The Silent Running Fallacy

The Silent Running Fallacy: "the mistaken belief that human industrial civilization can survive apart from nature. It’s this fallacy that leads countless well-intentioned people to argue that nature is an amenity, and should be preserved because, basically, it’s cute." It is definitely a dangerous idea and akin to the idea that if an economic need can be defined that somehow nature will meet that demand. The Silent Running Fallacy was appropriately named by John Michael Greer in his blog The Archdruid Report. He goes on to say "Yet nature is not an amenity, and the “practicality” that leads current political and business leaders to ignore the disastrous consequences of their own actions doesn’t deserve the name. If anything, industrial civilization is the amenity, and it’s not particularly cute, either. Nature can survive without industrial humanity, but industrial humanity cannot survive without nature – no matter how hard we pretend otherwise, or how enthusiastically we stuff our brains with science fiction fantasies of electronic reincarnation and the good life in deep space."