24 December 2008

Deep Green Thoughts, Pt III

At the conclusion of the last segment, we had just established that saving the earth so humans can still live on it is in fact ok. We have also, if you missed it, established that we (humans) are not the enemy (and neither are phragmites). So it’s no use taking the extreme approach of laying the blame on the species as a whole. We are subject to the same laws as every other species on the planet, and that leaves us with a choice: a) keep going the way we’re going, and allow the species to die out in some form of massive catastrophe as our resources run out, or b) change our ways. There’s no particular ethical value to one choice or another, unless, of course, you place value on the preservation of the human species (I do).

So where do we even start, if we want to save our species? Well, it would make sense to start with the root of our ability to survive. What do we need that we absolutely must have not to die out? I’ll give you a minute to think about it.

Ok, if you said food, you’re close. But there’s something we need in order to even procure food. Have you guessed it yet? Air and water. And not just air and water- but clean air and clean water. Without air- well, we’d be dead, and without water, we’d have no means of growing food or catching food or whatever method you choose. I leave it up to you to come up with anything more basic that isn’t elemental (or just plain silly, like gravity. Obviously we rely on gravity not to fall off the planet. This is a given).

So presuming we need these two things to survive, and in a usable state, ie clean (because air laden with cancer causing chemicals doesn’t do much for the survival aspect), we can finally get into the ethics. Presuming again that our cause is to keep the human species going, in some form (and really, who could blame us?), something that is essential to our survival would fall under the “good” category- while the opposite would apply to something destined to kill us off. I realize, really I do, that this is absurdly simplified. But I’m writing a blog, not a treatise, so please forgive.

Step two. If clean air is good, and polluted air is bad, does that mean the act of polluting the air is bad? A-ha. Now we’re getting somewhere. But here’s where the grayscale comes in. Technically, you could argue that breathing pollutes the air. Carbon dioxide, in mass quantity, clearly causes us some problems on the survival front. By the same reasoning, most means of food production, staying warm, and moving about also cause ‘pollution’ of some degree. It seems we need at least one more piece before we can go further.

Let’s look for a moment at how others have gotten around this problem. Eastern Shore Native Americans burned fields when they started to become forest. Fairly often, actually. If you’ve ever seen a burning field, it gives off an enormous amount of what could be called pollution- ash and carbon dioxide and so on. They did this to maintain open grasslands to attract big game, for hunting. Incidentally they also encouraged biodiversity and caused hundreds of species to flourish that would have died out otherwise, but that was not their goal. And, even more amazingly, they didn’t cause global warming with these huge burns. Hmmm.

Where’s the difference between this and say, slash and burn in South America? Scale. The Eastern Shore Native Americans were burning fields, but to my knowledge, the Western Shore were not. By the same measure, if one group of people built a small coal burning power plant to create electricity, the air would more or less still be ok. But when an entire planetful of people do the same thing- aha. We have found our problem.

Let’s return momentarily to our friends the phragmites. If, under normal circumstances, there was a sudden influx of nitrogren, the phragmites would flourish. If the nitrogen then disappears, they die back. But this is presuming there are only phragmites in the area. Say there are also other water based plants- and some of these absorb nutrients that might kill the phragmites, and some of the others in fact fix nitrogen in the ground for phragmites to absorb- well, that will increase the phragmites chances of survival, and maintain the integrity of the wetland as a whole (rather than leaving it as an empty waste if all the phragmites die).

Do you see where I’m going? If one group of humans decides to clear cut to grow crops, while the one across the way decides to encourage the growth of forest to provide a lot of game, then it balances out, and you don’t end up with massive, endless clear cuts. In addition, if the group who clear cuts suddenly runs out of food and dies out, the group across the way can fill in the area and the overall integrity of the ecosystem as a whole is maintained.

We have, if you’ve been paying attention, just established one of the main principles of ecosystems: biological diversity. The important feature is that it doesn’t apply just to wetlands. We (humans) are a part of it too.

…to be continued.

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