There is an irony in The Nature Conservancy’s headline heralding a “new study” that “finds nature is vital to beating climate change.” The sub-title adds that “Nature could cost-effectively deliver over a third of greenhouse gas emissions reductions required to prevent dangerous levels of global warming.”
For one thing, what is the “nature” that would be “cost-effectively” corralled into doing this work? And for whom? (For us, of course.)
What is climate change if not “nature’s” response to the carbon emissions and other things that industrial systems have been spewing into the atmosphere for two centuries. If the problem is the sudden spurt of urban-industrial humanity, the solution may be to make life difficult for that life form and everything that goes with it. Wipe the slate clean, provide some new openings for alternative life-alliances to develop: isn’t that the kind of thing “nature” regularly does, whether it’s in California’s fire-adapted coastal chaparral ecosystems, or on the planet’s surface as a whole?
No need to ascribe “agency” here, though it wouldn’t be unwise to at least entertain that interpretation. The point is that there are causes and effects and that the larger system might occasionally have cause, if not “reason,” to spit out some of its parts.
Okay, I’m being a little facetious. I get what The Nature Conservancy does, and I understand the usefulness of a shorthand for all the things they stand for, like intact forests, well managed agro-ecological systems, wise stewardship (as opposed to uncontrolled, short-term profit-maximization), and the like. While I think there’s room for improvement on some of the specifics of their work around the world, I appreciate that work a lot.
But there has to be a more philosophically coherent way of thinking about those things. The only clarifications about what’s meant by “nature” in the article refer, on the one hand, to “investing in nature” and, on the other, to “the importance of nature, and especially trees and soils, as support for carbon sequestration.”
Is nature (“especially trees and soils”) a supporting actor, then, for some other project?
This is very true – “…nature is vital to beating climate change.” And, the carbon emissions on the planet has been increased and so some effective steps have to be taken to prevent the “Nature” or the “Planet”. “Is nature (“especially trees and soils”) a supporting actor, then, for some other project?” – Of course yes, and no doubt! What do you mean by other project? Please clarify me.
Roberto –
What I’m trying to suggest is that it is incoherent to say that “nature is vital to beating climate change.” Climate change IS nature — it is nature’s response to something human-industrial systems are doing. If we put the task of “beating climate change” *above* nature itself, then we are putting us, humans who can “beat” climate change, above the fabric of life on which we depend.
The premise of the article, or at least of its title, is flawed. How could we even imagine “beating climate change” *without* nature? What would be left — humans on a fully engineered world that somehow manages to maintain a climate that hasn’t changed? That would be impossible.
The problem is that the article seems to lack any substantial definition of nature. “Especially trees and soils”… So any kind of tree and any kind of soil is natural? If we plant a bunch of trees (no matter what kind of tree, no matter where), are we supporting nature?
Climate systems are part of the natural world, as are we. We humans ought to be determining how to limit the scope and impacts of our actions so as to keep those systems working in ways that serve us and other species well.
conservation is as of course an artificial practice and not surprising that they haven’t noticed the tension/irony, but I wonder if it’s an effective sales pitch for their audience? I doubt if they have tested anything radically different, would be an interesting project for yer students.
http://www.climatedisobedience.org
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