WHEN IT COMES TO OUR influence on the environment, many people critique homo sapiens as if it were apart from nature. But our bad behavior, however damaging to ourselves and other species, is not easily reduced to such a conceit. To locate us outside (and above) the chain of other living organisms misses a fundamental fact of our co-dependence.
We are not the first species to wreak havoc on the earth, and we likely will not be the last. Any meaningful strategy for improving the environment must begin with the admission that we just might not win. Whether it’s a river or star, dinosaur or mountain, that is the (eventual) way of all things.
Try as we should to limit the harm, it is impossible for us not to make tracks. As the mouse and beetle score the sand wherever they touch it, we, too, repeatedly scar the earth.
We have no choice. We can’t sit still. We have to move.
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