David Peat

160 From Certainty to Uncertaintyor paper?” What on earth are we supposed to answer? We’ve been toldthat plastic is a “bad thing” and so we’d better choose paper bags. Butpaper bags often get thrown away. Their manufacture is a pollutingprocess and their production involves cutting down trees. Plastic bags,on the other hand, are reusable and once they have ripped they can bethrown away as biodegradable matter. On the other hand, their manufactureinvolves the consumption of the world’s nonrenewable oil resources.The supermarket has put the onus of choice on us, the consumer,but in the end the best we can do is toss a coin and choose oneor the other. Of course people who live in smaller communities stillmake their purchases at local shops where they can use cloth bags orbaskets to carry home their daily groceries.There is a host of similar questions that arise, and in each case wewant to know what the right action is for each situation. Even expertsare divided on many of these questions. The photographer and environmentalistMark Edwards has spent his life documenting what hasbeen happening to our planet, as well as noting what has been occurringwithin the various environmental movements. For Mark these issuesare not so much questions as “disturbances.” They are part of themany small issues in daily life that worry and concern us—in otherwords, that disturb us.The problem is that we have been so accustomed to living withcertainty that we assume every crossroads must contain a right andwrong road. In the bygone world of Aristotelian logic if one choice isright then the other must be wrong. But in our modern world neitherchoice may be exactly right. The issues have become so complex thatevery action resonates through the environment in unpredictable ways.When it comes to costs and benefits, it is increasingly difficult to putan exact price on the consequences of our action. What is more, theremay be no “correct” fixed answer. Take, for example, the issue of wastepaper.Areas of the world cut down trees to turn them into pulp for ourbooks, newspapers, packaging, and a host of other products. In turnthese areas are replanted, often with monocultures. Naturally peopleturned to the idea that paper should be recycled and anyone who wasecologically minded made sure that the cartons, books, and paper suppliesthey bought were all made from recycled paper. But now some