The NY Times printed a fascinating article in the Science section today about how conservationists must adapt their strategies to a world changed by global warming. Do we abandon already-preserved lands that will turn arid and inhospitable? Do we keep sustaining environments we’ve rescued so they’ll be welcoming to new species that come to live there when the old ones can’t?It’s an interesting predicament that puts ecologists in the position of fortune-tellers. On the other hand, I wonder if this is what we get for having the hubris to think we can play God with the land, picking and choosing what to preserve and what to develop.
It’s a crazy, crazy time to be an environmentalist.
7 comments:
As long as we're killing the earth, we might as well agree that everything is back in play, as far as the discussion about what to save. This could become the kind of dramatic shake-up of values that totally reorganizes our thinking about the environment. Which, now that I've said it, is exactly what you already said, Carolyn.
Obviously the most needed and powerful tool to protect the environment is the willingness to limit human population. I never hear people discussing this. I have helped to preserve the future environment far more than any super-recycling hybrid-driving family I know, just by not breeding.
Here here!
It's not just you, Steven. Alan Weisman in his book The World Without Us proposes that if we limit everyone to one child, we will reduce the population drastically within decades, and suggests that this might even be the only way out of the downward environmental spiral we're in.
Of course, most people squirm when this taboo subject is brought up because it's against the current social mores. But maybe someday we'll realize such drastic measures are necessary.
Well, as much as I agree with you C, we'd have to convince the Catholics of the importance of birth control even in marriage. If we can't even get over the surprisingly taboo topic of birth control, how will we ever be able to discuss population control.
The taboo against self-imposed population control is more than just a current social more. It's part of the fabric of what makes a society.
The only way for a group of people (Americans, for example, or environmentalists) to carry out their will is to raise successive generations of people who will cling to the same values.
If all the environmentalists stop breeding, then who is going to raise the next generation of environmentalists?
The only solution is moderation. Or an act of forced population control, which is called war or genocide. And I'm not ruling those out.
I have no problem with some form of limits. The days when you needed 8-10 kids because some wouldn't survive past childhood and you needed help to sustain the family farm are past us-- at least, in the developed world.
The question is how to get people to abide by that control:
* Teaching and propaganda? As K pointed out, it's an uphill battle to sell the idea of birth control to various religious groups or--here's another one--cultures where a man is judged by the number of kids he's sired.
* Heavy fines? China is just now realizing that this doesn't entirely work (http://www.newsweek.com/id/96336). The fines do discourage the average person from having more than one child, but the rich don't give a hoot because they just pay the fine if they're found out or they find ways to skirt the law, such as having a child with a mistress.
(Re: the sportscaster in China who, we recently learned from the pissed-off wife at an Olympic press conference, impregnated both his wife and his mistress--what a swell guy.)
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