#we invested in industry artificial fertiliser and nimbyism instead | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

distractionactivated · 22 days ago

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Resolutely not reblogging a post about the UK biodiversity crisis to point out that drastic declines in biodiversity in the last 20-100 years do not, necessarily, mean that the entire history of human cultivation of nature here is catastrophic. Like, I get the point the person was making and I also think that the 'we made this green and pleasant land' rhetoric is usually thinly-veiled nationalist chauvinism, but also please think about the statistics you're using.

If your stats all point to the major damage being in the last century or two, this relates to industrialisation, industrial farming, power consolidation, and un/deregulation, not the activities of ordinary farmers 500 years ago or whatever. Therefore, it's not actually countering the points the 'green and pleasant land' chuds are talking about.

#a huge part of our current biodiversity crisis is in fact the fact that we *don't* use the land like we used to #we invested in industry artificial fertiliser and nimbyism instead #and like yes those were organic products of our history #but the strand of history that will be most instructive is the history of power and power relations #most people here for most of history/prehistory existed in a reasonable equilibrium with the natural world #were we ecosystem engineers on the level of the indigenous people of the americas? absolutely not #but that's a fairly high bar to clear they were/are extremely good at it

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