Background
How did we get here?
Moore and Patel propose that capitalism is based on the cheapening of seven things; the most important to be cheapened, nature. They say that the divide between humans and nature stems from the capitalistic world we live in today. John Soluri evidences that the creation of monocultures inherently alters the landscapes of nature creating these divides. Combining these ideas, it can be seen that monocultures create a divide between humans that are controlling nature and the world itself. In addition, the relationship between humans and the web of life as a whole is deteriorating as humans alter landscapes and treat nature as something to have control over.
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This divide has been an issue ever since the birth of capitalism when the value of resources in the ground is given once they are extracted. In monocultures, this happens when the plants are harvested. When they are harvested, they gain their value. However, when the plants are harvested, it also creates a divide between the people who are doing the harvesting and the land and Earth itself. This divide is growing deeper as humans alter the land in order to create more monocultures.
Land Alterations –> Deforestation
Humans alter the land in many ways. Most often land is altered by cutting down trees and forests. Deforestation is not the only way humans alter the land for profit, big corporations reroute rivers, build railroads, and leave the land all alone when they are done with it (Soluri). Rerouting rivers is a huge issue because it affects the whole ecosystem and how humans previously interacting with nature are no longer able to interact in the same ways as before. These people were previously living in the ecosystem and are forced to be part of the human nature divide because of how their world landscape changed. Even though they did not want to be part of the issue, they were sucked into the divide due to the capitalist world we live in.
Why should you care?
The divide between humans and nature is an issue because it causes rifts in the ecological systems that keep our world and everything on it alive. The crops harvested are not brought back through waste to the soil they were taken from. This leads to a lack of nutrients in the soil, and the plants over time strip the land of productive value. When the key nutrients are gone, plants lose the ability to grow on that land anymore. After the crops stop growing there, many times the companies will leave that site of extraction and go to a new one. The cycle repeats and nutrients continue to be stripped from the Earth and the landscape of the Earth continues to be altered. After the cycle continues to repeat, the Earth will never be the same again.
