Politics
and eagle's nests
In order to appreciate
the place of Ruskin in the modern environmental arena we first
have to consider environmentalism in relation to the model of global industrialisation,
to which he was responding when it was surging ahead in mid- Victorian Britain.
Environmentalism, like industrialism, was not a completely new phenomenon to the
Victorians, but rather the culmination of tendencies going back to the seventeenth
century. Its roots extend deep into the beginnings of the industrial revolution, from
where it became entangled in social criticism, public health Acts, and landscape
appreciation.
All that has happened
in recent years has been an explosive realisation that natural
resources, landscape heritage and the global commons of sea and air, are being
destroyed irreversibly on an ever increasing geographical scale. This has occurred
alongside a sharpening of public awareness of environment, through the media and
its popularisation of new divisions of applied biological sciences, such as
ecotoxicology. The rapid decline in 'environment health is now seen by nearly
everyone as a major threat to the survival of humanity.
The key to understanding
this vast interdisciplinary area of knowledge lies in the
synthesis between two eighteenth century primary divisions of knowledge, political
economy and natural economy. These subjects were the birthplace of the many
specialisms which produced the compartmentation of scientific information which is
now an impediment to civic understanding of environmental issues.
It is appropriate at
this point to give Ruskin's words which sets the tone for the
interaction between politics and wildlife.
"And of all essential things in a gentleman's bodily and moral training, this
is really the
beginning - that he should have close companionship with the horse, the dog, and the eagle.
Of all birthrights and bookrights - this is his first. He needn't be a Christian, - there have been
millions of Pagan gentlemen; he needn't be kind - there have been millions of cruel gentlemen;
he needn't be honest - there have been millions of crafty gentlemen. He needn't know how to
read, or how to write his own name. But he must have horse, dog, and eagle for friends.
If then he has also Man for his friend, he is a noble gentleman; and if God for his
Friend, a king.
And if, being honest and kind, and having God and Man for his friends, he then gets these three
brutal friends, besides his angelic ones, he is perfect in earth as for heaven. For to be his
friends these must be brought up with him and he with them. Falcon on fist, hound at foot, and
horse part of himself - Eques, Ritter, Cavalier, Chevalier.
Yes; - horse and dog you understand the good of; but what's the good of the falcon
think you?
To be friends with the falcon must mean that you love to see it soar; that is to say,
you love
fresh air and the fields. Farther, when the Law of God is understood, you will like better to see
the eagle free than the jessed hawk. And to preserve your eagles' nests, is to be a great
nation. It means keeping everything that is noble; mountains and fields, and forests, and the
glory and honour of them, and the birds that haunt them. If the eagle takes more than his share
you may shoot him, - (but with the knight's arrow, not the blackguard's gun) - and not till
then"
Political
Economy and Natural Economy
Ruskin's writings were
frequently concerned with what he called "political economy".
Political economy was one of the two major interdisciplinary themes that unified the
gathering and presentation of knowledge about European development for about 200
years. The other was natural economy. Natural economy dealt with the organisation
of natural resources for human production. Political economy, as a distinct body of
knowledge, is complementary to natural economy. In Ruskin's day, it dealt with
questions about how production is socially organised, the factors that determine the
pattern of jobs in different production systems, and the social and economic
relationships between workers. Ruskin would be pleased to see that, increasingly, it
now deals with the planning constraints governing the utilisation of natural resources
for sustained production. These questions are usually analysed in relation to
different kinds of monetary policies, and economic value-systems.
The distinction between
the "natural' and the "political" aspects of industrialism were
put in the following way by John Ruskin in the 1870s, "It is one question, how to get
plenty of a good thing, and another whether plenty of it will be good for us." In the
context of modern world development, political economy is the launching pad for
laws and plans governing development and conservation, whilst natural economy
delineates the technological innovations for the exploitation and management of
natural resources by which laws and plans can be realised.
Having said this, Ruskin
did not define natural economy as being separate from
political economy. But, some of his contemporary readers could dimly perceive a
distinction from his writings. For example, Mr Dixon, a cork-cutter in Sunderland, to
whom, in 1867, Ruskin wrote a series of letters stressing how important is was that
working people should clearly define their aims in social reform, tells Ruskin of a
pamphlet he has read. This "gives an account of how it is the poor Indians have died
of Famine simply because they have destroyed the very system of Political
Economy, or one having some approach to it, that you are now endeavouring to
direct the attention of thinkers to in our country". In fact, the American march into the
West had destroyed the delicate balance between Indian society and the natural
economy of its renewable resources, an example of the interdependence of political
and natural economy. Again, Dixon writes, after reading Sesame and Lilies "I
cannot help directing your attention to that portion where you mention or rather
exclaim against the Florentines pulling down their Ancient Walls to build a Boulevard.
That passage is one that would gladden the hearts of all true Italians, especially men
that love Italy and Dante!" It can be argued that since then the British have lost,
proportionately more of their architectural heritage than the whole of Europe.
The need to manage
nature to retain a wide range of incompatible benefits was not
new in Ruskin's day. It first emerged in 17th century Europe at a time when
information about, rocks, soils, and the particular assemblies of plants and animals
associated with them, were under scrutiny as resources for increasing human health
and prosperity. From the 16th to the early 18th centuries the term economy was
used in a context where we would now use 'management', 'control', or 'regulation'. It
defined the ordering of various systems such as the household, animal and crop
husbandry, the human body's physiological systems, the political administration of all
the resources of a community or state for production.
To a biologist, economy
also means the interactions and interdependence of plants
and animals. The latter area was defined by Linnaeus in the 1740s as 'nature's
economy' and it is to Linnaeus and his pupils that we must turn for the approaches to
a scientific understanding of the linkages of living things in food chains and habitats,
which were taken up later in the 18th century, particularly by Gilbert White and John
Bruckner.
Managing
nature
Although he never articulated
it distinctly, it is probably true to say that Linnaeus saw
our role in nature as managers of its resources to maintain the orderly and
interdependent interplay between living things and their surroundings. He certainly
saw the need to avoid unnecessary destruction and ensure a continuous supply of
environmental resources' for human development. He was aware that the
maintenance of natural resources requires knowledge of natural structures,
processes, and systems.
From the diaries he
kept on his scientific expeditions in search of new resources to
fuel the Swedish economy, it is clear that Linnaeus could also see that the richness
of an environment was not just the monetary returns that could be obtained from the
use of natural resources. He also put a great value on the aesthetic riches of an
unspoiled landscape. The problem then, as now, is to define the analytical
techniques and social mechanisms by which we may regulate relationships between
exploitation and stabilisation to maintain standards of 'environmental richness' when
different kinds of riches have to be related to a common monetary currency.
Natural economy gained
it's knowledge through analytical topography; the study of
the whole landscape and its multipurpose uses. However, as knowledge about the
developing European environment accumulated, it was increasingly delivered into
expanding academic educational compartments such as geology, and zoology. In
Ruskin's time, natural economy had lost its prime relationship to the human
economy and was split into a range of specialist academic subjects. Also, nature's
economy became much more narrowly defined as a subject dealing with unspoiled
nature, and eventually reemerged at the end of the 19th century as the academic,
non-applied subject of ecology.
Humanity has now entered
an era where we must return to the broad base of 'natural
economy' which, in its original definition was both font and focus of knowledge
emanating from a wide range of environmental subjects embracing anthropology to
zoology.
Modern natural economy
defines the ways in which we now treat most of the planet
as a resource. As a theme, based on a well-defined set of principles governing the
relationship of people to nature, it stands in relation to environmental management as
physics does to engineering. Also, it can also be an attitude, and a cause, to sustain
human development in that it sets out to systematise knowledge that is necessary to
balance human numbers with nature, in dignity and harmony.
National and local
perceptions of development have to be related to a world view
where human well-being is seen to be limited by the Earth's natural economic order,
and planners have to deal with many competing global demands on natural
resources. This depends on the "landscape capital" of rocks, soils, water, air and the
interdependent communities of animals, plants and microbes. This balance between
the uses of physical and biological capital produces the ecological segregation of
landscape expressed nationally as the country's biogeographic zones, and locally as
a particular pattern of land use and settlement.
The most dominant of
these demands is urbanisation. Ruskin in his description of
the expanding city of Geneva in the 1860s cynically describes the fruits of progress,
which will strike a cord with any modern traveler faced with endless miniaturised
versions of New York and Los Angeles. In Ruskin's day the models were London
and the industrial cities of northern Britain.
"The town itself shows the most gratifying signs of progress in all the modern
arts and
sciences of life. It is nearly as black as Newcastle- has a railroad station larger than the
London terminus of the Chatham and Dover-fouls the stream of the Limmat as soon as it
issues from the lake, so that you might even venture to compare the formerly simple and
innocent Swiss river (I remember it thirty years ago-current of pale green crystal) with the highly
educated English streams of Ware or Tyne, and finally, has as many French prints of dissolute
tendency in its principle shop windows as if they had the privilege of opening on the Parisian
Boulevards".
A holistic knowledge
system, based on Ruskin's overview is now necessary to deal
with the maintenance of the dynamic equilibrium and global accountancy of natural
resources. We have now become the dominant species on the planet, and the
dominant force for change. By comparison, the earth before mankind changed
infinitely slowly. Now, governments and local communities increasingly have to plan
within the natural economics of competitive resource utilisation in order to first to
gain, and then to maintain prosperity by setting a dynamic balance of land use. On
the credit side is prosperity; in the debit column of the global account is the decline
of wildlife communities, unclean rivers, unstable climates, and the loss of human
well-being through the creation of industrialised agricultural systems.
Consumerism
In the model of industrialisation
derived from Ruskin's writings natural economy
defines the system involved in our 'social use' of nature through industrialisation.
Expressed as a general model for world development, it represents people drawing
living, and non- living, resources from the material environment according to the
process of consumerism, which is driven by peoples wants. These wants are
generated within our social environment by education in its broadest context, and are
transmitted globally through sophisticated information networks of the media.
People's wants, expressed
as 'commodified' foods, goods, services and
armaments, are produced as cheaply as possible by industrialisation, which is
activated by a combination of science and monetary capital. Up to a point, human
development increases the richness of the landscape, but above a certain population
density, and, beyond a certain scale of industrial development, the environment is
'used up' and its riches decrease.
Industrialism no longer
means factory production lines;. Agriculture and tourism are
now classed as industries; the one using machines to minimise investment in people
to maximise crop output; the other supporting the production of ever larger aircraft
and hotels to get economies of scale in transporting people to their holiday
destinations, and feeding them with mass-produced food.
Ruskin had his clashes
with the embryonic tourist industry.
"In 1862, I had formed the intention of living some years in the neighbourhood
of Geneva, and
had established myself experimentally on the eastern slope of the Mont Saleve; but I was
forced to abandon my purpose at last, because I could not endure the rabid howling, on
Sunday evenings, of the holiday-makers who came out from Geneva to get drunk in the
mountain villages".
The products
of industrialism, whether it be the latest motor car, long-haul package
holiday , or commodified food produced by ranch-type industrial husbandry, change
society by increasing peoples horizons for more products. Industrialism therefore
uses up the environment ever more rapidly. The resultant self-augmenting cycle is
an example of positive feedback, which is the most difficult kind of system to control.
Ruskin was right to
tell us that control of industrialisation has to exerted through our
perceptions of the environment, which are set by moral values (religion), and culture
(political philosophy and associated legislation). Regulatory inputs at one extreme
come from the application of collective interest and responsibility (socialism with a
small 's'). This is the 'brake" which encourages a balanced or positive use of the
environment. At the other extreme are the corporate and individual interests of
capitalism). This is the "accelerator" which encourages destructive, or negative use
of the environment.
If we are to stabilise
the natural economy, the year to year stability and riches of
regional and local environments first have to be evaluated. These measured states
have then to be compared with desired norms of stability, richness and availability
(climate, soil fertility, wildlife diversity, state of industrial resources, and art in the
context of our landscape heritage). Any departures from desirable standards of
stability, richness and availability have to be corrected by a change in our attitude
towards development. This correction involves the application of collective interest
and responsibility through the social environment so that less is taken from the
material environment, and fewer harmful substances are put into it.
Ruskin was concerned
with delineating some of the social mechanisms to
controlling the use of the environment. For example, in the 1860s he wrote:
The income of great
landowners should be paid to them by the State and,
"So far from their
land being to them a source of income, it should be, on the whole
costly to them, great part of it being kept in conditions of natural grace, which return
no rent but their loveliness; and the rest made, at whatever cost, exemplary in
perfection of such agriculture as develops the happiest peasant life; agriculture
which, as I will show you hereafter, must reject the aid of all mechanism except that
of instruments guided solely by the human hand, or by animal, or directly natural
forces; and which, therefore, cannot compete for profitableness with agriculture
carried on by aid of machinery".
It is a small step
across a century of ever-increasing industrialisation of British
agriculture, and the destruction of its Georgian patchwork of small fields and
woodlands, to see this sentiment expressed in recent legislation to subsidise low-
input agricultural systems for maintaining uneconomic agricultural landscapes in so-
called 'environmentally sensitive areas'.
In a modern context,
education, is required to generate an ecological conscience;
legislation, taxation, and commodity pricing, to discourage negative usage of the
environment; and the subsidisation of unprofitable use of the environment, to
encourage positive management for wildlife and landscape aesthetics. The latter are
global riches that cannot be equated directly with monetary economics
The missing element
in Ruskin's work is a firm scientific viewpoint. Unfortunately,
apart from a tourists knowledge of geology, he lacked any scientific understanding,
which would allow him to incorporate natural science into the comprehensive
knowledge system he was striving to create. We are occasionally made aware of
this difficulty and at the same time see, as in the following passage, where a
synthesis between art and science might have led.
He tells us that in
1867, he visited a friend who had been conducting experiments
into the pigments of leaves, each of which he defined by its fingerprint of dark energy
absorption bands, or bars, in a spectroscope.
"My friend showed me the rainbow of the rose and the rainbow of the violet and
the rainbow of
the hyacinth and the rainbow of forest leaves being born and the rainbow of forest leaves dying.
And at last he showed me the rainbow of blood. It was but the three- hundredth part of a grain,
dissolved in water; and it cast its measured bars, for ever recognisable now to human sight, on
the chord of the seven colours. And no drop of that red rain can now be shed so small as that
the stain of it cannot be known and the voice of it heard out of the ground. Then , he
characteristically took off at a tangent to define the fulfillment of human liberty in the peaceful
inheritance of the treasure of a fruitful earth and not "the ravage of it down the valleys of the
Shenandoah".
