The Ecological Crisis and How to Solve It
Inspired by a post of maskedretriever
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We are in the midst of the Sixth Great Mass Extinction. We are wiping out the other species on Earth at a rate far greater than the ecosphere's rate of natural replacement through evolution and speciation, and in doing so we are destroying genetic diversity. The horror and folly of this is extreme: Nature has been performing biochemical and morphological experiments on Earth for some 4 billion years, and on large complex animals for some 600 million years. We are taking the results of those experiments, offered up to us free of charge, and tossing them down the toilet. Every species we slay means the loss of a genetic library, whose contents are difficult to determine after the death of that species.
Even if we could preserve the DNA of the lost species and recreate them, we would still be losing the results of the ecological experiments in which they took part. A species does not exist in isolation but as part of an integrated ecosystem, and when we destroy that web of life we lose the information of how that species interacted with other species, and whatever we might learn of game theory and economics by observing these interactions. In short, it is an intolerable waste, and it is caused by the load that humanity puts on the Earth's ecosphere.
The reason for that load isn't some shortage of crucial elements on Earth, but rather the fact that we are still maintaining our civilization in a way which rests heavily on the ecosphere, rather than isolating our production processes and our residences from the ecosphere as much as possible. If we built high and deep to minimize our horizontal footprints, and got our power and food in ways that did not involve much chemical interaction with the ecosphere in which other life forms dwelt, we could combine quite high populations with fairly low ecological footprints.
All this requires a very advanced technology: in fact one slightly more advanced than the one we have today. But we can take steps toward it right now by phasing out chemical power generation in favor of nuclear power generation, by building eco-friendly housing (which is to say high and deep developments), and by using self-contained forms of agriculture, carniculture and aquaculture where ever possible, instead of sprawling out farms and ranches across the land and treating the sea as an unlimited hunting park.
Some points here:
(1) Billions of people, with our current way of life including broad farming, ranching and fishing, severely damage the ecosphere.
(2) Short of catastrophe, the world's population is not going to drop by whole orders of magnitude with any speed,
(3) Any catastrophe capable of killing billions of people rapidly would also do immense harm to the ecosphere, and finally
(4) No significant part of the Earth's population is going to accept permanent poverty as the price of healing the environment. It's politically impossible: any government which tries to impose this will eventually fall (to election or revolution) and be replaced with a new regime friendlier to commercial and industrial development.
Oh, and a global pre-industrial agricultural civilization would very rapidly result in the extinction of all life that could not survive in close proximity to Man. If you study the history of the Fertile Crescent, Europe, and Eastern and Southern Asia, the reasons why should be utterly apparent.
Given these facts, the only way out of our ecological crisis is upward, through greater technology, greater wealth, and eventually off-world development. All the downward paths lead through a hell of fire (in the wars required to impose them) to a hell of stinking mud (in the pre-industrial agricultural society that results). The upward path, on the other hand, leads to the regeneration of Gaia, and to untold wealth and knowledge for Man.
Which shall it be, Mankind? Which shall it be?
===
We are in the midst of the Sixth Great Mass Extinction. We are wiping out the other species on Earth at a rate far greater than the ecosphere's rate of natural replacement through evolution and speciation, and in doing so we are destroying genetic diversity. The horror and folly of this is extreme: Nature has been performing biochemical and morphological experiments on Earth for some 4 billion years, and on large complex animals for some 600 million years. We are taking the results of those experiments, offered up to us free of charge, and tossing them down the toilet. Every species we slay means the loss of a genetic library, whose contents are difficult to determine after the death of that species.
Even if we could preserve the DNA of the lost species and recreate them, we would still be losing the results of the ecological experiments in which they took part. A species does not exist in isolation but as part of an integrated ecosystem, and when we destroy that web of life we lose the information of how that species interacted with other species, and whatever we might learn of game theory and economics by observing these interactions. In short, it is an intolerable waste, and it is caused by the load that humanity puts on the Earth's ecosphere.
The reason for that load isn't some shortage of crucial elements on Earth, but rather the fact that we are still maintaining our civilization in a way which rests heavily on the ecosphere, rather than isolating our production processes and our residences from the ecosphere as much as possible. If we built high and deep to minimize our horizontal footprints, and got our power and food in ways that did not involve much chemical interaction with the ecosphere in which other life forms dwelt, we could combine quite high populations with fairly low ecological footprints.
All this requires a very advanced technology: in fact one slightly more advanced than the one we have today. But we can take steps toward it right now by phasing out chemical power generation in favor of nuclear power generation, by building eco-friendly housing (which is to say high and deep developments), and by using self-contained forms of agriculture, carniculture and aquaculture where ever possible, instead of sprawling out farms and ranches across the land and treating the sea as an unlimited hunting park.
Some points here:
(1) Billions of people, with our current way of life including broad farming, ranching and fishing, severely damage the ecosphere.
(2) Short of catastrophe, the world's population is not going to drop by whole orders of magnitude with any speed,
(3) Any catastrophe capable of killing billions of people rapidly would also do immense harm to the ecosphere, and finally
(4) No significant part of the Earth's population is going to accept permanent poverty as the price of healing the environment. It's politically impossible: any government which tries to impose this will eventually fall (to election or revolution) and be replaced with a new regime friendlier to commercial and industrial development.
Oh, and a global pre-industrial agricultural civilization would very rapidly result in the extinction of all life that could not survive in close proximity to Man. If you study the history of the Fertile Crescent, Europe, and Eastern and Southern Asia, the reasons why should be utterly apparent.
Given these facts, the only way out of our ecological crisis is upward, through greater technology, greater wealth, and eventually off-world development. All the downward paths lead through a hell of fire (in the wars required to impose them) to a hell of stinking mud (in the pre-industrial agricultural society that results). The upward path, on the other hand, leads to the regeneration of Gaia, and to untold wealth and knowledge for Man.
Which shall it be, Mankind? Which shall it be?