To describe the forests of the world as its ‘lungs’ does no harm, and it might do some good if it encourages people to preserve them. But the rhetoric of holistic harmony can degenerate into a kind of dotty, Prince Charles-style mysticism. Indeed, the idea of a mystical ‘balance of nature’ often appeals to the same kind of airheads who go to quack doctors to ‘balance their energy fields’. But there are profound differences between the way the organs of a body and the species of a community interact with each other in their respective domains to produce the appearance of a harmonious whole.
