Perspectives from the Field: Non-Disruption and Non-Emissions as Cultural Resources

“T here is a danger,” write some wise Australian conservationists, “that as time goes by the ship of practice will have sailed so far from the ship of knowledge that there will be almost no way back and they will each have gone beyond the range of communication” (Byrne, Brayshaw, and Ireland, 2001). We would then be left, they warn, with “a cultural heritage field insulated against new thinking... and insulated from change” (Byrne, Brayshaw, and Ireland, 2001, p. 44). This is already happening in the United States (US). A symptom of this problem is the failure to update our definition of cultural resources to keep pace with the social (and other) sciences. Half a century ago, psychiatrists documented the health costs of disrupting people’s environment, yet we still haven’t acknowledged human habitat stability as a cultural resource. A quarter of a century ago, climate scientists documented the environmental costs of emitting carbon dioxide, yet we still haven’t recognized embodied carbon as a cultural resource. Environmental practice has lost touch with knowledge.