convert an empty lot or the ground around abandoned buildings into community gardens? Can you use something to build homes for urban animals instead of tossing it into the landfill? Will you fix your gear, recycle it, or scavenge supplies instead of buying them new? And overall, the best thing you can do to help is consume less and dispose of as little of your waste as possible.
Maybe one more thing. The next time your see a homeless person thank him or her for being ten times the environmentalist you will ever be.
.
.
Grab some Skinjumper-Punk here and help support your friendly WildernessPunker
WildernessPunk 