Imagine this: All of humanity disappears tomorrow.

Cities are left uninhabited, cars stay parked on the side of the street and streetlamps stop lighting up the night sky; nature is finally left on its own. To some, the death of humanity is an ecological dream. Of course, it’s a hypothetical dream — only the most extreme would actually argue for mass extinction as a positive. Yet the sentiment that we are inherently bad for the world seems to run rampant in environmentalist circles. Our actions are undoubtedly speeding up the degradation of the natural world, and it’s difficult for that not to manifest in the deprecation of the entire human race.

However, it’s not in the nature of humans to destroy the environment. It’s the modes by which capitalist, contemporary society functions that destroy nature — modes that destroy us just as much as they destroy our surroundings.

 As those in power expend more resources to increase their economic and industrial growth, carbon emissions and the destruction of nature only increase. Accordingly, lower-income communities face the most dire consequences from climate change, all while being pushed down by extreme wealth disparities. 

Regarding humanity as inherently destructive completely disregards the parts of humanity that clearly aren’t. It can’t be forgotten that many Indigenous communities continuously cultivate symbiotic relationships with the environment, fighting to protect the environment rather than destroy it. 

Non-destructive societies are deemed less human than destructive ones because it benefits those in power to convince people that the systems they’ve put in place are naturally supposed to be like that. Doing so cements capitalist and colonialist ideals as something inherent to humanity, blocking us from any chance at truly moving away from those imposed frameworks.

Once our connection to nature is dehumanized, it gives us leeway to accept that we are the problem. We end up wallowing in nihilistic defeat instead of realizing that the mindset of taking land, subjugating workers, exploiting resources, waging war and establishing hierarchical power structures all benefit extractivism as much as they hurt us. 

Demonizing ourselves places us at a crossroads of whether to save humanity or nature. And, in environmental activism, it’s often easier to pick nature. 

At UC Berkeley, a campus that prides itself on being ecologically friendly while silencing pro-Palestinian protests and refusing divestment from Israel, it’s clear that the university is taking on a form of safe environmentalism. It’s not seen as politically extreme to tout the benefits of recycling and solar panels. On the other hand, combining environmentalist action with a fight for human rights is more controversial and difficult to pull off. Since it threatens the established systems of power, human-centered environmentalism is silenced.

While institutions such as UC Berkeley may feel comfortable acknowledging the importance of decreasing our resource consumption, they fall silent when it comes to opposing a genocide that promotes consuming more resources to gain more power.

Even with human rights activism unrelated to issues of climate change, learning to care for ourselves is a way of learning to care for the planet — learning to care for life and well-being over profit and power. 

Humans can’t help the environment if we are too busy destroying each other. Climate change activism requires human rights activism, but we will never be fully comfortable doing that if we’re too busy being ashamed of our humanity. 

Instead of simply supporting a green world, support a society that is better equipped to take on a green world, a society that doesn’t prioritize the few in power. However, a society like that can only come to fruition when we stop subjugating people for political and economic gain.

 So start supporting those people as well. Stand against oppression and genocide and demand that larger organizations do so as well. Vote, protest and boycott not only for the sake of us, but also for the sake of the world.

As students attending a university that claims to lead the way in environmental progress, we need to hold UC Berkeley to that standard. This starts with a change in the way that we view our place in the world, as one that requires just as much of a battle as our fight for the environment.