Human Dominion and the Biodiversity Crisis

The idea of humans subduing the earth is fast losing ground to more inclusive views

If or when Moses sat down to inscribe Genesis 1:28 he obviously had no idea of the trouble he would cause around 3000 years later.

For just as we now know that Moses probably wasn’t the author, we’re also coming to realize that giving humans ideological dominion over all other species was probably a bad idea.

Yet the words are quite beautiful: “And God said to them ‘Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.”

Empowering, but unfortunately a poisoned chalice, as we’ll discuss later.

But now let’s skip forward a few millennia to New York in 1969.

Another legend has it that folk singer Joni Mitchell was stuck in a hotel room waiting to appear on a show.

She apparently flicked on the television and watched a chaotic music festival unfolding just 170 km (100m) to her north.

She channeled her frustration at not being able to attend into writing one of the great pop/folk anthems of the era.