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(2000) The environmental crisis, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan.
We might begin with two pictures, both of which are prominent talismans of a certain type of environmental consciousness. Consider, first, the Portuguese man-o"-war, phrysalia, whose 20-metre poisonous tentacles trail behind it, and whose sail floats, powered by the wind, drive it forward. Phrysalia is, it is now generally accepted, not an organism but a community. It is a community because each zooid, each of the individual components that makes it up, is derived from a complete multicellular organism. In effect, it consists of thousands of tiny individual animals, stitched together, sharing common purpose and common fate. Phrysalia should thus be assimilated to a colony of bees or ants, rather than to an individual organism. Each zooid is, of course, incapable of independent existence. And the nature and behaviour of each zooid cannot be understood in isolation from the whole of which it is a part. But the corresponding claims are both true for ants and bees also. And like bees in a hive, or ants in a colony, each of these animals knows its obligations and its place.
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Full citation:
Rowlands, M. (2000). "Where the danger is grows also that which saves", in The environmental crisis, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 1-16.
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