Richard White challenges the a common view that environmentalism and human industry cannot coincide in his essay "Are You an Environmentalist or Do You Work for a Living?" It's true, by the commonly accepted definition of nature, as that unaltered by man, there is no way the world can uphold the environmentalist creed. Human civilization demands progress, which demands constantly altering of the face of the earth through industry, expansion, or exploitation of natural resources. In opposition to this, environmentalists must oppose work and therefore human progress, while supporting the recreational enjoyment of nature and making sure the relatively untouched continues to be untouched. But there is no way to live in the world without making an imprint upon it, one that naturally comes with living - of food intake and waste output. Nature is shaped by its components, the living and nonliving things. As beaver chop trees to build lodges and dams, so do humans construct and modify nature to facilitate their lives. If beaver lodges are acceptable to environmentalists, why isn't human architecture? As White points out, humans are a part of nature such that there is no area on earth not affected by humans. Even environments that are assumed to be formed by nature are not. Many deserts in the Middle East and Africa are product of cities, which deplete the soil. This is the sort of thing environmentalists want humans avoid, and usually the spotlight shines on whoever visibly "attacks" nature - miners, loggers, fishers, ranchers, laborers in short. White points out that white collar workers make footprints, too, by using the resources made readily available by the blue collar workers. Seeing as how work is fundamentally connected with life (working to live or working to make a living), working should not be seen in opposition to the environment. Nor should environmentalists shun work, but rather work in the most environmentally friendly manner - minimalizing their waste, remaining aware of where their resources come from - and encourage others to do the same. It is the most the environmental movement can hope for, because nothing but a compromise is possible in human civilization or nature. Thus, the real enemy of environmentalists becomes those who are not environmentalists and do not work for a living.
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Sarah: I like the way you have formulated the bumper sticker's motto into a kind of mathematical problem. If A = environmentalists and A' = non-environmentalists, and B = those who work for a living and B' = those who do not work for a living, your argument is that those who form the intersection of A' and B' (A' ∩ B') are the worst offenders. By the same token, perhaps the best environmentalists are those that acknowledge that they do in some way "work" for a living, even if that means typing away at a keyboard (A ∩ B).
ReplyDeleteKeep this focus on the real labor and resource-use involved in white-collar work in mind as we move into the rest of the semester. We'll be watching the film Manufactured Landscapes, which I think beautifully illustrates the abject character of First World waste.