Know Your Enemy

"The biggest handicap that conservation faces is that we humans still consider ourselves to be separate from the rest of life, and the rest of life is merely there to support us. It is infantile arrogance. How can anyone think we’re in some way abiotic? It’s nonsense. If I were to say, for instance, there was a parity of importance between myself and something living out in the woods, people wouldn’t understand that because we’re conditioned culturally and socially to think that we are the most important thing."

Fresh from firing shots at the Countryside Alliance, the National Trust and the Wildlife Trusts (provoking the former into furiously demanding his sacking by the BBC), Chris Packham trains his sights on the damaging consequences of anthropocentric attitudes.

As Zoe Williams' commentary makes clear, it's ludicrous that Packham's moderate, rational, compassionate views are being lambasted as radical and dangerously subversive. Still, this seems to be par for the course these days - see also Jeremy Corbyn's depiction in the media...

(Thanks to Chris for the link.)