So! Just as with last week, when I presented the essay I wrote during my AP Literature class, followed by the essay I wish I had written instead; here is the essay I wrote during my AP Language class; and tomorrow I hope to post the essay I should have written instead of this one. (I may need a little extra time to finish the rewrite on this one, because it requires some research, and this has been a busy weekend.)

This essay is the Synthesis Prompt. The concept here is entering into a debate: the students are given six sources of information, which divide mostly evenly into two groups, one on either side of a controversial issue of some kind. The students are to synthesize information from these sources and present the two sides of the debate, and their own opinion on the topic — which can be on both sides, either side, or neither side.

The topic this year was urban rewilding, which is the practice of taking back some developed areas in a city and turning them into natural ecosystems, planting native plants and trying to encourage wildlife to live in the area, as well. This can take the form of anything from a rooftop or a vertical garden, to reclaiming vacant lots or empty buildings and turning them into natural green spaces. And while in most years, the topics don’t have a definitely “correct” or “incorrect” side — two years ago the question was about whether schools should teach cursive, which, good grief, who cares — this topic had such a clearly correct side that even the sources weren’t really on both sides: four of them were correct, and two of them were, well, sort of weaseling.

To be clear: the correct side is in favor of urban rewilding. The concrete tombs that we call cities are in desperate need of greenery, and our world is in desperate need of plants that can capture and sequester and convert more carbon dioxide, and the natural world needs not to be driven into extinction by our destruction of habitat.

And that was my problem: as I was reading the sources, I was looking for the two sides, and I just couldn’t find one of them. Not that I would argue against urban rewilding no matter what, but I couldn’t even take that side seriously. So by the end of reading the sources, I came to a decision: I was going to argue for neither side, with the appearance of arguing for the wrong one.

I don’t know that this is a bad argument, but it is not the argument I would like to make. It was fun to write, though, so here it is. Enjoy. If I can get my research done, I will write an argument stating why we should clearly, obviously, promote urban rewilding everywhere we can.

Urban rewilding is an effort to restore natural ecological processes and habitats in city environments. Many cities around the world have embraced rewilding as part of larger movements to promote ecological conservation and environmentally friendly design. Now, a movement to promote urban rewilding is beginning to take shape in the United States as well.

Carefully read the six sources, including the introductory information for each source. Write an essay that synthesizes materials from at least three of the sources and develops your position on the extent to which rewilding initiatives are worthwhile for urban communities to pursue.

Urban rewilding is an effort to restore natural ecological processes and habitats in city environments. It’s becoming more popular, and so the debate is heating up: is it worth putting effort into this? It seems like a positive concept, a valuable endeavor — but is it worth the effort? Would it be prohibitively expensive? Worse: could it be that this is only window dressing?

The answer is something else entirely. Urban rewilding is evil. It promotes precisely the wrong goal, by trying to bypass the actual issue. The actual issue is humanity. We are a blight upon the Earth, and we should be destroyed. Then and only then — when the last living human has returned to earth and dust — should our cancerous pustules, the monstrous toxic boils we call cities, be “rewilded” by the natural processes that will devour our waste as they devour our worthless corpses. [I am terribly disappointed in myself that I didn’t finish the “boils” metaphor by talking about lancing and draining the pus. Ah, well. Next time!] 

“More than 70% [of] projected extinctions of plants and animals would be counteracted by restoring only 30% of priority areas,” the infographic in Source A tells us. Sure, that seems like a wonderful trade-off — but it still includes the extinction of 30% of the species projected to die by our actions. You know what would preserve 100% of species that would otherwise go extinct thanks to human action? The extinction of the human race. Come on now: if 70% of species are worth saving by limiting humans, aren’t 100% of species worth saving by eliminating humans? Wouldn’t we trade 100% of species for the loss of only one? Of the worst one? This trolley problem isn’t even a problem.

Source B, I think, shows the heart of the issue: we are the most short-sighted, selfish, superficial beings imaginable. The idea here is to grow more life, more nature, inside our dark, dingy, dangerous, disgusting urban sprawls — and yet this policy brief feels it must sell this concept to the public. “Rewilding is a powerful new term in conservation,” it says. “This may be because it combines a sense of passion and feeling for nature with advances in ecological science. The term resonates. Rewilding is exciting, engaging, and challenging.” Look at that: saving the planet, living in a natural setting, respecting our fellow beings by not slaughtering them wholesale so we can build another goddamn Walmart: those appeals are not enough! Noooo, we need to market the brand, we need to sell it, we need to convince people. How disgusting is that? How disgusting are we?

Source C continues this. It presents a delightful scene of a friendly scientist helping the audience think back to their childhood: before they became polluters and exploiters of the natural world, when they were innocent (if we ever truly have been) and actually loved nature. Because, the TV host says, “if [we] don’t spend any time outside, why are [we] going to care about [our] local places let alone the national parks in the distance?”

WHY ARE WE GOING TO CARE?! Because this is not our world! Nature does not belong to us, we belong to nature! We need nature, it doesn’t need us! The graph in Source E shows it: more nature means less depression, less stress. Even we are happier when we don’t live in the world we are building. We destroy everything in order to benefit ourselves, and in so doing? We destroy ourselves. Even our attempts to remedy this, like Dr. Scott’s presentation in Source C, are performances given on television: they are artificial. Attempts to trick people into associating SAVING THE PLANET with some happy childhood memory of climbing a damn tree. Because without that emotional manipulation, without that chicanery, we would be far more likely to simply wipe out all life: including ourselves. 

Well. We should skip the middle step, and jump straight to the end game. If all humanity were reduced to windblown ash, then the rest of the natural world — the healthy part, the good part — could flourish, once more. Urban rewinding is clearly not the answer: even at its best, as presented in Source F, it can only create 600 hectares of parkland in Madrid, one of the biggest cities in Europe; or 300 km of park connectors in Singapore, one of the greatest sprawls in the world of human filth. Is it worth pointing out that even those attempts at rehabilitating the human virus focus primarily on the wealthy? That Toronto’s Beltway features “farmers’ markets, performance spaces, and a children’s garden,” but not a single breath of fresh air and a flash of green life for the poorest slums in the city?

No. It doesn’t matter. We are not worth saving, if we have to think this hard about saving our planet. I just hope that we are the first to go, so everything else can go on without us. To that end, let’s forget about urban rewilding: let’s just build ourselves to death.