How to Green the World
Our world is defined as much by what we forget, as what we remember. The billions of memories lost to time distort our perceptions with their absence. Add a healthy dose of lies and half-truths, and the past becomes a murky place, the truth almost indecipherable.
It isn’t just a problem for historians. Ecologists continuously try to decipher what landscapes once looked like, back when they were pristine. What was once grassland, and what was once forest? Are the highlands of Scotland or the moorlands of England natural? Or are they the sign of ecological collapse — a degraded landscape? And, where do we draw the line? In a changing landscape, who gets to say what the natural world should look like? For instance, you might be surprised to learn 40,000 years ago, a straight-tusked elephant (Elephas antiquus) once roamed Europe; we might have forgotten, but the trees haven’t, it’s why they are so strong, they’re elephant-proof!
In North America, the now heavily polluted Potomac river boasted sturgeon up to eighteen feet long and shoals of herring, such as alewife and shad, in the millions. Such abundance wasn’t in the mists of deep history, but a few centuries ago, when colonists landed in the New World. It was a vision only their ancestors in Europe had known, long, long ago. Now no one even remembers the Potomac’s millions. We’re all suffering from ecological amnesia.
