Humans and the Natural World Article 3
 

For Tim Jackson of the University of Surrey: “Maybe humanity should grow up before it spends even more trillions littering its techno junk around the solar system and instead should pay a little more attention to what's happening right here and now on planet Earth” Meanwhile, in her book: “The Human Condition” (1958) Hannah Arendt signalled the beginning of a new understanding between humanity and the Earth. For her, going into space allowed us to grasp our planetary predicament. It was a reminder that: "the Earth is the quintessence of the human condition."  For her nature itself may be unique in providing human beings with a habitat in which they can move and breathe without effort and without artifice."

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Mars and other areas in the solar system outside the Earth may prove habitable, but it's still a very far cry from the beauty of the Earth our hone whose fragility we only truly learned to appreciate fully from the images sent back to us from space. Nature photographer Galen Rowell once called William Anders' iconic photo Earthrise—taken from the Apollo 8 module in lunar orbit—"the most influential environmental photograph ever taken". Earthrise brought home to us, in one astonishing image, the reality that this shining orb was, and still is, humanity's best chance for anything that might meaningfully be called "life". Its beauty is our beauty. Its fragility is our fragility, and its peril is our peril.

We must learn to acknowledge that in any conflict with nature any sense of unity degenerates. Trust evaporates. Living with nature is not about fighting to have things in a certain way, but allowing things to grow in a harmonious and sustainable way.

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The “trance” we live in suggests we must acquire more and more things, regardless of the impact on the Living Earth. It also makes it seem fine to completely ignore the consequences of the way we live regarding other people and the natural world. Meanwhile, at some level we know little of what is happening to the Living Earth and to human communities in general across the world.

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Such ignorance drives us even further towards alienation, despair, and disconnection. The task is to ensure a better understanding of how the world really works.

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Sadly, today we humans are exploiting, and destroying the natural world on an unprecedented scale. For the UN the natural world is deteriorating, and failure to act could threaten the goals of the Paris Agreement of 2015 on both regarding the climate crisis and sustainable development goals.

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For Sir David Attenborough humanity has entered a new geological age – the Anthropocene – where humans dominate the Earth. However, he added that it could well be the time we learn to become stewards of nature, rather than what we have generally become, which is its destroyers. Writing recently in a 'collection of essays' Sir David tells us that:  “We will require systemic shifts in how we produce food, create energy, manage the oceans and use materials, and above all, it will require a change in human perspective about the natural world.”

Many of the environmental and biological dangers that surround us can seem insurmountable, and so today there are loud calls from concerned people for a paradigm shift in the way that we tend to view human life, along with our place in the natural world. Both global warming and the biodiversity crisis are the consequences of human actions along with the dominant economic systems and the values of deeply consumerist life-styles that direct and shape our everyday lives.

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