Of all the things that this class has made me question, the rhetoric we use today to discuss the environment is one of the areas that troubles me the most.\u00a0 Our relationship with the environment is one of the most debated and volatile topics in our world today.\u00a0 It seems with our modern perception of the environment and of the term \u2018natural,\u2019 that it is hard to speak positively about the way we use our environment.\u00a0 The rhetoric is filled with words such as abuse, greed and destruction.\u00a0 Most people associate natural with untouched or preserved.\u00a0 Our readings have shown us the corruption and danger behind a word like \u201cpreservation.\u201d\u00a0 Our rigid definitions of these words contribute to our heated debates about these topics.\u00a0 They create a rhetoric around a binary concept of Us vs. Nature.\u00a0 This suggests that any human interaction with nature is inherently bad for the environment because we are altering its natural state.<\/p>\n
This class has made question this rhetoric and question if we can truly have a positive interaction with the environment.\u00a0 From all our readings, it seems to me that something that\u2019s in its natural state is fulfilling it purpose on the earth.\u00a0 This does not mean it is untouched.\u00a0 To use the example of the commodification of timber in William Cronnon\u2019s Natures Metropolis<\/i>, yes the trees are being taken from the original environment, but they are being used to serve a purpose.\u00a0 They are helping to build infrastructure and helping to stimulate an economy, which helps a people survive.\u00a0 Is this tree not fulfilling a purpose and thus, is it not natural?\u00a0 Its obviously difficult to think of something that has been commoditized as natural, however, I believe that commodification is just as natural a process as the growth of a forest.<\/p>\n
The difficulty in trying to look positively at environmental interaction is where to draw the line.\u00a0 Where is the line between an action on the environment being natural and an action being abusive or greedy.\u00a0 The critic to my approach might agree that the commodification of lumber is a positive good, but when does it become deforestation?\u00a0 How much timber can we extract before it becomes greedy?\u00a0 Chelsea<\/a> asks a great question in her blog post, \u201cWill there ever be a point where we as humans will tip the scale too far in our direction and forever upset the world as we know it.? Obviously human motivations play a big part in answering these questions.\u00a0 However, even with all the reading we have done, I can still confidently say that I do not have an answer everyone.\u00a0 We have run into a number of qualifications in this class.\u00a0 They seem to be popular in environmental history. \u00a0So I believe that the answers to these questions have to qualified and have to be studied on a case-by-case basis. \u00a0The definitions of environment and nature are so ambiguous that the answers to these questions must be as well.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Of all the things that this class has made me question, the rhetoric we use today to discuss the environment is one of the areas that troubles me the most.\u00a0 Our relationship with the environment is one of the most debated and volatile topics in our world today.\u00a0 It seems with our modern perception of … <\/p>\n