Feral by George Monbiot
Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Monbiot
Website: https://www.monbiot.com/
The basic premise of Feral is quite simple. Western society has shaped the world to its needs. In doing so it has squeezed out the wildness, complexity and beauty that is essential to how the natural world works. We need to reclaim this wildness, to save the planet and to save ourselves.
Most commentary on the climate crisis concentrates on the late 20th and early 21st century. But Monbiot takes us back to before the last ice age when elephant were plentiful in Northern Europe. There is ample evidence that even many thousands of years ago, humans were slaughtering animal species to extinction, the elephants being a prime example. Even with the loss of a major species, nature is resilient in the face of threats and continues to produce abundance. Monbiot cites written accounts from the Middle Ages when the seas around the UK were home to an extraordinary profusion of fish. But sadly, even this abundance has largely been exhausted as industrial fishing has stripped the sea of life.
He asks us to consider how the world should be and deliberately makes this assessment challenging. He asks us to look beyond the National Parks, which are monuments to farming practices over the last two hundred years, to the abundance that humans have destroyed. He condemns the Cambrian Hills near his home as a desert. Thousands of years ago, this area would have been dense forest, home to all types of indigenous trees, bears, wolves, elk, deer and eagles. It would also have been a prolific source of food, in the form of animals, nuts, tubers fruit and fungi. That has all gone, replaced by a desert of grass, close-cropped by sheep. He points out that sheep are not even a viable product. Without EU payments, sheep farmers would be destitute. In a very telling passage, Monbiot meets the Welsh Minister for Rural Affairs to ask her why policy is opposed to replanting trees. She points him to a report which she claims says that replanting releases additional carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Monbiot reads the report for himself. It says exactly the opposite. National Parks in Wales are being kept treeless because someone has misread a report.
The land of the UK should be largely forest with a rich ecology. Much of it still could be, except that a combination of inept leadership, greed and adherence to pointless activities combine to maintain the deeply unsatisfactory status quo.
He asks us to look back, over the full scope of what we have destroyed and commit ourselves to allow the natural world to reclaim the land. To stop following the practices that have made us poorer and embrace the diversity and richness of nature at work.
An obvious point here is: how do humans turn away from behaviours that have been present for thousands of years? Monbiot has advice on this issue. He suggests we rewild ourselves, as well as the land.
The monocultures that we have imposed on the land reflect the monocultures that we have imposed on ourselves. Anything unconventional is frowned upon, marginalised and in many cases legislated against. Access to the land is restricted. Convenience and safety dominate our lives. Monbiot pushes back with accounts of his experiences with indigenous people in their wild native lands. He reminds us that “We still possess the fear, the courage, the aggression which evolved to see us through our quests and crises, and we still feel the need to exercise them”. He suggests that we satisfy this primaeval need by getting closer to the planet, by getting to know how nature works and revering it.
The chapter, The Wild Hunt is a glorious, densely described account of a canoe fishing trip off the Welsh coast. The power of the sea, the elusiveness of the fish and the vulnerability of the man all jostle each other in this tale of elemental strength. There is more than a nod to Hemmingway’s The Old Man and the Sea.
We should not worship safety and convenience. We need to be in touch with the elements of the natural world to allow them to stretch and develop us. If humans are to have a future, it will be in harmony with nature, getting our hands dirty and our feet wet, not staring at a screen or trudging around a shopping mall.
