Nature ISN'T fragile nor a bossy mother-in-law - top eco boffin The Green movement needs to rethink its philosophy from the ground-up. That's according to Peter Kareiva, a leading conservation expert and chief scientist for The Nature Conservancy, the world's biggest environmental group. It must abandon the idea that nature is "feminine" and in particular that it's "fragile", he said, …
If we all moved to mud huts and started burning cow shit for warmth the more fanatical greens still wouldn't be happy. They would then be kicking up a fuss and demanding we all start eating leaves.
Then when they won that they would insist we gave up our huts and reverted to living in the trees.
Just like religion, these dogmatic greens will always have some agenda more nutty than the last one.
In order to counter "dogmatic greens", we have Andrew and the boffin in this article asking us to "believe" in a robust nature that heals itself. And probably believe that Jesus can save us all anyway if the first hypothesis does not hold. The problem with beliefs shaping policy is that basically, they lead to decisions based on ignorance.
I prefer the current "green dogma" that acknowledges our ignorance of certain fields and recommends caution there.
We devote a large part of our land to sustaining humans, be it for food, dwelling or activity. This needs to continue because we need to preserve our species. However, with populations growing and land becoming scarce, we cannot afford to destroy land because moving to the next spot is not an option anymore. So yes to sustainable "farming" but no to destruction.
And we also need to preserve other parts of the ecosystem from human touch because we do not know what the consequence of their alteration would be. We know that a patch of forest can regrow but what do we know about regrowth if we wipe out all forests ?
clean_state Your comment makes a strong argument against your beliefs.
Population rates aren't rising, they're falling. Land isn't becoming scarce - as we live in urban areas, we use less land.
Much more importantly, we make much better use of the land - India doesn't have famines - it exports rice. People don't die of famines any more, starvation is caused by regional conflict. We have enough land to feed everyone.
All this is the result of prosperity - it came about by people ignoring arguments like yours about natural resource constraints - and doing inventing clever and useful ideas.
More importantly, as James Watt (R. Reagan's Secretary of the Interior) said, the end of the world is nigh, so we might as well cut down all the forests anyway.
'God has ordained it' seems a bit more profound than a 'greed is good' argument.
OTOH how's that rapture thing coming along?
"Population rates aren't rising, they're falling."
Not sure if that's what you meant but every day, and certainly for the next few decades, assuming BAU, there will be more and more people in this world. Add in the longer life-spans where people retire later in life (or never retire) and things are not looking good. Your sentence seems to be implying otherwise.
"Land isn't becoming scarce - as we live in urban areas, we use less land."
Wherever I look the price of good land keeps rising which suggests otherwise. I know China is trying to buy land left, right and center. Why do you think that is happening?
"We have enough land to feed everyone."
And yet the price of food keeps rising. Every year it takes a larger chunk out of our income. And if you think India is not facing major problems you are ill informed http://is.gd/AkzttY
"All this is the result of prosperity - it came about by people ignoring arguments like yours about natural resource constraints - and doing inventing clever and useful ideas"
Prosperity at a price. Americans & co have all the wealth but at the price of a 'work until you die' lifestyle. Well, You might get rich but you are far more likely to die first. The Chinese are following in their footsteps and sacrificing their poor and their natural environment for a 10% rise in GDP year after year.
I agree that those that call themselves environmentalists are often full of unattainable ideals and a weird idea that a life without technology was somehow better. But I truly believe you are living in the same la-la land as them, just in a different neighborhood. But there's no need to argue, you have already won. If you look at what is happening in the world you can see that most people will never sacrifice convenience for a chance at a better future. Not until it's waay too late.
Once again, you're repeating the philosophy (and rhetoric) Kareila criticises: that when humans do something good there must be a downside because we've harmed "Mother Nature". The downside will get us in the end. Stop, everybody!
Scientific innovation and technology transfer (to make sure it spreads around) are making people healthier and have more choices. It's that simple.
You are arguing that prosperity, good health, comfort, freedom, choices for women - all are bad. You think this is awful. The rhetorical device here is that there's a "price" - but you don't say what it is. We know what the costs are. We consider the benefits outweigh those costs.
You don't really have offer evidence of irreversible costs, or quantify them - just rhetorical devices ("Waaay too late" - er, for what?) and hand waving.
Example:
"Wherever I look the price of good land keeps rising which suggests otherwise. I know China is trying to buy land left, right and center. Why do you think that is happening?"
I can only guess what that means. Facts, figures needed please to make a convincing argument.
"If you look at what is happening in the world you can see that most people will never sacrifice convenience for a chance at a better future."
Yes, good - and why the hell should they sacrifice anything? Because you're shouting at them. Because you feel guilty about having these things yourself, so have to invoke an imaginary, ontological entity (Gaia) to make your case ethical somehow?
I think everyone should have the choices we have - and the prosperity we have. You're not convincing me why we can have them and others shouldn't at all. To me it just sounds like guilt.
"Animal populations naturally level out at the resource levels the environment can sustain"
Only in the presence of adequate predation/mortality rates.
Otherwise they vastly outrun their resources, crash, build up as resources recover and repeat the cycle.
Running a "foxes and rabbits" simulation shows this quite neatly if you remove all the foxes.
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Up until now, it has indeed been true that Nature is very resilient. Human activities have resulted in the extinction of occasional species, which is a tragic loss, but they have not seriously threatened human survival.
But our technological reach as humans keeps growing, and so do our numbers. We are starting to affect the environment on a global scale. The "ozone hole" which led to a need to ban CFCs was the first striking evidence of that to enter the public consciousness. Some of the early effects of global warming - polar bears threatened with interbreeding from grizzlies, the Great Barrier Reef threatened by ocean acidification, methane release from thawing permafrost - can be added to a list that also includes the fouling of huge areas of the Pacific Ocean by garbage produced by humans.
The radical environmentalists who had been crying "Wolf" before may not be the people to turn to advice even now, but that doesn't mean that the wolf hasn't finally arrived this time.
Sensible and sober advice, from people who respect the environment without being fringe activists, can show us the way out - if we can find the right people to advise us. And of course that's difficult what with everyone with an agenda, whether it's radical environmentalists or corporate shills trying to present themselves as qualified. The mainstream scientific community, though not perfect, is still the best resource we have.
I really dislike how environmentalism has become so misanthropic, even to the point of advocating population reduction at a pace that would make the depredations of Nazi Germany look merciful by comparison. And nature does need to be made to "work for people". After all, its people who actually can comprehend and appreciate nature. Wolves, trout and hawks don't have the mental aptitude to think "Wow, that's a great sunrise!" or "What pretty flowers". Essentially, without intelligent life to appreciate it, nature becomes so much empty real estate that is not providing inspiration/enrichment to anyone.
That being said, I'd be happier if mankind were more careful in making changes to the environment.
Ask any farmer, and he will tell you nature is a bitch on wheels with PMS!
And if Mother is in a bad mood long enough, city folk will learn of it.
Immediately after Republican Texas Governor Rick Perry claimed no global warming, Dallas was struck by unprecedented tornados, closely missing an important airport. Thank Jebus there is no global warming!
Sorry lads,if Southern USian republican politicos deny global climate change you are clearly on the wrong side!
"The Economic Man" does not grasp the Law of the Jungle. That is, "no grass, no lions", hold that down vote just a second, lion food eats grass, does it not ?
Whether you are a Wall St. Master of the Universe, or simply a week-end Social Darwinist, you have to admit that playing the game by the simplest rules you can think of will not end well.
What a stupid, stupid person.
First of all, the "Environmental Movement" is not whoever shouts about the environment loudest. There are many of us, who care a lot about the environment and actively do things to help protect it, who are NOT represented by the upper reaches of Friends of the Earth or supporters of Greenpeace's latest distortion of the facts. Just because a minority faction with a lock on the board of Friends of the Earth choose to think they represent the environmental movement when they misrepresent facts about, say, nuclear power, it does not mean they are representative of people who care about the environment. The author of this paper needs to reign in his rhetoric and think about who exactly he is criticizing. Am I wrong to care about how many species we are making extinct even now? Or to raise concerns about GM crops creating a vulnerable monoculture and putting the world's food supply in the hands of a few patent holders?
Secondly, there are sadly almost endless counter-examples that disprove his idea that humans can't cause large scale harm. Countless species we've wiped out, areas of the earth we've cleared of significant life, lakes, rivers we've polluted. His argument that "Nature" carries about as much weight as someone trashing your house and smashing everything and then saying: "but the House is still standing." For someone who wants to get away from characterising "Nature", he certainly seems to want to treat it as a unified, robust entity, rather than the collection of species and cycles that it actually is. There's no such thing as "Nature". If you wipe out a species of bird or destroy a forest, all that means is that they are gone. Not that because "Nature" still exists elsewhere that nothing has changed.
Thirdly, his idea that human convenience is the highest guiding principle when it comes to the environment is obnoxious and not very far-sighted. If we want to preserve standards of living and not destroy our environment, then the only logical behaviour is population control. Which we can achieve very effectively by educating and providing jobs for women. UK? Low birth rate. India? High birth rate. What logical consequence does he suppose there is to expanding forever along his guiding principle of 'whatever is best for humans'.
Fourthly, his rhetoric is really, really flawed. Nonsense about "fragility of Nature is a relatively modern idea." Well so are bacteria, microchips and biotech. Does he suppose that recent consideration of something makes it false? I expect he would be one of the first to leap up and down on any environmentalist for having a Golden Age mentality, but he's pretty quick to appeal to the past himself. Sure, worrying about how we might damage the ecosystem might be relatively modern. But so is our capacity to do so on a massive scale.
Speaking as an environmentalist who is pro-Nuclear, slighly skeptical about AGW (but very keen to get off fossil fuels for other reasons regardless) and very concerned with the damage we are doing through deforestation, species extinction and pollutions affects on our health (this is very bad time to be an infant in Beijing, health-wise), I have to say that yes, there are others in the environmental movement who annoy me when they try to claim a lock on it (e.g. FoE's anti-nuclear propaganda), but that doesn't mean this guy isn't talking rubbish. As far as I'm concerned, his piss-poor logic just puts him in the same category as the people he thinks he's condemning.
Why is he talking rubbish? If I were you I'd give your arguments a good shake to see how well they stand up. To me, you've got a worldview that is based on several assumptions about constraints and innovation, which in practice, don't stand up.
"If we want to preserve standards of living and not destroy our environment, then the only logical behaviour is population control"
OK, you want coercion - control, the removal of choice from people. Fine. But increasing prosperity is the best known contraceptive there is - fertility falls to replacement levels (or below-replacement levels). That's a choice made by individuals - and why it's called "desired fertility".
(By the way, "preserving a standard of living" aka a static economy is not a goal for anyone except a few cranks. High growth is the goal.)
Basically you've lumbered yourself with an argument that ignores the reality that a) we can do more with less. b) we invent things all the time. The UK in the 1990s grew, and used fewer resources than it did in the 1980s. We have more forests now because we don't need to chop down trees for wood. We can leave uranium in the ground, because we have thorium.
So your predictions of doom can only come true if we stop doing the basics we've always done - find better ways of doing things. And you say Kareiva is unrealistic, and misunderstands your philosophy? I think he understands your philosophy pretty well. He's really nailed it.
Oddly enough, Andrew. I agree with most of your articles and I like them too. But first off, you have to appreciate that I consider myself an environmentalist - just as many, many other people do even though we argue violently against some of the people who *claim* to represent the environmentalist movement. I'm a bloody borderline AGW skeptic (I'm not denying, just not fully convinced we're as sure as we think) and I still support RSPB and get involved in various other environmental campaigns where I agree with them! So when the writer starts talking about "environmentalists this..." or "environmentalists that...", the first thing you should understand is that I consider him to be talking about ME. That's what I mean when I write that he needs to go back and have a little think about whether he's attacking who he thinks he's attacking. I would like to say to him: "you keep using this word environmentalist. I do not think it means what you think it means."
Now regards the two bones you decided to pick with my post. You wrote:
"OK, you want coercion - control, the removal of choice from people. Fine. But increasing prosperity is the best known contraceptive there is - fertility falls to replacement levels (or below-replacement levels). That's a choice made by individuals - and why it's called "desired fertility".
If it were that or breeding to the point of societal collapse through exceeding the environment's ability to support ourselves, then yes, at that point I think we'd have to look at coercian. But the VERY NEXT SENTENCE after you cut off my quote, reads: "Which we can achieve very effectively by educating and providing jobs for women." You're actually incorrect when you say that it is "prosperity" that means reduced birth rates. Look at several rich Middle Eastern countries where there is a great deal of affluence and massive families. The actual factor is female empowerment. A more educated and employed female population both gives women opportunities to do something other than produce children and empowers women to say "no". To say that I am for population control at the barrel of a gun is like saying that I would kill someone who kept coming round my house uninvited. Yes - eventually as an absolute final ever resort I might whack them round the head with something, but before that point there would be dropping hints, dropping stronger hints, telling them I was busy, not answering the doorbell, calling the police, getting friends to chase them away, mocking them publically. As asking them not to come round normally works, just as female empowerment and reduction of infant mortality works, why immediately accuse me of wanting to resort to coercian when I've already stated my preference for an ethical and effective approach which we know works?
You also wrote: "(By the way, "preserving a standard of living" aka a static economy is not a goal for anyone except a few cranks. High growth is the goal.)"
That's another fragmented quote.
"If we want to preserve standards of living and not destroy our environment..."
We are currently subsisting off fossil fuels. That is logically not sustainable unless you think coal and oil are renewing themselves. The first thing we should be doing, and we need to be doing this now, is massively promoting nuclear power. Fukishima released no significant nuclear fallout in the grand scheme of things, but the media fallout is doing terrible damage. If we are to - yes - preserve our standards of living at the current rate, we cannot do it by living off fossil fuels forever. You want another example more bio-ey? We are currently destroying rain forest faster than it can be replaced (by us or unaided) so that we can grow soybeans to feed cattle for the American meat market. That is not sustainable. If the Americans want to continue to guzzle beef at the same rate they have been then they have to either start vat growing artificial meat, or they have to reduce their population until in balance. With other countries around the world aspiring to the same unhealthy diet as well, they can again only do this by a fall in population until equilibrium or better is achieved. I am unapologetic about raising population control. You say we should be focused on growth. Well I'm all in favour of that when it comes to wealth causing our living standards to rise, but logically if we keep growing in terms of population, our living standards will drop at some point. Logically.
I'm going to leave this here now because I have work to do (sorry), but also because I think, I don't know which, that some phrase or element of what I wrote set you off on a pre-conception of who you were talking to. You comment:
"So your predictions of doom can only come true if we stop doing the basics we've always done - find better ways of doing things. And you say Kareiva is unrealistic, and misunderstands your philosophy? I think he understands your philosophy pretty well. He's really nailed it."
is odd when so much you wrote about what I think is actually at odds with what I do think (and wrote). Where am I a predictor of DOOM? I'm pretty optimistic about the future. If you gave me a baseball bat, access to parliament and a one day immunity to prosecution, I'd move that up to "very optimistic". But probably it was my rather rude title that triggered your preconception. Sorry, but I'm unapologetic about that as well. I DO think that his argument is stupid. My original post gives the reasons why. Fallacies like an Appeal to the Past and the ever seductive golden age mentality of our ancestors knowing best ('we never used to think we could damage the environment'), fallacies like saying "Nature" carries on when there is no such thing as "Nature". If a species is wiped out, it's still wiped out even if you point at another species that survived and say: "look 'Nature' still survives'.
Basically, as far as I'm concerned, Kareiva's writings above can be lumped in with the brochure FoE sent me telling me why Wind Farms are good and nuclear is bad. Let the poor arguers on both "sides" go off into a room somewhere and shout at each other whilst the rest of us get on with looking after this planet the best we can.
Peace - this is one of those rare columns of yours I disagree with. I think you must just have been in a snarky mood so I send you spiritual cupcakes and put it down to misunderstandings.
From where comes the romantic notion that animals do not damage their environment? The modus operandi of an animal is to consume its immediate environment then starve or move on; any 'natural balance' is an accidental by-product of death or enforced migration. The only creature on this planet that I am aware of that makes the slightest attempt to consciously ameliorate its effect on the environment is, dare I say it, Man.
I do not think we need headline-grabbing notions of 'Mother Nature's fragility' or 'bossy mothers-in-law' to see this; just a pair of eyes. We are all trying to survive, and Man's intelligence gives him the undoubted ability to avoid killing the 'golden goose' that gives him food and shelter. And for all his imperfections I think he is doing a better job than anything else on the planet. Not with an ideological 'silver bullet', but with an uneasy, but necessary coupling of the dreamers' dreams and the capitalists' capital.
I once had an interesting chat with a Eco-fundamentalist. She was almost frothing at the mouth at how the human race was destroying the planet, and how it must change NOW!
I asked her one question - "do you have any children", she replied "yes - four".
I pointed out to her that SHE was part of the problem that she describes, and that to save the planet from the human race, she should have set an example by having no children at all. She then went off into another rant that it was a womans right to have children..... I pointed out that it is NOT a right, it is a gift of nature, but if humans are the cause of nature's downfall, why did she create four more humans to speed it's destruction?
Up to that point, she hadn't thought one bit about what she was doing in life, or indeed her part of the ecosystem.
We have an affect on the planet. But unless we blow this rock to bits, or some how lose the atmosphere, it will survive beyond the human race, maybe not in the way that it was in 1923, but it'll still be here.
It's called evolution.
It is a mistake to think the Earth is a perfectly balanced, harmonious, self-regulating unity, because it's not. Life has nearly destroyed itself in the past, such as during the Great Oxygenation Event. On the other hand, it is also a mistake to think that the planet can recover from anything we do to it. (It probably will, but on a geological/evolutionary time scale, not a human one.)
Humanity is changing the world, and will continue to do so. What is important is that we be aware and conscious of the changes we make, and ensure that it will still be habitable for future generations.
I hate it when "opinion formers" conflagerate independent ideas to make a false arguments.
Yes, many Greens are misanthropic
Yes, Nature is robust, as in some DNA based life forms will continue to inhabit earth for a very long time
Yes, degradation of habitats have impacts on society
Yes, mankind is having a major impact on the global eco-system
Put these together and you always get.... "And do as I say!"
This applies to all sides of all arguments!
I really enjoyed reading your article and overall wholeheartedly agree that a grand rethink is necessary in green spheres about the relationship between man (and woman) and nature and how to communicate with the public.
What I strongly disagree is with your condescending views on the typification of nature as either the fragile female victim or castrating bitch. A word on me, I am the furthest thing from a raging feminist, having a firm belief that I AM equal to men and would never dream of burning my bras.
In human history, as will teach you any books on symbols, mythology or anthropology, nature is part of the great feminine archetypes, as giving and sustaining life. The problem is not that nature is feminine, it is that feminine attributes and values are still repressed in our disconnected society overly based on masculine values. Communicating by reframing nature as being more masculine may be easier, but I fail to see how it will solve the core issue.
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