you know i'll peg a few remarks about the environment, nature, etc on a tom friedman column. i think we really need to reconceive this thing in a profound way. the basic models are: the world as an arena of resources, and a kind of "cult" of nature. the former model ranges from just "so let's strip the planet" to a more circumspect friedman-style economic model of renewable resources or "sustainability." that is, we still think of the environment as something we use or a technological object, but we have been chastened by various difficulties, and we're worried about long-term economic or health implications etc, esp energy. then there's a kind of picture of nature as a benevolent mother (or whatever), conceived in terms of a beautifully balanced system which we're disturbing, the romantic origin of the natural/artificial distinction. i would write about this for hours, but just a few basic principles: we are nature. there is no conceptual distinction between human effects on the environment and those of bees or beavers or volcanoes. probably once you get rid of the artificial you have gotten rid of the idea of nature as well, and that's ok; you cannot conceptualize this in terms of a separation or duality of any kind. second, "nature" or the environment or whatever is, as our activities but also geology or evolutionary biology show, volatile - as deranged as it is arranged, as chaotic as sensible, as destructive as nurturing, as stupid or arbitrary or fatal as benign. it's always subject to change from the excellent (from a species view) to the disastrous. there are provisional equilibria (like say the water cycle or something) and also conflagrations, collisions, mutations. if the earth is heating up, let's say, that is a perfectly natural event, and perfectly typical in the history of worlds.