When did we stop thinking of our own backyard as nature?
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“This is a crisis that is, by its nature, slow moving and intensely place based. In its early stages, and in between the wrenching disasters, climate change is about an early blooming of a particular flower, an unusually thin layer of ice on a lake, the late arrival of a migratory bird—noticing these small changes requires the kind of communion that comes from knowing a place deeply.”—Naomi Klein, This Changes Everything (2014)
The lady’s man or player who says he loves “women” probably doesn’t love any one woman well. Likewise, the Romantic who says he loves Nature, but doesn’t seem to know the first thing about the flora and fauna around him, probably doesn’t love Nature the way it needs to be loved in the twenty-first century.
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It’s sad that most of the kids I meet in Montreal can tell me the names of ten dinosaurs or ten animals from the African Savannah or ten marine mammals, but they can’t name ten Montreal animals.
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The Romantic conceives of Nature as something which is Over There: far from Civilization, far from The City: in The Country, in The Jungle, in The Wild. It’s a pernicious delusion which allows an oilman who works on the Alberta Tar Sands during the week to say that he loves Nature because he goes duck hunting in a national park on the weekends, a delusion which allows a chemical engineer who works for DuPont to say that she loves Nature because she went hiking in the Adirondacks last summer.
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While hiking up Mount Royal last summer with my wife’s parents, a curious young boy of about eight or nine came up to me and asked me what I had in my hand. I told him it was a blue-spotted salamander.
Much to my surprise, however, the kid really wasn’t that interested in seeing or touching or talking about the living, breathing salamander in front of him. Instead, he wanted to tell me about another salamander and give me a little pop quiz consisting of one question: “Do you know why the fire salamander is called the fire salamander?”
I was puzzled by the question. After all, the fire salamander (Salamandra salamandra) is native to Europe. And we’re not in Europe. I turned to the boy’s parents and asked them if they were from Europe. They said they were not. Any family in Europe? Nope. Had he seen a fire salamander on a European vacation? Nope. The kid had never been to Europe. Not even once.
This, my friends, is what’s wrong with nature shows! This, my friends, is what’s wrong with nature books for kids!
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So much of our global culture—the very same way of life that’s systematically destroying the living systems upon which we depend—is based upon a radical denial of place.
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It’s sad that most of the kids I meet in Montreal can tell me the names of ten dinosaurs or ten animals from the African Savannah or ten marine mammals, but they can’t name ten Montreal animals. This tells me that their boilerplate globalized knowledge of Nature comes from nature shows and mass-market children’s books produced by multinational corporations based in New York and London.
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Their knowledge of Nature ought to come from an intimate connection with the world immediately around them, with the plants and animals who share this island with them. Instead, it’s derived primarily from what I call “nature porn” (e.g., British-accented nature shows with their zoom lenses, impossible camera angles, and all-seeing eyes).
The difference between real Nature and the Nature depicted in a David Attenborough documentary is roughly equivalent to the difference between real sex and the sex depicted in Debbie does Dallas (1978). Just as a kid who learns about sex from porn is going to have some seriously messed up ideas about sex, a kid who learns about nature from nature shows is going to have some seriously messed up ideas about nature. Nature porn reinforces the Romantic conception of Nature as a pristine place you visit: in the summer (e.g., at camp, at the cottage), or on vacation (e.g., on a Costa Rican eco-tour).
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Never before has the real been so radical.
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We live in an increasingly globalized world where every thing and every one and every place is supposedly expendable, unimportant, and interchangeable. The company your dad works for moves the factory to China to save a few bucks and kills a small town in Idaho. The New York movie you’re seeing tonight was shot in Toronto, and the dystopian DC show you watched last night on Netflix was shot in Montreal. The malls in Missouri look just like the malls in Ontario, and, though you’ll never admit it, you went to McDonald’s when you were in Italy because—goddammit!—you know what you’re gonna get!
So much of our global culture—the very same way of life that’s systematically destroying the living systems upon which we depend—is based upon a radical denial of place. As such, one small way to struggle against this global culture is to stubbornly insist upon the placeness of place. It may seem odd at first, but it’s really no different than saying: “I don’t love humanity in general, I love you. And I don’t love cities in general or rivers in general or mountains in general. I love this city, this river, and this mountain.” Never before has the real been so radical. Place matters. Reality matters. Now more than ever.
—John Faithful Hamer, From Here (2016)
This article was originally published on Committing Sociology. 
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Photo: Getty Images