Decoupling from the Naturalistic Fallacy feat. Alan Levinovitz

What happens to our decision-making when we turn nature into God?
Humans crave cognitive shortcuts to spare us the metabolically
costly mental labour of reasoning through complex
decision-making. The heuristic of "Natural Good, Unnatural Bad,"
has become one such shortcut. But what is natural? Why have we
come to deify nature? And does worshipping it help us to make the
best decisions for humanity and the environment?


Natural is not always what is good for humans or the environment.
Nature, for instance, is very good at killing off children under
the age of five. Charcoal production, while quite natural, is
leading to rapid deforestation throughout Africa. And biomass
burning is treated as carbon neutral by many government
regulations partially because it feels natural. 


Humans are not the first species to radically alter the planet
and its atmospheric chemistry. During the Paleoproterozoic era,
the first mass extinction was caused by cyanobacteria
metabolizing CO2 into O2, turning the oceans and atmosphere from
a reducing to an oxidative environment which wiped out most of
life on earth. Humans, via our harnessing of technology, have
radically altered the carbon, nitrogen, and hydrological cycles
of the planet. As a result, standards of living have improved but
a deep existential angst and fear of technology is building as we
threaten the ecosystem life support services that "nature"
provides us with. Can humanity have its cake and save nature too?


While some dispute the very notion of nature claiming that
everything is natural and made of stardust, traditional
environmentalists and ecomodernists both heavily reference
nature, though they have radically different conceptions of it
and tools for how to preserve and interact with it.
Environmentalists favour harmonizing with nature through
agroecology and renewable energy, with human populations and
energy infrastructure distributed diffusely across the land.
Ecomodernists favour "decoupling" from nature by continued
urbanization and intensifying agriculture and energy production
on the smallest footprint possible to allow rewilding. 


We live in strange times where rather than setting clear goals
and searching for the best tools to achieve them we make
emotional decisions based on deifying nature and what feels
natural. We are at risk of relying on simplistic labels and slick
marketing in making our most consequential decisions like how to
mitigate and adapt to climate change.


Alan Levinovitz is a professor of Religion at James Madison
University. He works at the intersection of philosophy, religion,
and science, focusing especially on how narratives and metaphors
shape belief. His most recent book is "Natural: How Faith in
Nature's Goodness Leads to Harmful Fads, Unjust Laws, and Flawed
Science."


Books Referenced: 


Sapiens: Noah Yuval Hariri


Factfulness: Hans Rosling