Why this? Why  Now?

 In a very real sense the problem of the environment is the problem of our age. What we mean by the problem is so totemic and so problematic. The entire idea of environmental impact understood properly unpicks our notions both of humans specialises but also of human identity. We come merely a flow of particles, along with all the other flows. We move certain ways, and the world (the environment) rejoins with move of its own.

 This problem has (since Heidegger) anyway haunted western thought.

 However it a thought best by a danger.

 To think the environment properly is to scrap the notion of a human being as such. The Being of humanity is merely an aspect or feature of a wider being. the being of the world. From 

 From this last point to rather difficult three distinct and very problematic conclusion might be drawn

Firstly to forget humans as such, it to risk opening out one authoritarian schemes and ideas. Humanity as such is lost in the sharp bark of command and control. It will follow from this individual deaths of human matter not at all (or not more than the wider world of death). Environmentalism on the name of being other than human, slips into totalarianisms of the worst sort. Hitler might to have been an environmentalist or even a vegetarian, but  there is something strangle appropriate in thinking he was….

Secondly the alternative viewpoint is anarchy. Maybe the entire system is all relative anyway. If so we ought o change things (perhaps), but maybe not to much. Any system will always find its balancing point somewhere, and it might not do to attempt to forecast that point. Indeed it is probably impossible to do so. One should then cut down of emissions (perhaps) but not expect any ready solution. Or better the solution might be death of species (possibly including humanity). 

This council of anarchy-cum-endemic change comes in many variation .From the apologists for pollution (it is merely one factor in extinctions or even so what if it destroy, most species are extinct), to those who think it would be no bad thing in humanity itself was no more (then at lest the problem would cease to exist).

 The complexity of a system becomes then a council of despair (we can do nothing) or complacency (we should not want to do anything. Our very impotence becomes a pretext for carrying on s we are. 

Thirdly, one might attempt to draw the problem of pollution into existing models for human conduct (say the market or regulations). One might then treat it as if it were another human problem, and become distressed or annoyed when this fails to work.

These three dangers in really antinomies. That is they are natural errors generated within a complex system. They are ideas we all think sometimes, and ideas that are not utterly wrong, and yet in which deep danger lurks. The problem of a too easily solution. That is, the danger is that if we follow any one of these routes, we loose sight o the full the full difficulty of the problems posed by environmentalism. That is we know that human actions have been caught up in an effect which is undermining the world we have lived in since the dawn of agriculture (and possibly since the evolution of homo sapiens sapiens, or event the since the hominids). We know then we are very likely to be in trouble Andy yet it is rather hard to forecast (well impossible really) what that trouble is, and how it might itself evolve. 

We have messed up real bad. But no one knows what will follow on from that messing (if anything).

 The problem  is then we are faced with an open question. 

But of course at this point humanity has a tendency to rush in and attempt to answer such a question, as to leave it festering away makes everything so difficult, so provisional. We find answers, in morality or in extremisms, answers that many give us a short term fix, and which might well make the actual problem so much worse.

  At this point Ranting lends a hand. The aim of these rants is to boot the question open once more, and holding it open and difficult attempt to show why we need not fear that difficulty too much, and ho, with care it might be productive,  in itself. As such these rants are not about problem solving, but rather the far more problematic tasks of problem preserving. Let us first understand our danger is the mantra, and not merely impose impossible but comforting solutions, on problems we cannot even define. 

 A task which is far more difficult than it sounds.