Edward O. Wilson of Harvard University has written and lectured widely in fields ranging from sociobiology and evolutionary psychology to conservation biology. He spoke recently on “sustainability” at Baldwin-Wallace College in Berea, Ohio. Wilson believes that too much emphasis has been placed on trying to reduce energy consumption and avert climate change—what he calls the “physical environment”—and too little on preserving habitat and biodiversity, or the “living environment.” For Wilson, preserving the living environment means protecting areas of the world with the most concentrated biodiversity. He also believes that poverty is a critical factor that needs to be addressed to achieve a sustainable world. Freelance science writer Diana Steele excerpted his remarks:
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The tragedy unfolding in our ignorance, in our preoccupation with strictly physical environments, is that human action is destroying countless species and even ecosystems before we even know they existed. Many of them are millions of years old; all of them are exquisitely adapted to some particular part of the environment.… If you save the living environment, that’s the rest of life around us, and the full diversity of it, then you will automatically save the physical environment too. But if you save only the physical environment and ignore the living environment, you will ultimately lose both.…