The essay embraces environmental problems and egoism, something that seems quite unrelated, but have, actually, very much to do with each other. Williams comments on words about environment, how it is "a bloodless word," and how little attention it gets from writers. The essay overall discusses the ways in which humans are engineering, manipulating nature to their own taste, human egoism, and the unnatural way of life we naturally have. Very briefly she mentions dinoseb, a pesticide "directly linked with birth defects" and its continuous use to kill weeds. Williams also criticizes the environmental sin of farmers to use such poisons and kill wild animals who go to their ranch for their livestock. Then, she moves on to "harvesting shrimp." Fishing shrimp isn't bad for itself, but the simultaneous catch of other sea creatures and their slaughter using TED is incorrect. Tourism, the next topic, grows inevitably and desirably, destroying the environment around with the creation of "concessions and motels" with "a clean bed and a hot meal [in] the wilderness." She brings to light the bizarre manipulation to protect animals, "track and tape and tag and band (...) relocate, restock, and reintroduce." Large projects, such as building a city in Everglades, are destroying the environment, because businesses can't stand only looking at "this ancient sea of grass." She implicitly mentions the lie humans tell about liking the environment. They like until it doesn't affect their lives, when it "looks pretty," when it is inside the norms of their tastes. "Nature becomes scenery, a prop. (...) Nature has become simply a visual form of entertainment." It even depends on the person in what type of nature to see; "see it dead or not dead," like in the International Wildlife Museum, "full of dead animals." There is Biosphere II, "a 2 1/2- acre terrarium, an artificial ecosystem" imitating several environments from different parts of Earth. Some lakes in Canada are being polluted for scientific experiments, but the time they take to recover is too long. Wilson proposes a solution to acid rain in order to exemplify the manipulation of nature to save nature by humans, turning trees into genetically engineered machines. Then, the human cling to its own comfort is shown, and strangely, told to "make babies" to solve the problem. Williams breaks the belief that recycling is saving much of nature, but actually, the decrease in produce is the only solution to the growing problem of pollution. If not solved, humanity will face horrible consequences. Some solutions to "the ecological crisis" are "have few desires and simple pleasures. Honor non-human life. Control yourself, become more authentic. Live lightly upon the earth and treat it with respect," etc.
The author constantly assumes the position of the reader. Although she is right on most of the cases, this assuming can decrease the quantitative truth in some readers. She frequently asks questions, including some meaningless, but answers them in a transparent way, assimilating much to a talk, rather than an essay. She uses a very casual way of writing, the tone very relaxed, without much formalities when there are words like "stuff" and pronoun "we." She usually comments on discussed issues in the last sentences of a paragraphs, making remarks like "products are fun." Her paragraphs could've been shorter, breaking them up when the subject changed. She changed topics abruptly, but logically, thus making such errors undetectable. She amusingly uses some illogical approaches for solving a problem, to "make babies" without minding nature. Her arguments aren't very credible, because she doesn't cite many studies on a discussed topic, or her experience, or accurate information on the examples, such as when she wrote about some "lakes in Canada" but failed to mention the location of the lakes, or the name of the lakes. The essay's title is quite unfitting to the topic, because the essay is not about saving the whales and screwing the shrimps, but about environment overall. Yet, that must be because she said, in the starting paragraphs, that the word "environment" is a "bloodless word" and doesn't supposedly call much attention than using the word "screw."
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