Dogs and Climate Change: The human environment and non-human life
Brock A. Shaver
November 16, 2006
Do we ever stop to realize that the only regular contact we have with non-human life is our dog? Living in the urban, concrete jungle, we see the world from our cars, work in office cubicle factories, get our food packaged in supermarkets, and 99% of our possessions are purchased. We cannot exist without electricity and money. Our regular interaction with 'nature' is running from the door to the car, mowing the lawn and paying admission to a park.
Our dogs (and cats) melt our hearts. We spends billions on them. They are part of the family. And they are non-human.
If we were growing up on a farm 100 years ago, our contact with non-human life would be far more extensive. The farm contained pigs, chickens, cows, horses, and so many more animals. We saw them being born, and we participated in their death for our food. We sheared them for our wool, and even used them to heat the house in some cultures.
We also planted the seeds and watched them grow, and then harvested the plants for food. Survival was directly connected with natural life in everything we did. Now it is money and electricity that make our survival happen. It is an astonishing turnaround for humankind.
The Baby Boomer generation has known nothing different than modern urban living. We pride ourselves in our comforts and control. It all seems so normal. But we do not have a thorough life with the rest of the life on the planet. So our dogs melt our hearts, we are so starved for something other than inert matter to relate to. All other life has been hidden from us. And we are too busy to notice, or care. Modern life is normal and better than living with the brutish conditions of the wilderness.
This is the Achilles Heel of the current fear of climate change. Nature is alive. The environment is a concept. Do we relate to our dogs as concept, or through our hearts? Do we manage them, or live with them on some other level?
The whole climate change debate is a political mess. Detractors suck the proponents into their argument about whether its real, created by humans, or just a cycle in weather patterns. No one has enough information.
Climatology is an infant science. It is not like the human body or creating a car or jet plane. It is not like pumping chemical fertilizers into the ground to make it produce. The massive Earth as a whole is completely interconnected and reliant on infinite factors that scientist are just beginning to consider and measure. All we are doing now is reacting and looking at the statistics. Civilization has never had to control something so large, amorphous, or critical to our survival.
Maybe this is a natural cycle, all the concerns about droughts and melting ice caps. Maybe it is the greenhouse gases we pump into the air. Maybe its the cycles of the Sun upon the Earth. We just don't know. It is too much inert matter, too much natural law out of our control. We're good at small things, but something on this size, let alone controlling it with the cooperation of every nation, is just beyond our ken with the current model of thinking about reality. Science reassures us that reality is just natural laws we can control, like turning iron ore rocks into steel.
Climate change is not about the Earth. It is about humans maintaining their standard of living using the current models of controlling the world. As the debate heats up, it becomes apparent to everyone how fragile our economic survival system is. Without money we starve. Without jobs we have no money. Our jobs are dependent on increasing consumption. If we stop, we starve. We have no other behavior right now to offset this. And the environment is just now becoming a hot topic. It is testing our political and economic systems to do the right thing. But they are ill-equipped to threaten their own security and the status quo. They would lose business and votes.
Worry about the environment is embarrassingly narrow in scope. Stop global warming. This is the sole question before the media. How do we stop the threat to human habitat?
Left out of the whole debate is the reality of the entire planet. We have reduced the living planet to a keystone: stop global warming and we will stop drought, the disappearance of fresh water, hurricanes, and any other horrible thing the Earth can throw at us. Its a crisis because we thought the stability of the environment was reliable, and we have not had to worry about it since the Great Depression. Civilization had tamed nature with our technology and market, so that it was no longer a threat. It is dawning on us that this may have been a delusion and we must now re-establish our control once again.
In this environment of human fear, there is little talk about what the Earth is. We assume it is an object, components that we can tweak like a car engine to keep it running for our benefit. There is no relationship between human and the life of the Earth. It is not nature, alive. It is the environment, a concept. But the forces are so large, taken as whole instead of broken down into manageable pieces, that the weather seems to have a life of its own.
If we can only control human activity, then things would be fine. Stop pollution and we can stop worrying about life on this planet. But it is becoming apparent how out of control humans are. Two hundred countries, power politics, rampant transnational corporations, terrorism, economic disparities between rich and poor nations; how do we get ourselves under control so that we can get the Earth under control again? How do we do this with a suvival system based on doing the very things we need to stop? And how do we do this and not be put under the domination and control by government that has always failed in the past?
Society is so artificial now, that we frame the whole issue in our strange way of looking at reality. We have no real connection with the Earth, with non-human life. So far the effects of 'climate change' appear to be spotty, remaining on the television and not in our neighborhood. And this fear for human survival has eclipsed any other ecological concern. Wild animals are becoming extinct. The oceans are emptying of fish. The water is polluted, and smog (a non-greenhouse gas) is creating asthma in record numbers. We don't know the cumulative effects of all the chemicals in our food. Civilization does not know what it is like to live without the stress that modern living entails. It is considered normal, the natural evolution of the human mind to this apex of controlling our happiness with knowledge.
This is the real crisis facing mankind. We have no relationship with the natural world, and as such, do not have an appropriate 'model' in which to approach both the human and natural environmental concerns. Modern society has been catatonic since Ronald Reagan put the Baby Boomers asleep in the suburbs, concerned with driving to work, the kids education, and saving for retirement. Business delivers the goods. The freedom of the market is the answer. And science will give us the tools to control all our questions.
The terrorist threat since 9/11 is the first real psychic penetration of the global village. Strange angry men half-way around the world threatening us. The Soviets were using our Western language, and the Vietnamese were not blowing up our skyscrapers. The Muslims brought the reality home to us. And this sparked the dormant idiocy of power politics in Washington to take advantage of the fear to invade Iraq to seize their oil for big business. It could have been learned in a classroom. But the White House had to use on-the-job training to realize human societies are a little more complex than what they imagined.
Now there are two issues. Not only trying to control the Earth, but also conflicting civilizations around the world. The West is having to face the cumulative effect of its colonization over the last 500 years. Its all global. And every issue is in fragments right now, without a conceptual framework to form a planetary civilization that promotes our lifestyle of abundance, peace and freedom.
Unless we get the two together, climate change will remain an icon of our lack of control. We are stressed by the deadlines the scientists are giving us to start managing the Earth's climate, when we can't even manage the humans.
But its a worthy goal to stop polluting for both the Earth and humans, even if the Earth is in one of its weather cycles. Unfortunately, the hysteria to preserve our current way of life is masking over deep, fundamental problems that civilization has never had to confront. We are disconnected with the Earth to such a degree, that the only natural life we come into contact with is our domesticated dogs.
Modern humans look at wilderness as just a natural resource waiting for human subjugation. Wild life is a nuisance. They are no longer a threat. Our artificial human environment removes us so completely from the planet that we cannot find an alternate language or way of approaching both problems together, as a whole, with humans as part of the living world from which it comes.
Its a respect issue for life in general. We look into our dogs' eyes and feel unconditional love and warmth. We can't even do that with our fellow human beings. We have to, once again, stop humans around the world from acting like they are wild animals before we can domesticate the Earth that we thought we had tamed.
Are our dogs telling our hearts that there is something missing in our equation with the Earth?
Our dogs (and cats) melt our hearts. We spends billions on them. They are part of the family. And they are non-human.
If we were growing up on a farm 100 years ago, our contact with non-human life would be far more extensive. The farm contained pigs, chickens, cows, horses, and so many more animals. We saw them being born, and we participated in their death for our food. We sheared them for our wool, and even used them to heat the house in some cultures.
We also planted the seeds and watched them grow, and then harvested the plants for food. Survival was directly connected with natural life in everything we did. Now it is money and electricity that make our survival happen. It is an astonishing turnaround for humankind.
The Baby Boomer generation has known nothing different than modern urban living. We pride ourselves in our comforts and control. It all seems so normal. But we do not have a thorough life with the rest of the life on the planet. So our dogs melt our hearts, we are so starved for something other than inert matter to relate to. All other life has been hidden from us. And we are too busy to notice, or care. Modern life is normal and better than living with the brutish conditions of the wilderness.
This is the Achilles Heel of the current fear of climate change. Nature is alive. The environment is a concept. Do we relate to our dogs as concept, or through our hearts? Do we manage them, or live with them on some other level?
The whole climate change debate is a political mess. Detractors suck the proponents into their argument about whether its real, created by humans, or just a cycle in weather patterns. No one has enough information.
Climatology is an infant science. It is not like the human body or creating a car or jet plane. It is not like pumping chemical fertilizers into the ground to make it produce. The massive Earth as a whole is completely interconnected and reliant on infinite factors that scientist are just beginning to consider and measure. All we are doing now is reacting and looking at the statistics. Civilization has never had to control something so large, amorphous, or critical to our survival.
Maybe this is a natural cycle, all the concerns about droughts and melting ice caps. Maybe it is the greenhouse gases we pump into the air. Maybe its the cycles of the Sun upon the Earth. We just don't know. It is too much inert matter, too much natural law out of our control. We're good at small things, but something on this size, let alone controlling it with the cooperation of every nation, is just beyond our ken with the current model of thinking about reality. Science reassures us that reality is just natural laws we can control, like turning iron ore rocks into steel.
Climate change is not about the Earth. It is about humans maintaining their standard of living using the current models of controlling the world. As the debate heats up, it becomes apparent to everyone how fragile our economic survival system is. Without money we starve. Without jobs we have no money. Our jobs are dependent on increasing consumption. If we stop, we starve. We have no other behavior right now to offset this. And the environment is just now becoming a hot topic. It is testing our political and economic systems to do the right thing. But they are ill-equipped to threaten their own security and the status quo. They would lose business and votes.
Worry about the environment is embarrassingly narrow in scope. Stop global warming. This is the sole question before the media. How do we stop the threat to human habitat?
Left out of the whole debate is the reality of the entire planet. We have reduced the living planet to a keystone: stop global warming and we will stop drought, the disappearance of fresh water, hurricanes, and any other horrible thing the Earth can throw at us. Its a crisis because we thought the stability of the environment was reliable, and we have not had to worry about it since the Great Depression. Civilization had tamed nature with our technology and market, so that it was no longer a threat. It is dawning on us that this may have been a delusion and we must now re-establish our control once again.
In this environment of human fear, there is little talk about what the Earth is. We assume it is an object, components that we can tweak like a car engine to keep it running for our benefit. There is no relationship between human and the life of the Earth. It is not nature, alive. It is the environment, a concept. But the forces are so large, taken as whole instead of broken down into manageable pieces, that the weather seems to have a life of its own.
If we can only control human activity, then things would be fine. Stop pollution and we can stop worrying about life on this planet. But it is becoming apparent how out of control humans are. Two hundred countries, power politics, rampant transnational corporations, terrorism, economic disparities between rich and poor nations; how do we get ourselves under control so that we can get the Earth under control again? How do we do this with a suvival system based on doing the very things we need to stop? And how do we do this and not be put under the domination and control by government that has always failed in the past?
Society is so artificial now, that we frame the whole issue in our strange way of looking at reality. We have no real connection with the Earth, with non-human life. So far the effects of 'climate change' appear to be spotty, remaining on the television and not in our neighborhood. And this fear for human survival has eclipsed any other ecological concern. Wild animals are becoming extinct. The oceans are emptying of fish. The water is polluted, and smog (a non-greenhouse gas) is creating asthma in record numbers. We don't know the cumulative effects of all the chemicals in our food. Civilization does not know what it is like to live without the stress that modern living entails. It is considered normal, the natural evolution of the human mind to this apex of controlling our happiness with knowledge.
This is the real crisis facing mankind. We have no relationship with the natural world, and as such, do not have an appropriate 'model' in which to approach both the human and natural environmental concerns. Modern society has been catatonic since Ronald Reagan put the Baby Boomers asleep in the suburbs, concerned with driving to work, the kids education, and saving for retirement. Business delivers the goods. The freedom of the market is the answer. And science will give us the tools to control all our questions.
The terrorist threat since 9/11 is the first real psychic penetration of the global village. Strange angry men half-way around the world threatening us. The Soviets were using our Western language, and the Vietnamese were not blowing up our skyscrapers. The Muslims brought the reality home to us. And this sparked the dormant idiocy of power politics in Washington to take advantage of the fear to invade Iraq to seize their oil for big business. It could have been learned in a classroom. But the White House had to use on-the-job training to realize human societies are a little more complex than what they imagined.
Now there are two issues. Not only trying to control the Earth, but also conflicting civilizations around the world. The West is having to face the cumulative effect of its colonization over the last 500 years. Its all global. And every issue is in fragments right now, without a conceptual framework to form a planetary civilization that promotes our lifestyle of abundance, peace and freedom.
Unless we get the two together, climate change will remain an icon of our lack of control. We are stressed by the deadlines the scientists are giving us to start managing the Earth's climate, when we can't even manage the humans.
But its a worthy goal to stop polluting for both the Earth and humans, even if the Earth is in one of its weather cycles. Unfortunately, the hysteria to preserve our current way of life is masking over deep, fundamental problems that civilization has never had to confront. We are disconnected with the Earth to such a degree, that the only natural life we come into contact with is our domesticated dogs.
Modern humans look at wilderness as just a natural resource waiting for human subjugation. Wild life is a nuisance. They are no longer a threat. Our artificial human environment removes us so completely from the planet that we cannot find an alternate language or way of approaching both problems together, as a whole, with humans as part of the living world from which it comes.
Its a respect issue for life in general. We look into our dogs' eyes and feel unconditional love and warmth. We can't even do that with our fellow human beings. We have to, once again, stop humans around the world from acting like they are wild animals before we can domesticate the Earth that we thought we had tamed.
Are our dogs telling our hearts that there is something missing in our equation with the Earth?
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