Living Through The End Of Nature: The Future Of American Environmentalism by Paul Wapner

Enriching and engaging book. Some parts were heavy with jargon so much so that I didn’t even know what he was talking about but the ideas that Wapner discusses facilitated to my contribution of what is happening in the world.

This is a simple elegant book on a profoundly important subject for all those who care about the natural world, the wonders of life in our biosphere and want to think about the future and what contribution they might make. It’s a refreshing counter to doom and gloom and an invaluable tool to get environmental thinking back on track to face the tasks that our new circumstances present.

Picking up on Bill McKibben’s phrase concerning our now living after nature, in a period where human actions have changed our conditions of being, Paul Wapner has used all his very considerable experience as an academic, environmentalist and teacher to caution activists against despair in the face of what may seem impossible tasks.

His argument is that much of the current debate about environment has oscillated between assumptions that human are the masters of their fate, or merely part of a nature that has to be preserved, something apart from humanity that we mess with at our peril. But the contemporary transformations suggest that neither of these assumptions is a good place to start thinking about what needs to be done and how we should now live in the more than human world that we are nonetheless remaking by our actions.

Nature is neither something that we can completely dominate, nor is it something separate and unchanging that we nevertheless have to try to protect. It is changing as we change the circumstances of our human being, and thinking carefully about this most basic assumption is key to both environmental activism and academic research in the new era when humanity has become a new force shaping the biosphere.

Getting this premise clearly in focus is the key to much of what needs to be discussed and acted upon in coming decades and Paul Wapner has done us all a huge favor by writing so well and clearly about these big questions. Neither hubris nor despair are called for in present circumstances and by dismissing both Wapner shows that we can act effectively by holding life and its future clearly in focus.

Buy this book and read it very carefully. Then after you have told your friends all about it and how it explains the traps of hubris and despair that we all so frequently fall into, think once again about the world we are collectively remaking and how you should now act in these new circumstances.

LIVING THROUGH THE END OF NATURE is profound, insightful, readable, moving, and–dare I say–wise.

I hope that Wapner will become a major influence for theorists, practitioners, and politicians. He has important things to say to those who think about and engage with the environment and environmental politics. The “future of American environmentalism” is Wapner’s vision for the future, not a prediction.

We are faced with new and complex environmental realities. While politically expedient, the old answers (whether environmentalist or anti-environmentalist) won’t help us move forward. Modeling what he preaches, Wapner argues that we need to embrace complexity in our dealings with the earth and, in politics, with each other.

Building on the best of recent work in environmentalism (especially Bill McKibben), Wapner gives an overview of the profound empirical and conceptual changes that have already occurred in “nature.” I.e., there is no place on the planet that has not already been impacted by human activity. And there is no single objective meaning to nature. Humans are and henceforward will always be taking part in whatever nature is and/or means. This much, as Wapner explains, has already been established. So, his question is, what now? How do we move forward?

Wapner lays out two extreme views that might–but don’t–provide the answer: (1) “the dream of naturalism” held by many environmentalists says if only we can leave nature alone, things will be well; (2) the dream of mastery held by many skeptics of environmentalism says if only we can control nature, things will be well. But, Wapner shows, neither of these dreams can work because both are only applicable to “nature” as it was before the profound changes that have taken place since the Industrial Revolution.

Wapner’s own way forward is “a middle way.” Though fully committed to environmentalism, he is able to draw on aspects of both “dreams” without “deifying” either. We cannot control the environment, and we cannot leave it alone either. We cannot ignore the very real danger the planet is in in order to allow people to continue to “use” nature. But we also cannot peddle fear about that danger in order to “protect” nature from people. Instead, we need to promote the mutual benefits (to people and planet) of cultivating healthy relationships between humans and the more-than-human world. For instance, everyone will benefit if we use wind, sun, and water for energy rather than coal and oil.

As he writes in his conclusion: “All living and nonliving entities on earth are a mélange. We are so intermixed and mutually constituting that although we are different entities, one cannot disaggregate the human from the nonhuman, nor imagine their fates as separate.”

Near the end of the book (pages 195-197) are several paragraphs dealing with pain, suffering, story, narrative, and public discussion in the middle way. These pages seem particularly significant to me. But I’ve yet to fully come to terms with them, so I’ll need to reread and ponder them. Perhaps these ideas could be further developed in another book.

I highly recommended this book for environmentalists and ecocritics as well as educated readers in general. So far I’ve just read it once, and though I plan on spending quite a bit more time with it, I feel that it has significantly impacted me already.