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Wednesday, October 18, 2006

Do You Hear that Howling?

"I travel the roads of nature until the hour when I shall lie down and be at rest; yielding back my last breath into the air from which I have drawn it daily, and sinking down upon the earth from which my father derived the seed, my mother the blood, and my nurse the milk of my being - the earth for which so many years has furnished my daily meat and drink, and, though so grievously abused, still suffers me to tread its surface."
-Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, ( 5.4, trans. by Maxwell Staniforth)

I watched Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth today, and if true, it sure will be more than inconvenient. In the two hour documentary/ lecture, Gore cites compelling evidence that the planet is doomed. Among his most convincing arguments is the statistic that in almost 1000 scientific, scholarly articles, not one scientist disagreed with the fact that the earth is warming and that warming is causing significant, and in most cases, detrimental change to the planet. In the popular media, fifty-three percent of the newspapers and magazines offering commentary on the subject discount the facts of global warming, placing the debate into the political, and not scientific, arena.

Let's forget Al Gore and politics for a second, and let's employ common sense. Irrefutable is the fact that world population continues to increase exponentially as modern medicine and standards of living help preserve life. Now, think about natural selection and animal populations. As habitats change, so do the animals which inhabit them. If the animals cannot find sustainable living, they die out. If they can migrate, they do so and survive in a new location. Take for example the wily coyote in Washington, DC. Yes, in the great Rock Creek Park, the coyote has found refuge and plenty of deer on which to nibble to the consternation of the urbanites who dwell in the nation's capital. Why have they come there? Because the deer cannot survive the sprawl in the suburbs, so they move at night until they find vegitation. For the coyote, it means no natural competition and ample supply of venison. Mother Nature chuckles as the DC Parks Service scratches heads to find the answer to ridding the park of the carnivores. They'll be there tomorrow and next week and next. Take that to the bank.

Common Sense tells us that more people mean more demands on the planet's resources. More demands mean the strong will survive. Those with water, fossil fuels, and agriculture will be sitting pretty as the human migration to find that sustainable habitat occurs. Human coyotes in the middle of a protected park.

The movie also suggests one solution: government standards for fuel efficiency in cars and trucks. As the recent spike in gas prices has taught us in the past, the oil faucet can be stopped with the flick of the OPEC wrist. Venezuela's Chavez and Iran's Ahmadinejad wring wrists and lick chops to put the U.S. in their economic vise and crank away. However, the movie also points out that the automobile companies that earn the most profit are not the gas-guzzling makers in Detroit but those of Asia. Gore even suggests that Toyota and Honda's success has occurred because of their products' burning fuel more efficiently and cleanly. Why then would we want Uncle Sam to lift the hood and tweak Ford's engine? Let the market decide. Eventually, people won't be able to pay the price of filling up their GM SUV, and they'll wise up.

Marucs Aurelius, the Roman emperor, wrote the words above as he traveled the various regions of the empire with his armies. He reflected often upon the inner working of the soul, and how it relates to the larger, outer world of Nature that surrounds us all. What he understood is that we are on loan to the earth, and Mother Nature will have the last word. If we destroy ourselves, something will replace us. If we want to prevent it, however, the debate has to rage in the public arena with hard science, not with political puffing of someone who wants to re-enter the race or someone who wants to stay on retainer for the Big Oil companies. Otherwise, bet on the coyotes.
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2 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

First, I have not seen the movie. I have read that most of the science in
the movie is accurate, but there are a few inaccuracies. Also, it is
important to note that it is as much a propoganda film as Farhenheit 9/11.
BUT...it does open some people's eyes to the current state of disarray
and the alarming decline of our environment...and how it is all our fault.

As a Bio teacher, I like your analogy to natural selection. However, you
are forgetting one huge point. Natural Selection is all about the
environmental pressure placed upon an organism and whether or not that
organism can develop over multiple generations the necessary variations to
overcome those pressures. Humans are the only animal that is capable of
altering their environment, therefore turning natural selection on its
ear. Instead of developing a favorable variation to a pressure, we change
the pressure to match our adaptations.

But I like the "borrowing the earth"...reminds me of the ancient native
American quote..."we are borrowing the earth from our grandchildren". And
it reminds me also of the quote I have attached from Edward Abbey. Abbey,
by the way, is lost to the modern world. There is no documentation of
where he is buried. When he died, his buddies came to his cabin and
carted his corpse away in the back of a pickup. Without being embalmed
and without a modern funeral, he was buried in a hole - with no casket or
vault to preserve him - so that he could truly become one with the
environment...again.

10:02 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

“One final paragraph of advice: Do not burn yourselves out. Be as I am ~ a reluctant enthusiast…a part time crusader, a half-hearted fanatic. Save the other half of yourselves and your lives for pleasure and adventure. It is not enough to fight for the land; it is even more important to enjoy it. While you can. While it’s still here. So get out there and hunt and fish and mess around with your friends, ramble out yonder and explore the forests, encounter the grizz, climb the mountains, bag the peaks, run the rivers, breathe deep of that yet sweet and lucid air, sit quietly for a while and contemplate the precious stillness, that lovely, mysterious and awesome space. Enjoy yourselves, keep your brain in your head and our head firmly attached to they body, the body active and alive, and I promise you this much; I promise this one sweet victory over your enemies, over those deck bound people with their hearts in a safe deposit box and their eyes hypnotized by desk calculators. I promise you this: You will outlive the bastards.”

Edward Abbey

10:03 AM  

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