Fulco Pratesi on Nature, Spinoza, and the Future of the Planet

Fulco Pratesi, architect and founder of WWF Italia, now honorary president, shares his vision of the future in an interview. Born in Rome in 1934, he cites Nature as his only artistic inspiration. His most representative project is creating an association for environmental and biodiversity defense, now a leading global environmental organization. He believes the past, even recent, offers useful lessons for the future, especially regarding the devastation of nature. For young people, he advises considering every life form on the planet as important and non-replicable once destroyed, from whales and sequoias to the most insignificant insect and plant. On the concept of the sacred in a post-truth era, he links it to Baruch Spinoza's 'Deus sive Natura,' a new pantheism unwelcome to many world religions. He imagines the future as a continuation of uncontrolled population growth and greedy, irresponsible consumption, seeing no real signs of repentance from Homo sapiens, which has doubled its invasive presence in the last fifty years to the detriment of the planet.