Again and again I hear and read that we should behave "ecologically" or "more naturally", that our destructiveness harms the "natural balance".
To me all these expressions seem to name something completely wrong: if we humans restrain ourselves and *don't* consume everything we can get to, *then* we act "unnaturally".
In the natural, species find their limit in their own efficiency: if the predator kills more prey than it needs to raise offspring, then there are simply fewer offspring, and the prey population can recover. (Yes, simplified.) This is just as true for herbivores. None of these animals stop preying or eating plants out of *consideration*. They just aren't powerful enough to destroy the whole earth, but we are.
You can see this very vividly in neophytes: the rabbits or cats in Australia, for example, which have wiped out quite a few local populations: a natural, ecological process. Only we humans are so unnatural to find this "a pity" and to want to preserve species that are no longer adapted to the current situation.
Let us act naturally: Death to the polar bears! Yess! They have no business on a warm world!
So it is also the *natural* behavior of humans to drain the earth and then experience a drastic population decline. An extreme decrease of the human population, everything edible for us we have eaten up until then.
That would be a *natural, ecological* sequence of events. And, in my opinion, *not desirable*.
But any other behavior is "value-based" rather than "natural". Sophisticated or civilized would perhaps be appropriate, but rather discredited words. Perhaps "ethical" is also appropriate here, at least in comparisons.
In this respect, I think a lot of "green" advertising for your ideas completely misses the point: we don't need to live more *naturally*, but more "ethically"!
That might win over a few more conservatives, too.
"Nature" may sound nice, but nature is death throes, annihilation of the inferior, extinction of the incompetent.
I am there more for some human values like compassion, compensation and survival for many. For intelligence and planning ahead, for impulse control and responsibility.
All concepts that hardly play a role in nature.
So: let's be less natural, more human! And that includes much up to technology. Without technology, we would have no choice. Let's design a desirable future and do and use everything - including technology - to make this desirable story a reality.