Survival guilt, part 2
Link to part 1
E. O. Wilson, author of Biodiversity, recently put out a new book ambitiously titled The Future of Life. In Chapter 2, he states that far from being a "special-interest lobby" whose proponents are always "exaggerat[ing] their case . . . [e]nvironmentalism is something more central and vastly more important. . . . [Earth's] soil, water, and atmosphere . . . have evolved over hundreds of millions of years to their present condition by the activity of the biosphere, a stupendously complex layer of living creatures whose activities are locked together in precise but tenuous global cycles of energy and transformed organic matter. The biosphere creates our special world anew every day, every minute, and holds it in a unique, shimmmering physical disequilibrium. On that disequilibrium the human species is in total thrall. . . . When we destroy ecosystems and extinguish species, we . . . threaten our own existence. . . .
"[Humans] exist as one organic miracle linked to others. The natural environment we treat with such unnecessary ignorance and recklessness . . . remains our one and only home. To its special conditions we are intimately adapted in every one of the bodily fibers and biochemical transactions that gives us life."
In Chapter 5, Wilson gives us a similar warning from ecological economists: "To supplant natural ecosystems entirely, even mostly, [with technological substitutes] is an economic and even physical impossibility. . . . [A] much greater dependence on artificial means--in other words, environmental prostheses--puts at risk not just the biosphere but also humanity itself.
"Most environmental scientists believe that the shift has already been taken too far. . . . Ancient and vulnerable, [Mother Nature] will not tolerate the undisciplined appetite of her gargantuan infant much longer."
And yet, Wilson's projection in Chapter 3 of a future after biosphere collapse is nowhere near as bleak as that of T. C. Boyle in his novel, A Friend of the Earth.
"In 2100 . . . [t]he huge human population, having at last leveled off at nine to ten billion, occupies the entire habitable part of the planet, which has been turned into a tight mosaic of cropland, tree farms, roads, and habitations. Thanks to massive desalinization plants . . . new methods of fresh-water transport, and irrigation, drier regions have turned from brown and yellow to green. Global per-hectare food production is well above 2000 levels. More of the 50,000 species of potentially palatable kinds of plants are in agricultural use. . . .
"A global technoscientific civilization has risen from the cauldron of ethnic and class conflict, which nevertheless still simmers beneath it. People in 2100 are better fed and educated than in 2000. . . . [E]lite rich countries remain in conflict with resentful poor countries. War is rare and terrorism has diminished, but it is a tense world. . . .
"The causes of aging are known, and birthrates have plummeted in compensating degree, especially in the richest countries, where young people are increasingly obtained through recruitment from poorer countries. The genetic homogenization of the world population by intermarriage . . . has accelerated. . . .
"Homo sapiens remains in 2100 a relatively unchanged biological species. Therein lies our strength, and our weakness. It is the nature of all biological species to multiply and expand heedlessly until the environment bites back. The bite consists of feedback loops--disease, famine, war, and competition for scarce resources--which intensify until pressure on the environment is eased. [There is] one feedback loop uniquely available to Homo sapiens that can damp all the rest: conscious restraint. For the trends of 2000 to have continued, as I imagine in this scenario, means that restraint has failed."
So why doesn't Wilson imagine widespread disease, famine, and resource wars in this future? Perhaps he's implying that between now and 2100 we will have to learn restraint, but perhaps too late to save "most of the biodiversity hotspots . . . [and] half or more of Earth's plant and animal species." To stave off the resulting "Age of Lonliness," Wilson imagines people might try "to create new kinds of plants and animals by genetic engineering and somehow fit them together into free-living artificial ecosystems."
And of course the future Wilson imagines is not much more stable than our present; even if we handily survive the collapse of the biosphere, the danger of altering the disequilibrium in other, more deadly ways will always be with us.
E. O. Wilson, author of Biodiversity, recently put out a new book ambitiously titled The Future of Life. In Chapter 2, he states that far from being a "special-interest lobby" whose proponents are always "exaggerat[ing] their case . . . [e]nvironmentalism is something more central and vastly more important. . . . [Earth's] soil, water, and atmosphere . . . have evolved over hundreds of millions of years to their present condition by the activity of the biosphere, a stupendously complex layer of living creatures whose activities are locked together in precise but tenuous global cycles of energy and transformed organic matter. The biosphere creates our special world anew every day, every minute, and holds it in a unique, shimmmering physical disequilibrium. On that disequilibrium the human species is in total thrall. . . . When we destroy ecosystems and extinguish species, we . . . threaten our own existence. . . .
"[Humans] exist as one organic miracle linked to others. The natural environment we treat with such unnecessary ignorance and recklessness . . . remains our one and only home. To its special conditions we are intimately adapted in every one of the bodily fibers and biochemical transactions that gives us life."
In Chapter 5, Wilson gives us a similar warning from ecological economists: "To supplant natural ecosystems entirely, even mostly, [with technological substitutes] is an economic and even physical impossibility. . . . [A] much greater dependence on artificial means--in other words, environmental prostheses--puts at risk not just the biosphere but also humanity itself.
"Most environmental scientists believe that the shift has already been taken too far. . . . Ancient and vulnerable, [Mother Nature] will not tolerate the undisciplined appetite of her gargantuan infant much longer."
And yet, Wilson's projection in Chapter 3 of a future after biosphere collapse is nowhere near as bleak as that of T. C. Boyle in his novel, A Friend of the Earth.
"In 2100 . . . [t]he huge human population, having at last leveled off at nine to ten billion, occupies the entire habitable part of the planet, which has been turned into a tight mosaic of cropland, tree farms, roads, and habitations. Thanks to massive desalinization plants . . . new methods of fresh-water transport, and irrigation, drier regions have turned from brown and yellow to green. Global per-hectare food production is well above 2000 levels. More of the 50,000 species of potentially palatable kinds of plants are in agricultural use. . . .
"A global technoscientific civilization has risen from the cauldron of ethnic and class conflict, which nevertheless still simmers beneath it. People in 2100 are better fed and educated than in 2000. . . . [E]lite rich countries remain in conflict with resentful poor countries. War is rare and terrorism has diminished, but it is a tense world. . . .
"The causes of aging are known, and birthrates have plummeted in compensating degree, especially in the richest countries, where young people are increasingly obtained through recruitment from poorer countries. The genetic homogenization of the world population by intermarriage . . . has accelerated. . . .
"Homo sapiens remains in 2100 a relatively unchanged biological species. Therein lies our strength, and our weakness. It is the nature of all biological species to multiply and expand heedlessly until the environment bites back. The bite consists of feedback loops--disease, famine, war, and competition for scarce resources--which intensify until pressure on the environment is eased. [There is] one feedback loop uniquely available to Homo sapiens that can damp all the rest: conscious restraint. For the trends of 2000 to have continued, as I imagine in this scenario, means that restraint has failed."
So why doesn't Wilson imagine widespread disease, famine, and resource wars in this future? Perhaps he's implying that between now and 2100 we will have to learn restraint, but perhaps too late to save "most of the biodiversity hotspots . . . [and] half or more of Earth's plant and animal species." To stave off the resulting "Age of Lonliness," Wilson imagines people might try "to create new kinds of plants and animals by genetic engineering and somehow fit them together into free-living artificial ecosystems."
And of course the future Wilson imagines is not much more stable than our present; even if we handily survive the collapse of the biosphere, the danger of altering the disequilibrium in other, more deadly ways will always be with us.