Iconoclasm - questioning heroes and ideals, and even tearing them down - can be the most difficult thing. Many people root their attitudes and lives in narratives that they hold to be self-evidently true. So it's obvious that changing conservation isn't going to be an easy furrow to plow.
However, change it must. Conservation's achievements don't alter the fact that it's rooted in two serious and related mistakes. The first is that it conserves "wildernesses," which are imagined to be shaped only by nature. The second is that it believes in a hierarchy, with superior, intelligent human beings at the top. Many conservationists still believe that they are uniquely endowed with the foresight and expertise to control and manage so-called wildernesses and that everyone else must leave, including those who actually own them and have lived there for generations.
These notions are archaic; they damage people and the environment. The second also flouts the law, with its perpetual land grabs. For nature's sake as well as our own, it's crucial to expose how these ideas grew and flourished...
By Harold Brubaker, The Philadelphia Inquirer | 04.04.2024
Aggregated News
Acompany started by University of Pennsylvania scientist Jim Wilson has received FDA approval to test a form of gene editing in infants for the first time in the United States, the company said Thursday.
A Mexican standoff with the United States turned into a Mexican smack-down this month with the release of Mexico’s formal rebuttal to US efforts to overturn limits Mexico has ordered on the use of genetically modified (GM) corn and the...
The U.S. government must move “quickly and decisively” to avert substantial national security risks stemming from artificial intelligence (AI) which could, in the worst case, cause an “extinction-level threat to the human species,” says a report commissioned by the U.S...
The Center for Genetics and Society is fiscally sponsored by Tides Center, a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization.
Please visit www.tides.org/state-nonprofit-disclosures for additional information.