Maria Stella wrote
>
> Hi Jim, (and all)
[snip]
>
> ANYWAY, if there is such a thing as an environmentalists' profile at
> all:
>  1) Either Budiansky's version of the profile is true, in which case
> Budiansky fails to explain why a love for nature is so universal, and the
> hatred for too many people on earth is so universal too. I see nothing
> wrong with loving nature even at Thoreau's way, and as Budiansky himself
> says, and Jim repeats, that this feeling is valid, people have it.
>

Chris Perley here.  Budiansky is saying nothgin controvercial by looking at
the cultural/social construction of our view of nature.  Many environmental
historians have pointed out the same - to the extent that I don't think it
is really challenged anymore (at least not in the environmental history
discipline).  Cronon, Schama, Nash all say much the same as far as I can
see.  Our view of "nature" carries social baggage (like Bambi) - and it
seems to me that is important to get beyond that baggage if constructive
change is to occur.  It is one potential hurdle to environmental solutions.



[snip]

>However, i think that Budiansky fails to
> state WHY HE CARES for conservation, since he proves 'scientifically'
> that there is no need to be one,

Does he?

except for to cater for human values
> of environmentalist loonies. First he says that virtually there is no need
> for conservation except for only when we want it, and then he says that we
> have to dusturb the land in order to achieve conservation (true but why we
> need to bother at all is NOT explained, unless he is an under-cover
> environmentalist).

Chris Perley: I implicitly took him to be an environmentalist, and didn't
associate his criticism of PARTICULAR environmentalist paradigms as in any
way implying a critique against environmentalism generally - though perhaps
it is not unexpected that people might take a general offense.  I do think
our environmental problems require a
"stand-back-and-have-a-cold-look-at-the-broad-reality" stance if we are to
progress toward solutions (instead of reciting poetry to each other - which
is nice, but...).  Unfortunately people who ask searching questions will
often be classified as anti-environmental.  People like the certainty and
comfort that is so associated with prior belief.  Whatever Budiansky says,
the fact that he asks is enough to make him a target - but I guess he knew
that.  Actually I do recall a particularly vitriolic review of Simon
Schama's Landscape and Memory when it first appeared (though I thought it
uncontrovercial when I read it).  And Bill Cronon put in a new preface to
the paperback of Uncommon Ground because of the comments he had made in the
1st edition about our sociological connection to ideas of "nature".  Cronon
was also taking a gentle swipe at the aesthetes.


>  Anyway, I REPEAT that although human intervention can be beneficial,
> the human intervention that Budiansky describes, and the reationalle he
> uses is dangerous and pretentious: <colon, Jim, in case you didn't
> notice) from one hand he says that burning can save a species, and from
> the othe hand he disputes that a species has to be saved at all (unless it
> is a 'key' species). Why would he save the species anyway? Again, is he a
> Muir-believer? What ARE HIS VALUES? Quickly, somewere in the beginning of
> the book, he reveils something shallowly utilitarian, mumbling something
> about medicinal drugs from wild plants, for example. Is this enough to
> justify all this 'disturbance' he wants to acquaint us with? Or is it just
> enough for him to prove that he has no 'spiritual' needs, but only
> utilitarian? And, in the long run, why aren't spiritual needs utilitarian?
> He does talk about value judgements, that are far from science.  He does
> say that we do not have to save basically anything that we don't need or
> that is not feasible. He agrees that nothing has to be saved if only
> science is taken on board. THEN WHY DOESN'T HE ACCEPT THE VALUE JUDGEMENT
> OF THE OTHERS (THE 'ENVIRONMENTALISTS')? Are his own value judgements
> better than the others? In what way? That's incoherent (<Jim>). If he is
> doing science, he has the right to criticize environmentalists, but he
> does not have the right to propose any kind of conservation techniques,
> 'in case we need it for one thing or the other', because then the
> Environmentalists will come with their own techniques, and really,
> according to Budiansky, it does'nt matter how many species will
> be saved.
> If he talks science, and if he believes that scientifically there is no
> reason to save anything, then every intervention he does is unjustified on
> scientific grounds. Why accuse only the environmentalists?
>
>
> > In chapter two, "The Cult of the Wild," Budiansky discusses intellectual
> > and environmental history that has led up to the "hands off"
> philosophy of
> > environmental management in the late twentieth century.   Ultimately his
> > goal in the second chapter is to answer the question posed in its first
> > paragraph: "How have we come to believe things about nature that are so
> > untrue?" (p. 27).
>
> As i said, i believe that this is only part of the story. I agree with you
> that there are people that are 'hands-off', but this is as Budiansky
> agrees too, only when people are fed up with urban life (and I add:
> Landlessness). Budiansky acknowledges the love of the Environmentalists
> for rural life. HE LIVES IN A FARM HIMSELF BY THE WAY.
>
> >
> > First he describes what many here and elsewhere might refer to as the
> > "socially constructed" aspects of our (historically) very
> recent admiration
> > for nature:
> >
> > --"The modern-day admiration of nature is so nearly universal
> that it comes
> > as a shock to discover of what recent vintage these feelings
> are.  For all
> > but the last two hundred years of civilization, anyone expressing a
> > conviction that wilderness contained anything admirable, much
> less that it
> > was the embodiment of perfection, would have been considered
> eccentric, if
> > not insane.  Before the end of the eighteenth century, mountains were
> > universally disliked.
>
> I am not sure about this. THis looks more like the English rolling hills
> approach which is not universal. Go and talk to Tibetan people and see if
> they dislike the mountains. Besides, there is a whole lot of philology
> around the running-down of mountains (e.g in the Mediterranean) 'due to
> cultivation' (partially a great inaccuracy, depending on case). People
> have been living in mountais for many reasons, but also for many
> centuries. People have worshiped mountains. In the UK, people actually are
> supposed to dislike woods too. This was my conversation with Brynn Green,
> of Wye college. He tought in a Mediterranean Landscape Ecology course and
> he believed that it is given that we would like open spaces in Greece,
> since there are parts that are so dry. However, all Greeks are crazy about
> the wilderness of the forest and the mountains. My great aunt is almost 90
> years old, and since ages has a flat in Athens, but she keeps on going to
> cultivate her garden in the village for 5 months a year - alone. She has a
> trully utilitarian old-style village approach to land use, she does feel
> that the town is easier, and she is not as educated to have ideological
> constraints against civilization, capitalism and urban life.
> SHE JUST GOES TO THE MOUNTAIN VILLAGE EVERY SPRING AND STARTS THE
> CULTIVATION CYCLE AGAIN AND AGAIN. WHY? (She is in no need for money or
> the produce).
> That's what i call a healthy link with the land, of people that never
> heard about Thoreau or Budiansky's type of ideology.  It is there, it
> exists, and Budiansky and you should acknowledge this.



Chris Perley:  I think this last piece is excellent Maria-Stella.  And a
land ethic requires exactly this sort of association - of people feeling
that they are PART of the land.  But that is not what Muir or Thoreau were
talking about.  It is subtly different.  One sees it as a solitary preserve
(jealously preserved for their annual sojourn) for their "soul" or whatever,
and the other sees it as a connection that does not preclude basic acts of
living (like growing food or hunting etc.).  Is it too provocative to say
that the better association to the land is the one where people just accept
they are part of it, and watch the seasons, and the ebb and flow of life and
death as just a reality of nature?  The comparison is the traveller who
lives in the comfort of airconditioning and has a romantic view of nature
(often as a recreational retreat) which is not formed by long-term direct
association, but by more indirect and short-term experiences?

I will let Jim say whether he does not acknolwedge this or not - but I am
not sure that you have perceived Budiansky's target.

I think I'll stop here.  You are a pretty good writer though!

CP




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