If you’ve been following my account for a while, you have probably seen me mention ecofascism before, but for those of you who haven’t, I’m going to address it a bit more in detail, given the increase in narratives lately regarding covid-19, and because I think it’s partly my responsibility as someone who is majoring in environmental science to do so.
Arguments I’ve seen lately:
- Humans are a “virus”/”plague”/etc and the pandemic is the earth’s immune system “curing” itself of us
- Humans are all evil and the pandemic is our punishment
- Earth would be better off without any humans
All of these statements have some things in common whether they’re from a religious or non-religious perspective:
- They homogenize humans as if we’re all equally responsible for environmental degradation, which is patently false (1 - 2 - 3)
- They are anti-Indigenous and erase the fact that Indigenous communities have lived sustainably for centuries prior to settler colonialism (1 - 2 - 3)
- They likewise erase the work done and sacrifices made by humans for environmental protection and efforts to repair the damage done by others (1 - 2 - 3)
- They presuppose that humans are separate from nature, and that we don’t belong as part of the entirety of the earth’s ecosystem, which is also a myth propagated by Western-European idealism and settler colonialism (1 - 2 - 3)
These arguments are therefore not only unscientific, but also reinforce certain ideologies which suggest:
- That certain members of the population are expendable (elders, people who are disabled, people with chronic illnesses, poor people, homeless people, migrants, refugees, etc.)
- That despite the fact the BIPOC make up the majority of those who are below the poverty line and are at most risk to dying from infectious diseases as well as our exposure to environmental racism, that whatever befalls us is still deserved
- That oppressed peoples must “sacrifice” our wellbeing for the earth by any means necessary, despite the fact that human and environmental welfare aren’t mutually exclusive (they are interconnected)
I urge anyone who falls in line with this type of thinking to please read the articles linked above and spend some time contemplating your internal motivations for these beliefs; are you truly concerned about the environment or are you merely angry and feel the need to project that anger by misplacing blame rather than finding solutions? There is a difference between genuine care for the environment versus using the rhetoric of environmentalism to justify an underlying problem of misanthropy. Remember that you cannot address unhealthy coping mechanisms for your emotions by adopting politics which only serve to enable them.
I want to emphasize, however, that it’s perfectly fine to feel anger at the state of things. But instead of allowing your motivations to be controlled by it, learn to use it to your advantage by showing solidarity with others who feel the same way and are also searching for solutions. A movement will never succeed if we give in to misanthropy and individualism.
I agree with almost all of this, except the fact that you say humans are part of nature. In a “biological” sense I guess that’s true, but we also don’t follow the same ecological or environmental patterns that every other animal follows in the ecosystem. For example: there’s never any overpopulating in nature, once a population reaches a certain point the curve plateaus and the population doesn’t go up anymore - resources match the birth and mortality rates. But that’s not the case with humans (post-colonisation of course), population just keeps going up and up, and there’s no ecological pattern anymore. We don’t fit into nature. (article)
But I do agree with this whole post, and it’s obvious a lot of problems are caused my billionaires, rich corporations and capitalism.
“we also don’t follow the same ecological or environmental patterns that every other animal follows in the ecosystem.“
Define “we”; the point of the my original post is to point out that we can’t homogenize “humanity” by making sweeping generalizations about how “we” all behave, because “we” don’t all behave in the same way.
Secondly, the Malthusian argument regarding population growth has been repeatedly debunked by the scientific community, specifically in the field of population & community ecology, so I’m not sure why you’re so fixated on population growth as opposed to the exponential rate of extraction, production, and consumption of natural resources under the perpetual growth model of economics, which does far more damage with respect to climate change and environmental degradation.
Also, the content of the 1 article you sourced doesn’t disprove the consensus in the scientific community that we are a functioning member of the earth’s ecosystem insofar as we influence and are influenced by it, whether that is beneficial or harmful to other organisms. This is a good thing, because that means that positive changes in our behaviour will lead to positive results for the ecosystem. If you wish to disprove the consensus you are always welcome to submit a research paper on the subject to a scientific journal, like the rest of us who major in environmental science/ecology.
Also, and I see this argued a lot, just because we’ve removed ourselves from the food chain doesn’t mean we aren’t still part of the environment we live in. That’s not how it works.
Thank you, and exactly. Separating humans from the ecosystem only allows us to further justify behaving in ways that disregard the impacts of those behaviours on the environment. We need to remain conscious of the fact that everything we do impacts the environment; that’s precisely how an ecosystem works.