Global ChangeIntersection of Nature and Culture

David Orr ends his column at Conservation Biology with some final thoughts about nature and culture

Thursday, November 26th, 2009

After 21 years of writing a column for the journal Conservation Biology, here are a few excerpts from Orr’s final piece—a retrospective¹:

• I believe that all of us working for a habitable planet should have focused more clearly on politics and on the question of how good ideas move across the chasm from being right to being effective in the conduct of our public and international business.
• I think we should have learned to be more adept, personable, and creative in talking to the public and the guys down at the truck stop and the women working two jobs to make ends meet. I think we might have gone to fewer scientific conferences in exotic places and to more Rotary meetings and  tedious city council sessions. We should have talked less often to ourselves in a scientific jargon and more often to the public and in the common tongue. And we should have mastered the art of persuasion on radio and television the way some others have. We in the “environmental movement” are sometimes accused of being effete, overly intellectual snobs more concerned about nature than people, and there is some truth to that.
• [W]e know enough right now to make far better decisions than we typically do about wildlife, ecosystems, and landscapes….What ails us, rather, is  fundamentally political and is the result of the yawning chasm between the  world of science (and intellect generally) and that of public affairs.
• [T]he worldwide conversation about sustainability and the human future is  larger than just the issues of biodiversity, pollution, climate change, land use,  and resource scarcity.
• [W]e are rapidly becoming an indoor species with fewer people spending time  outdoors and with fewer experiential connections with nonhuman nature.
• Finally, 21 years ago it would have been difficult to plausibly imagine the scope, scale, and rising intensity of the global movement to build a decent, fair, and sustainable world. The resilience of the human spirit in difficult times is the news of our age.

¹Orr, D. (2009) retrospect and prospect: The unbearable lightness of conservation. Conservation Biology23, No. 6, 1349–1351

Tags: David Orr

Posted in: communication and framing, environmental studies, environmentalism, nature and culture, race and class | 1 Comment »

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