Environmentalism as a science

Seeking to develop environmentalism as a science, it makes us explore the scientific and bibliographic horizon. We have understood that studying biology or ecology does not define our normal relationship of humanity with itself and with the environment (ortho-environmentalism), so we must explore the sources that allow us to really understand it..

In this opportunity we will comment on what we find as a source in the vision of Vladimir Vernadsky. This author developed in his theory contributed in the framework of the Russian cosmism, that our planet evolved or had succession in three clear periods:

1 Our planet at the mercy of the elements, the energy, the media, in the primordial period of the geosphere, to give way to the other two.

2 Then life and ecological succession appeared, living beings helped to shape the face of the planet, it is called the biosphere era..

3 Perhaps as a higher part of the same phase of the biosphere, species with individuals with intelligence arise, which finally dominated humanity, owner of the transforming ingenuity, phase that Vladimir Vernadski calls noosphere (noos: from Greek intelligence)..

For environmentalism as a science, this vision gives us some understanding of humanity in its biological and ecological significance.

Our species belongs to the biological diversity, but its linear taxonomic study does not reveal our ecological niche and our transforming role in the areas we occupy, with greater or lesser density.

More difficult is to try to find how our populations are embedded within each ecological community and each ecological level, we know of no studies or visions.

We seem to believe that we are outside the environment, from another location, as if we were on an observation balcony or as if we were looking into a fish tank.

When mankind developed naturism, conservationism, biology and ecology, environmental groups or ecologists, also each of the creations or developments impresses us was made from a position outside the community, outside the ecosystem or other ecological level.

In the vision of many, it is as if the populations of humanity are not integrated and interrelated with other populations of other species in a clear notion of community or as part of an ecological level. This goes on and on, despite the reference of the Stockholm Summit in 1972, which stated that we are not outside nor are we masters of the environment but just another factor. It is a vision of a supranatural noosphere.

Making an analogy for the development of the basis of environmentalism as a science, if our planet is considered as an organism, taxonomy and ecological levels (ecosystems, biomes, bioregions, biosphere, planet) would represent anatomy. While the world of relationships, ecology would be physiology. The noosphere, as explained in the previous paragraph, would have no place in this consideration.