Carnal Reason

I want to consider one of the axioms of contemporary environmentalism. It is not often stated, but is widely held. Roy Spencer explains what I will call the principle of human toxicity:

There seems to be an unwritten assumption among environmentalists — and among the media — that any influence humans have on nature is, by definition, bad. I even see it in scientific papers written by climate researchers. For instance, if we can measure some minute amount of a trace gas in the atmosphere at the South Pole, well removed from its human source, we are astonished at the far-reaching effects of mankind’s “pollution.”

If human influence on nature is intrinsically bad, it follows that we should strive to minimize our influence. To reduce our footprint, as it were. Some carry this line of thought to its logical conclusion, and advocate voluntary human extinction. But let’s leave them aside for the moment.

I claim that the principle of human toxicity is impossible to reconcile with philosophical materialism, and thereby hangs a tale.

If beavers build a dam, it is perfectly natural. If men build a dam it is an assault on nature. A beehive is beautiful, an apartment complex is an eyesore. How can we reconcile this? In the purely material world, the world of matter and energy, the one devoid of gods and spirit, nature is all there is. Every human artefact is as natural as a flower, because it can be nothing else. There is nothing that is not a part of nature. Nature is all there is.

If one is to paint human action as toxic and unnatural, there has to be something outside of nature, either something above it, or something below it. So the goddess returns in her new incarnation as Gaia. We have sinned against her, and so fallen out of nature.

Of course it won’t do to trot out explicitly supernatural explanations. The supernatural has to slip quietly in the back door, in disguise. Here’s an example, courtesy of Paul Watson of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society.

The planet’s ecosystem is a collective living organism and operates very much like the human body. Water is the blood of the earth. It provides the same function in the body as it does for the earth. Water transports nutrients to the land and transports waste to the sea or more specifically the estuaries and salt marshes that function as the liver for the earth, cleansing the water of the toxins. Water circulates through the ecosystem from the sea into the clouds falling back onto the land and returning to the sea again. It is pumped by the energy of the sun, the heart of the earth. It’s a continuous cyclic movement of nutrient bearing, waste removing action that keeps the land fertile.

A river is an artery and a vein, and streams and brooks are capillaries. Put a dam on a river and you cut off an artery preventing nutrients from moving downstream and you cut off the vein preventing the waste from the land from being removed and cleansed.

Plankton, plants, and especially forests are the lungs of the earth, removing carbon dioxide and producing oxygen. Overfishing, plankton harvesting, and deforestation is literally diminishing global lung capacity.

Species work interdependently to develop mutually beneficial strategies that maintain and strengthen ecosystems. Every species removed diminishes the system and weakens the collective body of the biosphere.

Humans are presently acting upon this body in the same manner as an invasive virus with the result that we are eroding the ecological immune system.

A virus kills its host and that is exactly what we are doing with our planet’s life support system. We are killing our host the planet Earth.

I liked Jim Dandy’s version better: “I can see man’s progress cause earth’s dying days”. Brevity is a virtue in prophets.

Recall that Dandy had a prescription: “we could go back to nature, and live in the wilderness, just another animal pure, earth would live longer, we’d live less.” Watson proposes much the same thing.

Human communities should be maintained in small population enclaves within linked wilderness ecosystems. No human community should be larger than 20,000 people and separated from other communities by wilderness areas. Communication systems can link the communities.

In other words, people should be placed in parks within ecosystems instead of parks placed in human communities. We need vast areas of the planet where humans do not live at all and where other species are free to evolve without human interference.

We need to radically and intelligently reduce human populations to fewer than one billion. We need to eliminate nationalism and tribalism and become Earthlings. And as Earthlings, we need to recognize that all the other species that live on this planet are also fellow citizens and also Earthlings. This is a planet of incredible diversity of life-forms; it is not a planet of one species as many of us believe.

We need to stop burning fossil fuels and utilize only wind, water, and solar power with all generation of power coming from individual or small community units like windmills, waterwheels, and solar panels.

All consumption should be local. No food products need to be transported over hundreds of miles to market. All commercial fishing should be abolished. If local communities need to fish the fish should be caught individually by hand.

Preferably vegan and vegetarian diets can be adopted. We need to eliminate herds of ungulates like cows and sheep and replace them with wild ungulates like bison and caribou and allow those species to fulfill the proper roles in nature. We need to restore the prey predator relationship and bring back the wolf and the bear. We need the large predators and ungulates, not as food, but as custodians of the land that absorbs the carbon dioxide and produces the oxygen. We need to live with them in mutual respect.

We need to remove and destroy all fences and barriers that bar wildlife from moving freely across the land. We need to lower populations of domestic housecats and dogs. Already the world’s housecats consume more fish than all the world’s seals and we have made the cow into the largest aquatic predator on the planet because more than one half of all fish taken from the sea is converted into meal for animal feed.

We need to stop flying, stop driving cars, and jetting around on marine recreational vehicles. The Mennonites survive without cars and so can the rest of us.

In other words, most of us should die without children, so that the survivors can live as subsistence farmers with 14th century technology.

I’m not going to criticize a proposal that has exactly zero chance of happening. Nor will I criticize goddess Gaia. She is myth, not science, and myths are hard to overcome. Instead I’m going to suggest that Mr Watson and those who agree with him take their own beliefs more seriously.

Let’s stipulate that Gaia does indeed live. So far as we know, she is unique in all the cosmos, the only living planet, the only home of life.

The signature of life is reproduction, so how do living planets reproduce? This not a rhetorical question. Gaia is a being of unique value. But planets do not live forever, because stars don’t. Our sun will eventually destroy the earth, and every living thing on it. If Gaia matters, if her life is so valuable that Watson proposes to offer her human sacrifice on an unprecedented scale, then why should we let her die at the hands of Sol?

We are the key. The only way living planets can possibly reproduce is to spawn intelligent life. Life capable of developing interstellar travel, capable of spreading life to other worlds. We are the ones entrusted with this task. The dolphins, the chimps, the whales, the parrots, none of them can do this. We are the only chance for Gaia. She created us to save her. But if we take Watson’s advice we condemn Gaia and all life to die when the sun finally reduces us to ashes. This would be a colossal failure of nerve and purpose, a dereliction of duty, a betrayal of life itself.

Consider a fetal bird, growing inside the egg. Slowly it devours all the energy resources in its small world, which grows ever more cramped. Should the bird try to reduce its footprint and so stave off the end just a little longer? Our purpose is not to graze alongside the buffalo, or to catch fish by hand. Our task is to ensure that Gaia’s children flourish long after Sol’s third planet is no more. We are not a virus or a cancer. We are Gaia’s only chance. She created us for a purpose, to take her througout the galaxy. We are the seeders, and we are the seeds. That is the true environmentalism.

Posted on May 4th, 2008 by pwyll
Filed under: eco-catastrophe, religion