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we do is without environmental consequence. The amplification of
our lives by technology grants us a power over the natural world
which we can no longer afford to use. In everything we do we must
now be mindful of the lives of others, cautious, constrained, meticu-
lous. We may no longer live as if there were no tomorrow.
There are powerful and growing movements in many nations of
people who refuse to accept these constraints. They rebel against
taxes, health and safety laws, the regulation of business, restrictions
on smoking, speeding and guns, above all against environmental lim-
its. Like the people who promoted the invasion of the Yanomami's
lands, they kick against the prohibitive decencies we owe to others.
They insist that they may swing their fists regardless of whose nose is
in the way, almost as if it were a human right.
I have no desire to join these people. I accept the need for limita-
tions, for a life of restraint and sublimation. But I realized, on that
grey day in Wales, that I could not continue to live as I had done. I
could not continue just sitting and writing, looking after my daughter
and my house, running merely to stay fit, pursuing only what could
not be seen, watching the seasons cycling past without ever quite
belonging to them. I had offered too little to that life, the life of the
spirit,
Which is not to be found in our obituaries
Or in memories draped by the beneficent spider
Or under seals broken by the lean solicitor
In our empty rooms 3
I was, I believed, ecologically bored.
I do not romanticize evolutionary time. I have already lived beyond
the lifespan of most hunter-gatherers. Without farming, sanitation,
vaccination, antibiotics, surgery and optometry I would be dead by
now. The outcome of mortal combat between me, myopically stum-
bling around with a stone-tipped spear, and an enraged giant aurochs
is not hard to predict.
The study of past ecosystems shows us that whenever people broke
into new lands, however rudimentary their technology and small their
numbers, they soon destroyed much of the wildlife  - especially the
larger animals  - that lived there. There was no state of grace, no
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