The climate we change

We are destroy­ing our wilder­nesses in more than one way. On one hand, defor­esta­tion is clear­ing the ground for devel­op­ment projects, whereas on the other, mod­ern tech­nol­ogy is uproot­ing the very con­cept of wilder­ness from our mind.

Both, devel­op­ment projects and tech­no­log­i­cal progress are grad­ual processes that have been hap­pen­ing for over thou­sands of years. But, because of their expo­nen­tial growth in the last 25 years ¹ their effects are more promi­nent today.

Devel­op­ment Projects

Devel­op­ment projects are noth­ing new. Ever since the human race started to evolve we have indulged in these projects at the cost of the envi­ron­ment, or our imme­di­ate sur­round­ings. Ini­tially, our pop­u­la­tion was small, our needs were lim­ited, so our impact on the planet was neg­li­gi­ble. Today, our pop­u­la­tion is so large that our efforts to ful­fill our needs has a mea­sur­able neg­a­tive impact on our imme­di­ate sur­round­ings, and on the planet at large. But this impact is the cumu­la­tive effect of years of igno­rance and care­less­ness. All along, tech­nol­ogy has helped accel­er­ate the process.

I’m sure the pyra­mids of Gaza had no less an impact on the local ecosys­tem then, than the impact a field of shiny mir­rors planted to har­ness solar energy would have on the ecosys­tem today. The armies of Alexan­der and Ghengis Khan have destroyed kilo­me­ters of pris­tine for­est to make camps, carts, weapons and fortresses. On their hunt­ing sprees they have turned green plains red with the blood of innu­mer­able dead ani­mals. These dam­ages were never repaired, but we con­tinue to add to them, shaded by hi-tech blink­ers all along.

The advent of tech­nol­ogy accel­er­ates development

As man evolved, so did tech­nol­ogy. Large scale destruc­tion has fol­lowed every major tech­no­log­i­cal advance. When cave­man made weapons, his hunt­ing increased, as man learns to build large build­ings he goes quar­ry­ing all over the world (quar­ry­ing and build­ing are major causes of defor­esta­tion and habi­tat destruc­tion even today). The two indus­trial rev­o­lu­tions, fol­lowed by the two world wars, pumped enough car­bon diox­ide into the atmos­phere to make us feel guilty today.

Mod­ern Technology

Today we are try­ing to invent greener tech­nolo­gies to undo (or con­trol) the dam­age we have done.² But, while we are busy invent­ing prac­ti­cal tech­nol­ogy we are ignor­ing other tech­nolo­gies that are con­di­tion­ing our minds
differently.

Over the years, at least two very sig­nif­i­cant things have hap­pened – 1) Our sense of time had changed; and, 2) We have lost the mean­ing of ‘wilderness’.

Firstly, our sense of time has been altered by a hyper-connected world. We want every­thing to hap­pen instan­ta­neously and we just don’t have the men­tal space to accom­mo­date con­cepts which unveil them­selves over a larger can­vas of time.

Sec­ond, mod­ern tech­nol­ogy is chang­ing, or rather delet­ing the very def­i­n­i­tion of wilder­ness. What is wilder­ness? It’s not merely ‘uncul­ti­vated, unin­hab­ited land’, it’s also feel­ings of wild, unex­plored, unap­proach­able, mys­te­ri­ous, vast, lonely, and maybe even peril that one asso­ciates with wilder­ness. But we don’t ven­ture out any more, we don’t explore our sur­round­ings, we don’t asso­ciate, inter­act or expe­ri­ence our ele­ments, we shy away from them – this breaks our con­nec­tion with nature and makes it impos­si­ble for us to under­stand it.

Con­clu­sion

Nature has its own time scale. Unless we tune in to that time scale we will never regain ³ the capa­bil­ity to under­stand how it func­tions or why it does what it does. A super­fi­cial involve­ment with nat­ural ele­ments will only lead to more mis­un­der­stand­ings and more mis­takes. This will prompt us to invent new tech­nol­ogy to rec­tify those mis­takes. This is the new cycle of life.

Tagged as: climate change