Do humans have a responsibility towards the natural environment?

    The vast, open fields on the prairie with nothing but bushels of grass for miles; the hot and humid jungle where the sun is covered in darkness; the dry and empty desert, seemingly devoid of life. Would you like to live in any of these places? 

    Surely not!!!

    I’m sure everyone would much rather prefer to stay in their cozy little homes with built in air-conditioning and nice comfy beds with a fluffy pillow, surrounded by almost every possible convenience they could ever want in a ten mile radius.

    Many humans complain that we, as a society, are not doing enough to preserve our environment, and thereby claim that our society is controlled by evil corporate overloads maliciously destroying the environment to maximize their profit. They are of course correct, but their efforts to change this are unfortunately in vain. Not because people like you and me are evil and don’t care about the environment, but because human society was never meant to serve the environment. According to Nick Deakin, aerospace CEO, most ancient civilizations “exploited [natural] resources to depletion” and that deforestation was “not a natural phenomenon.” Not even your peaceful caveman ancestors gave any concern to releasing CO2 into the atmosphere with their huge fires, or hunting their prey to extinction (probably because they didn’t realize that animals could also reproduce and make more animals). Society was founded on improving the quality of human life, not on environmental stability. In fact, these two things (society and environment) are often direct opposition to each other, or “inversely related.” It is incredibly inconvenient to improve one without hurting the other.

    However, many humans still seem to believe that we have some responsibility towards the environment. For example, Parisian Perspectives says “we need to protect Mother Nature simply because she is beautiful, and living human 123 says, “I think our responsibility as humans on this planet is to respect other life forms and the environment to the best of our ability.” Well, I have only one serious question to ask to these virtuous and peaceful humans: why don’t you go live in the wilderness? You denounce the actions of human society, yet you don’t actually do anything to change it. In fact, you actively harm the environment through your participation in society. If you truly valued the preservation of the environment, you would realize that the most effective way to fix human effects on the environment would be mass global extinction, yet you are still here, still alive. Clearly most people value human society more than they do the environment, they just don’t realize this.

    I am an honest person. I am honestly letting these people know two things. One, they are not the messiah. They have done nothing to earn my respect. All they know is to criticize and make others feel bad to hide the fact that they sometimes are too lazy to through plastic in the recycling. This is why nobody likes the modern “climate change activism.” Their form of activism is so simple and non-laborious that it has been replicated millions of times by people looking for positive attention, yet not receiving enough of it because most normal people don’t appreciate being talked down to. Most normal people don’t want to listen to someone who is criticizing them, especially for something that basically boils down to participating in society. You are not changing anything or helping anyone. 

    The second thing I’d like to tell these people is that it’s not over yet. There are ways to promote environmental sustainability without coming across as extremely pretentious and unlikeable. Why not try picking up Aristotle’s The art of Rhetoric for some tips? I will tell you this: anyone who promotes environmental sustainability by choosing to live in the wilderness and not participate in the harmful society has my support, because I respect people whose words are truthful and align with their priorities.