... it is not a crisis of our environs or surroundings; it is a crisis of our lives as individuals, as family members, as community members, and as citizens. We have an 'environmental crisis' because we have consented to an economy in which by eating, drinking, working, resting, traveling, and enjoying ourselves we are destroying the natural, god-given world.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes that the environmental crisis stems from our individual and collective choices and actions, reflecting a deeper personal and societal issue.
Wendell Berry's quote highlights that the environmental crisis is not merely a result of our physical surroundings but is deeply rooted in our behaviors and priorities as individuals and members of society. It suggests that our everyday activities—such as consumption and leisure—contribute to the degradation of the natural world, implying that a shift in consciousness and responsibility is necessary to rectify this crisis. Berry calls for an awareness of how our personal and communal choices impact the environment, urging a more sustainable and ethical approach to living.
In practice
During a presentation on sustainability, one could quote Berry to emphasize personal responsibility in environmental issues.
We weren't allowing our hopes to become expectations. Expectations are tempting, pleasant, maybe necessary. They are scary too, once you have had some experience. They are not necessarily and not always a bucket of smoke, but they can be and are even likely to be.
The uplands of my home country in north central Kentucky are sloping and easily eroded, dependent for safekeeping upon year-round cover of perennial plants.
A corporation, essentially, is a pile of money to which a number of persons have sold their moral allegiance.
WE ARE DESTROYING OUR COUNTRY - I mean our country itself, our land. This is a terrible thing to know, but it is not a reason for despair unless we decide to continue the destruction. If we decide to continue the destruction, that will not be because we have no other choice. This destruction is not necessary. It is not inevitable, except that by our submissiveness we make it so.
Much of our waste problem is to be accounted for by the intentional flimsiness and unrepairability of the labor-savers and gadgets that we have become addicted to.
We had entered an era of limitlessness, or the illusion thereof, and this in itself is a sort of wonder. My grandfather lived a life of limits, both suffered and strictly observed, in a world of limits. I learned much of that world from him and others, and then I changed; I entered the world of labor-saving machines and of limitless cheap fossil fuel. It would take me years of reading, thought, and experience to learn again that in this world limits are not only inescapable but indispensable.
Passion is lifted from the earth itself by the muddy hands of the young; it travels along grass-stained sleeves to the heart. If we are going to save environmentalism and the environment, we must also save an endangered indicator species: the child in nature.
Whatever peace I know rests in the natural world, in feeling myself a part of it, even in a small way.
In this sequestered nook how sweet To sit upon my orchard seat And birds and flowers once more to greet. . . .
Bees sip honey from flowers and hum their thanks when they leave. The gaudy butterfly is sure that the flowers owe thanks to him.
I've found that there is always some beauty left -- in nature, sunshine, freedom, in yourself; these can all help you.
If we were to wipe out insects alone on this planet, the rest of life and humanity with it would mostly disappear from the land. Within a few months.
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