The Fable of Managed Earth

Abstract

HUMAN CIVILIZATION can thrive only in a healthy natural world. For at least two centuries, environmentalists, conservationists, and ecologists—greens—have, to their everlasting credit, made this point, showing that technology, for all its genius, will not last if it stands alone, damaging the natural world and disregarding the essential place of nature in our lives. Techno-optimism is a deeply flawed worldview—not only morally and ethically but also technologically. Yet in the midst of planetary-scale destruction, technology remains seductive; even some greens now proclaim the coming of a gardened planet, in which all nature is tamed, preserved, and managed for its own good by enlightened, sophisticated humans.¹ But these “neo-greens,” or “ecological modernists” as some call them, are doomed to disappointment: The gardened planet is only a virtual image; it will never happen in the real world.

We must judge with more reverence the infinite power of nature, and with more consciousness of our own ignorance and weakness. . . . Why do we not remember how much contradiction we sense even in our own judgment, how many things were articles of faith to us yesterday, which are fables to us today?

— MICHEL DE MONTAIGNE, ESSAYS, 1580