Making an adequate response to our deteriorating environmental situation is a matter of ever increasing urgency. It is argued that a central obstacle to achieving this is the way that scientism has become normalized in our thinking about environmental issues. This is taken to reflect on an underlying "metaphysics of mastery" that vitiates proper engagement with the natural environment, in particular, by subverting sensitivity to its own normative and purposive character. It is argued that the dominance of scientism can be exposed and disrupted by attending to understandings of nature that are intimate, embodied and emplaced, and that these need to be heeded in public debate of environmental issues. (Contains 4 notes.)