Irreconcilable Differences

They did not stay long – these clouds.  They formed in only a few minutes out of clear sky and they left the way they came.  I examined them for a while with my camera, but I was examining the snow covering the branches of trees on the ridge of a distant mountain and my  back was turned away from them – the clouds – when they left.

It was on a mild day in January that they came – and left.

In The End of Nature, Bill McKibben wrote:  I love winter best now, but I try not to love it too much, for fear of the January perhaps not so distant when the snow will fall as warm rain.  There is no future in loving nature.”

If we could manage nature we would – clouds, rain, wind, and snow – when they come and when they go.  We would, if we could, manage the genes too – especially the genes – human selection would replace natural selection.  We are certainly trying to do that now.  With such control, imagine the future – no more misery, no more death.

He is right, Bill McKibben is, there is no future in loving nature.  That is why we seek control, not love.  We see a future in control.

And from the perspective of nature:  Is there any future in loving such humanity?