On Claims of Defending Nature

 

Ah, nature. Everyone loves it!

 

Here on the left, we want to protect nature from human-caused climate change and pollution. The right counters, "Our scientists say there is no climate change!" Well, ok, but 99.5% of scientists agree that climate change due to our production of greenhouse gasses is indeed happening. Those are some really. . . unusual scientists you're citing. 

 

The redhat right has its own claim about needing to protect nature. They cry that people on the left are violating the laws of the nature of sex! Nature dictates and the nation requires a sex binary of men and women who are eager to marry and produce children, they say. But instead, the left is full of gender transitions and queer people and crazy cat ladies, leaving the real men of America bereft of the loving, attractive wives they deserve! 

 

Here's the thing. You can cause harm to natural beings and settings. You can kill off the vast herds of buffalo that once roamed the plains, or genocide a people, or poison a lake. But you cannot violate the laws of nature. The law of gravity has never needed to be encoded in human legislation, because nobody can decide to violate it and just float around!

 

A sure way to tell that a behavior is natural is to see it occurring around you while a group of reactionaries squeals that that's unnatural and works to pass laws against it. Like the laws that banned same-gender sexuality, or same-gender marriage, now overturned. Like the current executive orders banning teachers from recognizing a student's trans identity, detransitioning people on their passports, erasing the word "transgender" from federal websites, and declaring that to be trans is counter to biological fact. 

 

You know what you don't see? Laws or executive orders banning people from reproducing asexually by budding like a yeast does. After all, that would violate cisheteropatriarchy at least as much as queer parenting does! But humans can't bud like yeasts, because that would violate the laws of nature. Cultural reactionaries know this, so haven't led movements to ban it, because they're not worried we'll take it up as a practice.

 

When the left cries out to protect nature, we're not claiming that factories and trucks are violating the laws of nature by pumping out greenhouse gasses that raise the earth's temperature. On the contrary, we are saying that the laws of nature dictate that if we keep doing what we are doing, the result will be disastrous for us. It will naturally get too hot and as a result we will naturally see fires and floods, crop failures and sinking coastlines. That's scientifically sound.

 

When the right bellows that we must stop unnatural behavior, it's trumpeting nonsense. Unnatural behavior doesn't occur. Across the whole animal kingdom, you find species engaging in same-sex activity. You find intersex statuses in every species that exists. You find males that get pregnant and females that turn into males.

 

So: not all claims of "defending nature" are the same! Some are reasonable, and some are bunk.

 

Food for thought!