A Gentle Force of the Wilderness

Wabakimi is bigger, wilder, and prettier. It has more lakes, more rivers, and more woodland caribou than anywhere else. One of the ironies of this area is that right now it is very little traveled. That is attractive to people who find Quetico Provincial Park and Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness overcrowded. Now they want to come here and pretty soon this will be overcrowded. The basic problem on this planet is we have too many people. We not only have too many people, but we also have too many greedy people; selfish people, some of whom are ignorant. They are trying to kill the earth.

There was a Greek philosopher in 500 BC who said, If horses had religion, their gods would look like horses. Humans pretend to worship a whole host of gods, but what we really worship is people. We are not only individually selfish, we are a selfish species. We think we are the only important species. We think other species are secondary or irrelevant. Very few of us realize we are part of the biosphere, that we are animals, and if we are overpopulated or stupid, it’s not even good for us. Most people don’t seem to get that. They think meat comes in styrofoam from a supermarket, and magically appears from all over the world. We’re in big trouble. I’m not very optimistic about our future, but I remain somewhat hopeful. If you didn’t remain hopeful, life would be totally depressing instead of semi-depressing.

There was a time when the planet was mostly wild with small urban areas and relatively small agricultural areas. Now most of the planet is agricultural, logged, mined, or urban, and there isn’t much wilderness left. I truly believe all we set aside for nature in the next 5 or 10 years is all we will ever have. The biosphere is in trouble. The problem is humans. We are the most dangerous animal ever to stalk this planet.

Technologically, we’re clever. But we’re not good at saying no to ourselves. We just can’t do it. Emerging new technology is mostly good, but some of our technologies we should un-invent, but we aren’t capable of it. We never say no to ourselves and our toys.

 I’m a good example: I am a hypocrite. I’m the author; when I was a member of the Canadian Parliament, of the only climate change bill ever passed in the House of Commons. Our prime minister at the time, a Conservative, killed it in the Senate. On the other hand, I’m a hypocrite I have an airplane, a truck, a snow machine. I want everybody else to conserve, but not me!

I have a brilliant son. When he was 5 or 6 years old, he said, "Dad, can I tell you my formula for pollution? Pollution = overpopulation times greed times stupidity." I’ve been thinking about that for 20 years. I can’t improve on his formula. We have too many greedy people and too many ignorant people. It will probably be the death of us. If we don’t totally go extinct as humans, we are certainly going to get knocked back to a sustainable level at some point. There is a carrying capacity on the planet for every animal. Humans are way beyond their carrying capacity. There is a certain justice if we wipe ourselves out, but it isn’t fair for the thousands of other species we are taking with us.