Dark ecology: a view of nature not ‘saved’ by science? Lara Williams

Dark ecology: a view of nature not ‘saved’ by science

Lara Williams dissects the theory of dark ecology, and how scientists should consider the impact of human interference when fixing ecological crises.

Climate change is one of the most pressing problems to face 21st century ecosystems. Global warming and the loss of species is occurring at such a rate that the planet is accelerating towards what scientists are calling the “sixth mass extinction”.

Advances in science have offered a deeper understanding of climate change, as researchers continuously look for ways to help us limit this ecological crisis we find ourselves in. However, with that, scientific findings have also brought about a much deeper and widespread understanding of how the human species have contributed to the same environmental problems we are now trying to get out of.

‘Dark ecology’ is a concept rooted in the works of philosopher Timothy Morton, which suggests we need a change in the way we look at ecology.

exacerbate the problems that we are trying to fix? With scientific advances only going so far, dark ecology asks us to consider a world where humans do not try to control any further. Where science will not heroically ‘save’ the planet, reinstating humans as the species on top. “Only upon despoiling the planet have Dark ecology asks we come to realise just how much we us to sit with what are interconnected with it." we have done and accept it – science may not offer us a

Dark ecology proposes that we way out of this mess. scrap the term ‘nature’ as we know it, This is because controlling as ecology is not about the pristine outcomes via science is not always as it non-human nature. Instead, Morton seems. The human species were not to claims that as a species we must know that the Neolithic Revolution become more ecologically aware of (starting ~10,000BC), when humans our coexistence with the non-human first started to become farmers, would world. Dark ecology is about lead to the practice of agriculture as we developing an ecological awareness, know it today. Advances in science that which Morton states as “the enable us to thrive as a species have awareness of unintended always had unknown consequences. consequences”. In other words, to Only upon despoiling the planet have acknowledge that you cannot be we come to realise just how much we aware of everything that you need to are interconnected with it. Morton be aware of at all times. states that “ecological awareness folds

Dark ecology is said to be ‘dark’ back on itself in the Anthropocene. It because it forces us to think about our involves us being aware that we are interactions with the non-human involved in something that we did not world, causing Homo sapiens to sign up for [like contributing to global realise for the first time that they are warming] but which we are involved in, capable of acting on a planetary scale. nonetheless”. A full loop has been Human-induced alterations of the created, whereby scientific research planet are so extreme that we are now that looks to understand the changes of entering a new geological epoch – the our planet points to humans being the Anthropocene. Anthropos is a word culprits all along. Today we are not derived from Ancient Greek meaning only driving ecological construction, ‘human’ and this epoch is but science has made us know that we appropriately named as it is the first are. time in history that humans have Morton’s Dark Ecology outlook is been the primary cause of planetary nothing short of controversial, with change. Continued advances in claims of it interfering with science science and technology have been communication. It does, however, offer proposed as a promising solution to a different side of the coin to science, to alter human actions, and to reverse ecology, and to our interactions with some of the damage which has been the non-human world. done. But what if that is not the case? What if our actions further