The environment at 2000: 'A tremendous number of layers'

Any summary of a complex entity like 'the environment' is bound to be labry nthtine and incomplete. Historical investigation shows that we live in a pa rtially humanised world yet one with enough independence in the non-human c omponents to suggest that 'nature' has some autonomy. Our models of that ot her world are many and diverse and involve the whole of human culture. It i s not surprising therefore that our interaction with 'nature' is bound up w ith questions of identity which transcend the merely economic. If that lead s to the search for a Utopia then its failure to recognise cultural and nat ural diversity is very likely to produce all kinds of disharmony.