2 Replies to “Saturday cartoon by Ralph Underhill”

  2. Ooh, Ralph, this is an interesting point, and deserves far more comment than it’s had.

    I’d agree that the world would be a better place for both wildlife and people if they had more access to nature. Lots of work is going on now on the concept of the concept of the ‘green gym’, tying nature to health. A lot of people do love nature, far more than would self-identify as ‘environmentalists’. It’s just that they don’t realise it.

    There’s a small minority who will never care about anything but personal gain and status (I always think here of Monty Python’s merchant banker, who won’t give money to a children’s charity because he ends up ‘a pound down on the deal’). But there is also a significant constituency who might be sympathetic, but who are basically turned off right now. In one study in the USA, when asked to describe an environmentalist, people said that she (the image that came to mind was female, apparently) was affluent, up-tight and preachy, and whilst not a bad person, she was also someone you wouldn’t want to spend time with.

    It’s this group where the language of ecosystem services might prove useful. It’s controversial stuff. George Monbiot has written scathingly about it, and there is a lively discussion in the literature. For a very accessible account, see (Juniper 2013) and for some recent discussion, see (Dudgeon 2014; Ormerod 2014). There’s a whole blog article waiting to be written on this!

    Dudgeon, D. (2014) Accept no substitute: biodiversity matters. Aquatic Conservation: Marine and Freshwater Ecosystems, 24, 435 – 440.
    Juniper, T. (2013) What Has Nature Ever Done For Us? Profile Books, London.
    Ormerod, S.J. (2014) Rebalancing the philosophy of river conservation. Aquatic Conservation: Marine and Freshwater ecosystems, 24, 147 – 152.

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