Prosa Académica y Filosófica

The Destruction Of Nature And Visions For Survival

The destruction of nature in the title of this work is obviously not meant literally, in the sense that matter and the laws of nature cannot be destroyed, at least under present terrestrial conditions - though life can be.  But nature has many meanings;  in one sense of the word, like that developed in Bill McKibbon`s The End of Nature (1), man`s effects on the non-human environment have now entered a qualitatively new, irreversible dimension, which is different from all the massive changes nature underwent prior to man`s existence.  For the planetary crisis caused by the overproduction of oxygen by cyanobacteria two billion years ago, or the ice-ages initiated by planetesimals or meteorites colliding with the earth, or the geological catastrophes and shifts in the earth’s tilt, all happened before human beings and human consciousness had evolved.  

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