To save or not to save...is that really the question at hand?

You have probably guessed that I have indeed become somewhat disillusioned by this whole banana-farming prospect once I saw the sad state of my negative-growth seedlings. However, my overwhelming need to write has brought me back to my blog with a promise that I will try again. 

In the meantime, I am reading a very interesting book called Break Through: Why We Can't Leave Saving the Planet to Environmentalists by Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger.  The book is a few years old, but the ideas presented in it are ones I haven't come across in any other of the genre (and I do tend to read a lot).  Basically, the authors propose that the very concept of environmentalism was founded on American prosperity and that the only way to "save" the planet is to find a way to include humans as part of the planet (both economically and informatively). For decades now, environmentalist have been discussing the non-human world as so remote, sacred and violated by humans that it has become increasingly hard to imagine humans living harmoniously within it. How indeed are we supposed to save the planet and live in it? One the most thought provoking quotes from the book (its actually from their essay entitled "The Death of Environmentalism: Global Warming Politics in a Post-Environmental World") is:  "If 'the environment' includes humans, then everything is environmental and the concept has little use other than being a poor synonym for 'everything.'  If it excludes humans, then it is scientifically specious, not to mention politically suicidal."  This quote really opened my eyes to the way we are attempting to "save" the planet.  If I'm not mistaken, none of the proposed ideas for slowing global warming, ending deforestation or switching to more sustainable energy include the complete extermination of the human race.  If that were part of the plan why would we even bother or be worried about the planet at all?  This is why our approaches to saving the environment are stemming from the wrong direction.  We do not want to "save" the planet as it once was, before humans roamed the Earth (for that is long gone anyway), we want to develop a sustainable way for human and non-human life to live compatibly for many generations to come.

I don't have a solution to how to "save" the planet, though I worry about our world and what is to come of it. And while this post doesn't have a whole lot to do with bananas, it is important because without new ideas that really work there will not only be no more bananas anywhere, but life on our planet as we know it will cease to exist. I'm not trying to be morbid; I'm simply stating the truth of the situation at hand.