Perhaps the time has come to cease calling it the 'environmentalist' view, as though it were a lobbying effort outside the mainstream of human activity, and to start calling it the real-world view.
Interpretation
E. O. Wilson suggests that the environmental perspective should be recognized as a fundamental aspect of reality rather than an external advocacy.
In this quote, E. O. Wilson emphasizes the importance of understanding the environmental viewpoint as a critical and integral part of human existence rather than perceiving it as a separate or niche agenda. He urges a shift in how we view environmentalism, advocating for its recognition as the 'real-world view,' thus highlighting the urgency and relevance of ecological considerations in our everyday lives and decision-making processes.
In practice
This quote can be used in a speech advocating for climate action during an environmental conference.
Consider the nematode roundworm, the most abundant of all animals. Four out of five animals on Earth are nematode worms β if all solid materials except nematode worms were to be eliminated, you could still see the ghostly outline of most of it in nematode worms.
Nature holds the key to our aesthetic, intellectual, cognitive and even spiritual satisfaction.
The worst thing that will probably happen-in fact is already well underway-is not energy depletion, economic collapse, conventional war, or the expansion of totalitarian governments. As terrible as these catastrophes would be for us, they can be repaired in a few generations. The one process now going on that will take millions of years to correct is loss of genetic and species diversity by the destruction of natural habitats. This is the folly our descendants are least likely to forgive us.
Humanity today is like a waking dreamer, caught between the fantasies of sleep and the chaos of the real world. The mind seeks but cannot find the precise place and hour. We have created a Star Wars civilization, with Stone Age emotions, medieval institutions, and godlike technology. We thrash about. We are terribly confused by the mere fact of our existence, and a danger to ourselves and to the rest of life.
Destroying rainforest for economic gain is like burning a Renaissance painting to cook a meal.
An Armageddon is approaching at the beginning of the third millennium. But it is not the cosmic war and fiery collapse of mankind foretold in sacred scripture. It is the wreckage of the planet by an exuberantly plentiful and ingenious humanity.
As the end approaches, there are no longer any images from memory - there are only words.
This planet has β or rather had β a problem, which was this: most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much all of the time.
I have always regarded as a stroke of good fortune that I was not born or brought up in a small American town; they may be the backbone of the nation, but they are also the backbone of ignorance, bigotry, and boredom, all in vast quantities.
Christ exposed Himself not only to the unbridled hostility of angry men, but, more significantly, to the unmitigated wrath of God.
I miss everyone. I can remember being young and feeling a thing and identifying it as homesickness, and then thinking well now thatβs odd, isnβt it, because I was home, all the time. What on earth are we to make of that?
In the mind there is no absolute or free will; but the mind is determined to wish this or that by a cause, which has also been determined by another cause, and this last by another cause, and so on to infinity.
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