EcoPerson

EcoPerson: You are a strand in the web of life.

Every so often people ask me questions that make me think about my personal outlook on the environment. Quite different questions, some philosophical, some practical. One person, for example, asked if I lived my environmental beliefs and was I a rabid environmentalist? I try to live my beliefs, but no! I’m not fanatic about them. That would imply identification rather than relationship. And environmentalism is all about relationship. The first law of ecology is “everything is related to everything else”. There is a human feeling environment as well, and it is my belief that if each individual finds his or her path of interaction with the environment in a conscious, informed and healthy way, then we have a chance of keeping life on earth sustainable.

Environmentalism is an attitude, a set of values, lived out by each of us in an individual way. It’s having a sense of responsibility and acting on it.

At the practical end of the spectrum was a question concerning recycling. The friend who asked it said she’d like to be conscientious about recycling but finds it such a hassle; did I have any hints to make it easier? I realized that she already knows the facts about local recycling; she wants to work out her individual way of doing it. As we talked I mentioned that it is important for me to have large enough containers for glass, cans etc. so that I don’t have to take them to the pickup points too often. The notion of going to the grocery store fettered by one plastic bottle, a couple of tins and a battery raises resistance; the occasional grand approach with a whole bag of bottles or a large container of tins is so much more satisfying. A simple suggestion, but she realized that she’d prefer doing it that way too.

These two questions are at opposite ends of a continuum that implies that the individual’s personal feelings about the environment and his or her personal relation to it are important. And ultimately those are not the result of knowing all the facts about global warming, sustainability or the need for biodiversity; they have much more to do with knowing oneself. This is a level deeper than the intellectual or practical level usually addressed in environmental articles and it requires a different kind of input.

If you feel that your eco spirit needs some feeding to help you find your personal relation to the environment, I’d suggest you watch David Attenborough’s nature films. Originally made as TV series, Life on Earth, The Private Life of Plants, and The Life of Birds feature amazing photography and fascinating stories told by this passionate nature journalist. Attenborough has combed the world to find vivid illustrations of his subject matter, and he tells us about it in an engaging way that makes it clear that this man has found his rapport with the environment and is able to draw us into his stories for just that reason. Attenborough has gone on to make more films, including The Blue Planet - Seas of Life, The Living Planet and The Life of Mammals. All are now available as videos and DVDs.

And now for the other side of the coin. Just as Attenborough draws us into the beauty and complexity of healthy life, T. Coraghessen Boyle has presented a horrifying and believable scenario of what will happen to this intricate web if we don’t take care of it in “A Friend of the Earth”, a novel set in California in the year 2025. Searing heat, wind and floods of rain, rain and more rain characterize the weather, rampant species extinction means that there is little left to eat but catfish (and more catfish….) and the population is, understandable depressed and without hope. Boyle is far too complex a writer to create a novel that deals solely with ecological destruction, which is only one of the themes in this intricate story. But the environment of the story itself, the gloominess, hopelessness and misery, seeps into the reader’s bones. One feels the possible effects of global warming rather than learning about them.

So where do you, as a feeling individual, find your links in the web of life? For me the knowledge that my grandchildren will, I hope, still be alive for another 70 years or so is a strong motivation to do what I can to keep the environment as intact as possible. I don’t want them to suffer in Boyle’s scenes of misery. I do want them to enjoy Attenborough’s visions of health and beauty.