The War Against Nature

Humanity has conducted a war against nature ever since mankind roamed the earth. It is an odd war, because it is not in humanity’s interests that it should win the war, simply that it should keep nature in abeyance in order to prevent nature from destroying mankind and to enable mankind to enjoy the essential things that nature can provide and the luxurious things that nature can provide.

It is a war that is made up of many battles and the temporary gain that a victory brings usually leads to a long term problem. This is the same with all wars. If we harvest the rain forest to enjoy the spoils of its timber and replant with grass to feed that cattle upon which we feed, we win that battle, but in the long term we have destroyed and essential part of nature that supports us with the oxygen that the rain forest provides, the place where sequestration of carbon occurs and the effect of the rain forest in keeping our climate within levels that enables humanity to survive. I could write of thousands of our examples, but I do not have the time.

There have been many wars in which the victor has lost the peace that occurred after the war, and many wars in which a ruthless victory has led to new wars later. This is true of humanity’s war with nature.

Humanity is ingenious and inventive. It can harvest trees with helicopters and trawl the ocean bed with nets that remove all life.  It can use its ability to understand how nature works as a means of fighting nature in its fight. Nature has time on its side and the ability to adapt and find ways to destroy humanity that are always a surprise to humanity. Ultimately time is the most powerful weapon.

The object of the war is to win it, but this is not sufficient reason to fight beyond the necessity of self defence. Like all wars before the fighting starts an objective must be decided upon that goes beyond mere victory, and if no objective is decided upon then the war will be lost in the long term

Humanity is fighting a war to conquer nature, without any clear objective. Nature is defending itself.

One Response

  1. That was a decent post Rob.

    What I gleaned from these words is a picture of how everyone thinks have come to be, unatural greed is a rotten seed to which all of humanity could try to come to terms with, instead he fights another to get his fill without actually winning the constant battle with the ellements or nature.

    Eart time waits for no human, his time is unatural to the planet which never sleeps, he might learn to live by it, not against it and he might get somewhere.

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