Although the ecological crisis appears new (because it is now "news") it is not new; only the scale and the form are new. We lost the wild bit by bit for 10,000 years and forgave each loss and then forgot. Now we face the final loss. Although no other crisis in human history can match it, our commentary is strangely muted and sad, as though catastrophe was happening to us, not caused by us. Even the most knowledgeable and enlightened continue to eat food soaked in chemicals (herbicides, pesticides and hormones), wear plastic clothes (our beloved polypropylene), buy Japanese (despite their annual slaughter of dolphins), and vote Republican --- all the while blathering on in abstract language about our ecological crisis. This is denial, and behind denial is a rage, the most common emotion of my generation; but it is suppressed, and we remain silent in the face of evil.
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