Do we need nature?

[purpletigron]

"Nature's such messy, difficult stuff... doesn't it just get in the way of making money?"

Are you bored, feeling like you need a challenge?

Here's your chance: Shell Oil Company and the Economist are looking for essays on the subject of:

"Do we need nature?"

There are real prizes at stake here! An original 2000 word essay can compete for:

1 x USA$20,000 Gold prize and publication in The World in 2004(published by The Economist)
2 x USA$10,000 Silver prizes
5 x USA$5000 Bronze prizes

This is an international competition (but the essay must be written in English...). The submission deadline is midnight GMT [NB that timezone, and it's not BST] on Friday 22nd August 2003. All the competition information and the entry form are available at www.shelleconomistprize.com

Good luck!

Comments

[purplecthulhu.livejournal.com]

Are you going to enter?

[purpletigron.livejournal.com]

I've got a few ideas :-) Rest assured, you'll be asked to beta any essay which does emerge :-)

If I ever see Nature, I'll tell you :)

[overconvergent.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure that anything in Britain really counts as natural any more. Humans have been changing the environment for a very long time.

I come from East Anglia, near the southernmost of the Norfolk Broads. They look lovely and natural-ish, but it takes a lot of ceaseless human effort to keep them looking natural. If you leave them to their own devices, then they silt up and eventually become oak woodland, which is lovely but not what the Broads are about.

The Broads are actually man-made IIRC - people cut a LOT of peat out of the landscape, and the holes filled with water ...

Even the natural bits of California were once used heavily by humans - the National Park people spend a lot of time keeping them "pristine" (maybe this is an oxymoron).

Re: If I ever see Nature, I'll tell you :)

[purpletigron.livejournal.com]

I come from Cambridge, and you're right about the Broads.

I'm not sure about your definition of Nature - you seem to be using it to mean `unaltered by human influence', whereas I think even the Economist is thinking of `the biosphere'. We are, after all, part of the biosphere, so human influence is `natural' in that sense...

Re: If I ever see Nature, I'll tell you :)

[overconvergent.livejournal.com]

I'd reply that if we're not careful then the word "natural" loses all of its meaning - if everything we do is natural then there's no problem. As long as we survive there will be a biosphere, even if it's just us, rats, cockroaches and very large vats full of soy and algae.

I think that a more interesting question to ask is "is an *interesting* biosphere important?" where interesting means that there are animals & plants that aren't either parasites on us or exploited by us.

I'd answer yes, as I quite like biodiversity for aesthetic reasons (animals on Discovery Channel programs, National Parks etc) and because we can't bring extinct animals back without technology that we don't have. Best to save it *before* you need "Jurassic Park" to recreate it :-)