03-01-12 Spaceship Earth:A new view of environmentalism

Spaceship Earth enters 2012 belching smoke,overheating and burning through fuel at a frightening rate.Its feeling pretty crowded,and the crew is mutinous. No one is at the helm.Sure,its an antiquated metaphor.Its also an increasingly apt way to discuss a planet with 7 billion people,a global economy,a World Wide Web,climate change,exotic organisms running amok and all sorts of resource shortages and ecological challenges.

More and more environmentalists and scientists talk about the planet as a complex system,one that human beings must aggressively monitor,manage and sometimes reengineer.Kind of like a spaceship.This is a sharp departure from traditional green philosophy.The more orthodox way of viewing nature is as something that must be protected from human beings not managed by them.And many environmentalists have reservations about possible unintended consequences of well-meaning efforts.No one wants a world that requires constant intervention to fix problems caused by previous interventions.At the same time,we are in a position where we have to take a more interventionist role and a more managerial role,says Emma Marris,author of Rambunctious Garden:Saving Nature in a Post-Wild World.The easy answer used to be to turn back time and make it look like it used to.Before was always better.Before is no longer an option