Healing Our Divide With Nature

I found an article recently about how healthy ecosystems can help with climate change by reducing amounts of CO2.  This article makes sense to me but I am surprised I have not seen more like it.  If we are trying to save the earth we will need to partner with nature to do so.  After all aren’t we and all the inhabitants of this earth part of nature.  Aren’t these environmental issues we are facing such as climate change and extinctions a result of the forces of nature being thrown off balance and disrupted.  Nature’s ability to rebound and create equilibrium should not be underestimated.  The site of the Chernobyl nuclear meltdown is declared a “dead zone” due to nuclear radiation, humans were evacuated and not permitted to re-enter the area.  It has been 25 years and despite what the name implies this area is far from a dead zone.  Wildlife is doing quite well and the ecosystem appears to be thriving.

Now grant it there are still some issues such as mutations but the wildlife is just producing more offspring to counter that and there are problems with plant decomposers but this was an area that was completely radiated after hundreds of years of being farmed and built upon and stripped of any natural wildlife.  If nature could make this strong of a come back at Chernobyl imagine what it can do at other places.  To find an example of a less severe area that nature made a comeback in you only have to look at Yellowstone National Park in the U.S.A. where after humans tried managing the herds of herbivores without much success wolves were reintroduced and the entire ecosystem become more diverse as the wolves changed the entire landscape allowing vegetation to once again flourish and all sorts of organisms to come back to the area and prosper. 

Nature can fix things.  There isn’t necessarily anything mystical about this(unless you prefer to look at things that way).  Our planet is made up of very complex systems such as ecosystems.  It makes sense that the competitive forces and pressures of nature make it so when something isn’t working in the system it goes away or changes eventually until something does start working in the system.  We humans are a part of these systems as well, whether we would like to admit it or not.  We try to control these systems and divide ourselves from nature for various reasons.  We need to heal that divide in ourselves and release the control.  It’s starts on the individual level accepting we are of the earth and part of these systems then when that individual divide is healed it spreads out into our entire species and makes cultural and societal changes.  Humanity can once again work with the systems on this planet rather than fighting or controlling these systems and running into discord.  Earth doesn’t need a savior or a manager.  Earth needs a friend and ally.  Lets heal our relationship to this planet that we come from and call home and stand with nature not above it or below it or against it.  Once we accept that we are part of nature humanity can unlock it’s true potential.