No one seems particularly interested in the fact that we experienced the largest single-year global cooling on record last year. Of course, if you're revised your gloom-and-doom label from "global warming" to "global climate change," you can still fit this into the paradigm of "Toyota is going to kill us all with their damn dirty Tundras." Now of course, over the next ten years, we could experience enough average warming to bring us back to the brink the Day After Tomorrow nightmare world we'd been always just on the brink of experiencing, but we don't really know.
From my own perspective, I have two governing thoughts:
1. The climate has always been in a state of flux. A static view of the world--even of its general statistical properties--is simply wrong.
2. Humans are part of nature, not external to it, and the elements of an ecosystem are always changing it. "Man" is not the antithesis to "nature."
That doesn't mean we can't change things in a way that's really, really harmful. Mercury in the rivers and cadmium in the soil are really, really bad things. I would suggest that we should leave the mountains where they are, too. Hunting animals to extinction just because we can is probably unnecessary. However, one of the facts of our world is that humans build cities and farms, and they burn things to get energy (combustion just isn't going away, folks). Sure, we can build and burn smarter, but we're not going to somehow do it so brilliantly that the world is going to to turn into a static system, or that its continual change will somehow have nothing to do with us. We are facts of nature just as much as volcanoes, hurricanes, and predator migration are.
So I guess all I really want to say is that I see no moral imperative to eliminate man's effect upon the environment, because it's simply impossible. I do think we should be smart about how we do things, but that doesn't mean frenetically searching for the world's "pause" button.
Tuesday, March 04, 2008
Some Environmental Thoughts
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12 comments:
Well said. And I wouldn't discount the influence of a certain gaseous body of continuous nuclear reaction which is the source of our planet's thermal energy, either. Less thermal output, less heat for the Earth, and vice versa.
I like how the German of the Small Catechism gets that in the first article explantion:
he has created me SAMPT all things.
NOT he has created me AND all things, but he has created me together with all things.
Of course, there is an element of truth to the "it's all man's fault" thing. Just not the one most environmentalists would recognize.
The instability of the world's climate dates all the way back to Noah's flood. And that, of course, was due to man's sin. As to whether modern technology is at all responsible, however, count me as a doubter rather than a believer.
The words that should be out there are optimise, minimise etc. With time, oil and gas will get more and more expensive (for instance). So to look for VIABLE alternative sources, is the responsible thing to do. I advocate nuclear, for instance, because it buys us a lot of time (and cleaner air) while further research and development continues.
Your point about Hg & Cd is well taken.
I always try and think about the complete impact of so-called "green" technologies - like the infamous lightbulbs. How much energy and resources go into producing green tech, and how do these things pollute? We should be counting watts at the very end, but right through the process.
We should be WISER about what we do, not trying to eliminate what we do - the latter can only be achieved by self-extermination.
And ignore the media. They'll find something else to scream about, presently.
Thanks for articulating that so well, Josh. I've been trying to communicate that to people over the years, but they usually can't handle the rationality of it.
Don't bother eliminating our effect on the environment because it's impossible? Psht.
Don't bother with alternative energy because it's impossible to replace coal? Don't bother with fusion research because it's impossible? Blah blah blah because it's impossible?
We can at least try to minimise it instead of copping out like a bunch of pussies.
The problem with words like "optimize" and "minimize" is that they assume a static earth, i.e. the ideal world, in which man does not exist, does not change. But neither are true. Man is part of the ever-changing ecosystem, which would simply change in different ways were we not here.
Take any other species and apply the same language. Should we be attempting to minimize the effect that deer have on their environment? How do we optimize the effect that deciduous trees have on their environment. What about minimizing the effect that algae has on the environment? Why is it a noble goal to go as far as we can in eliminating the signs of man's presence from the earth, but not other species?
If you really want to "optimize" and "minimize," kill yourself. Or at least move out of the city and into a cave somewhere.
Settle down there. Optimize - meaning we dontt waste energy. Minimise - meaning we don't pollute where we can do something about it. This is called stewardship. Now take a deep breath and go have a beer.
But your version of optimization is just plain economical. As I said, I'm all for doing smart stuff. There's no sense in burning a 10 pounds of coal if you can figure out how to harness the same amount of energy from 7. You don't need to buy into Al Gore's prophecies of doom to see that efficient resource management is a beneficial thing.
But what's your definition of "pollution?" most environmentalists roughly define pollution as "everything man produces." When a bear takes a dump in the forest, it's "nature." When I do the same, it's "pollution." When a forest fire belches all kinds of nasty hydrocarbons and CO2 into the air, it's "nature." When I burn natural gas to keep myself warm, it's "pollution." When a climate changes because a volcano erupted or the sun isn't putting out as much energy, it's "nature." When the same thing happens because a population modernized, it's "pollution."
In schemes where "pollution" means (more or less) "stuff that makes the world unlivable," conservation tactics are not fundamentally anti-man. But when your definition is "any observable effect or product of man's presence," then practically everything is pollution, especially things like farms and cities, since they change local ecosystems far more radically than any amount of CO2 we've released via combustion.
I go with your definition of polution - things that make the world unviable. No - man is the crown of creation, and the steward who has to practice good husbandry. It is how, not what (in general terms). For instance, on the small farm I had in Africa, I broke virgin ground (gasp) - but not exterminating everything, and by farming "Environmentally friendly" - this entials a lot of things, and goes further than just merely complying to organic standards, some of which were certainly not set by organic farmers themselves!!! (Eco fascists... they have no idea about farming). But Eco-fascism, same as corporate greed, are political games, and mean nothing to us poor sods on the ground, except making life more complicated.
thanks for pointing out #2. I came to the same conclusion some time ago, but if I had said it, it would have sounded like I was farting out my mouth or something similarly in-eloquent.
While I am quite the conservationist, some of the ecofascists that I know are making me crazy. For example, they are claiming the cows on farms are belching too much and are killing the environment. WTF?
We are called to be good stewards to this amazing gift, the Earth. We don't have fur, we need to keep warm. So, we burn stuff. We've been given the gift of agriculture, but we can farm in such a way that destroys and pollutes (ala ADM) or in a way that is in harmony with nature (ala Wendell Berry or Joel Salatin). When we harm the earth with our excessive consumtion and obsession with greed we, in turn, harm ourselves.
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