“Solution Through Techniques and Action Was An Illusion”

Paul Shepard writes in the introduction to his book The Tender Carnivore and the Sacred Game:

Solution through techniques and action was an illusion.  Sufficient ecological data to guide the redirection of society toward environmental harmony has existed for more than thirty years, and surely there has been no lack of social change.  It seems that in staring at the environmental crisis we have missed the central spark of ecology itself, its unexpected connections to the whole of life.  Putting the environment "out there" external to us has made it invisible.  The failure of ecological action is not in our understanding of the cycles of the elements or readiness to change, but something that can be seen only by turning slightly away from it. . . If man’s environmental crisis signifies a crippled state of consciousness as much as it does damaged habitat, then that is perhaps where we should begin.  The secret lies in the darkness of the human cerebrum.  But to see it we must turn our eyes toward the sidelong glimmer of a distant paradise that seems light-years away.