Question for all the Environmentally Conscious folks

[Aitrus]

I guess the title would apply to just about everybody here.

Question: Why do we humans think we need to "manage" the world around us?

The reason I ask is because we have a long history of mis-managing ecosystems and end up causing just as much harm as good.

Take the timberwolf populations for example: farmers would kill them to protect livestock and sport hunters would kill for pelts and deplete the populations. The timberwolf then went into protected status, the numbers exploded, and now their prey animals are struggling while humans are in greater danger of attacks. If we had left well enough alone in the beginning and just left it with killing for protection only, we would never have the problems we have today.

Another example: Yellowstone and Yosemete National Parks. Truman set aside those parks as wildlife preserves because he was humbled by all the abundant wildlife. You go there today, and the numbers are a mere shadow of what they once were.

Both of these scenarios are all due to to well-meaning humans employing methods that had the opposite effect because they failed to see the whole picture. They thought that, because they were human, they understood the techniques required to effectively manage Nature. Now, as people that believe in nature-based religions and have a great respect for Her power, do we really think that Nature needs to be, or even can be, managed?

Some might argue that if we were more like primitive peoples, living at peace and with one with Nature, we would do better as a species. For those that ask that question, I would respond that Native Americans have a history of intentionally burning forests to create small patches of woodland. These small patches of woodland would be the only places that game such as Deer and the like could live, so it gave the Natives a small, densely populated area in which to hunt. They "managed" the land to suit their own needs.

I think that Mother Nature's a big girl, fully capable of taking care of herself. Case in point: the California Redwoods. Some people mistakenly believe that those forests have been around for hundreds of thousands of years and need to be preserved. Here's the real story (abbreviated version): During the Ice Age the area was a tundra of small, stunted trees. As the glaciers receeded the meltoff turned the area into swampy marshland. As the swamps dried in the warmer climate the area turned into a plains. Eventually different types of vegetation moved in, gradually building into the 2nd Generation forests that are there today. Those great Redwood forests have only been around for about a thousand years (if that), not the hundreds of thousands that people assume. Ma Nature has undergone many changes in her life, and she'll go through many more before she's through. We're just along for the ride.

Some of you might be reading this and thinking "What is this guy doing here? He should be sitting at home, watching Fox News or out driving a big SUV for all his concern he shows for the environment." You'd be wrong on both counts: I don't watch much TV and I drive a small gas-sipping SUV, not a large one.

My perspective is that, in short, we humans are too small and dumb to "manage" Mother Nature, and that we should avoid such hubris. As Ian Malcom said on Jurassic Park, "Nature finds a way." Not that I don't care about Ma Nature, believe me, I do. However, I don't believe that things like Greenpeace don't serve any purpose other than to further their own political power. Of course, I feel the same about the NRA and both the Democrat and Republican parties, but that's a discussion for another thread.

I'm interested in your thoughts.

[Serpentia]

Some of you might be reading this and thinking "What is this guy doing here? He should be sitting at home, watching Fox News or out driving a big SUV for all his concern he shows for the environment."

No, I think most of us are reading your post and wondering: "Why is he asking us of all people?" We share your sentiment, but I'm afraid we don't have the answer. We just try in our little ways to make things a little bit better every day.

I'm afraid to get an answer, you'd have to ask the people who try to "manage nature", not the ones who live with it.

MoonDancer

[Kernos]

I don't think any of that stuff is about managing Nature. After all we are as much a part of Nature as is everything. All that stuff is about managing humans for the sake of humans.

[treegod]

I manage nature but certainly not the WHOLE of nature. Gaia has been functioning long before humans arrived on the scene, why does she need us? She doesn't!

But I live in the countryside and have been studying and working with wildlife habitats, farms and gardens, so yes I see the need to "manage" to some extent. Not manage nature but manage the environment that directly surrounds me.

I manage the weeds in my veg patch because other wise my food can get overrun by some plants. I manage the trees surrounding the house because if they're too close to the house it could catch fire from a forest fire. I manage the wild boar by putting boundaries around my veg patch. I manage predators that could attack my chicken by building an enclosure to keep them out. I don't manage nature, I just manage the place where I live and work.

I did spend a few years studying conservation and the question bugged me to some extent because it's all about maintaining a habitat which I'm not sure always needs maintaining. For instance, the South Downs in SE England are under the management of several conservation groups, some of which I've worked with.

At first it was forest, which was then cut down when humans got there because they wanted more grazing area. For centuries (millenia even?) this is what it has been used for, grazing sheep, and the ecology has been influenced by this creating a very special South Downs habitat with a unique balance of grasses, flowers, insects and birds all maintained by traditional sheep grazing.

And this was what it was like all the way along the South Downs until WWII, when the government said to all farmers "plough the fields to produce more food for the war." Arable took over with a little grazing. Much of the grazed areas that were not good for arable and no longer grazed turned to scrub (bushes and shrubs started to grow). 5% of the traditional grassland was/is left, saved only by the rabbits that inhabit the area.

For conservationists this is a tragedy because traditional "Downs grassland" is being lossed, which means many plants and animals that depend on this habitat will go extinct in the area. I was very involved with this, my dad even had a small flock of traditional South Down sheep to graze some land for the conservation groups. But I question this now. Now an old grazing system is no longer useful perhaps nature is going through a different phase now, one that is not dependent on human activity.

It was once forest and then it turned to grassland when agricultural humans became part of the ecosystem. Maybe it's a new stage in the South Downs ecological history? But this isn't a question that is asked because people will say "It's to stop species going extinct" or "It's a traditional grassland area." No one will say "It brings in the tourists" though it does so it has economical implications too.

I must say I am sentimental about the "rolling downs" with it's grassland, having grown up near it, but I do question the need to keep them like that because, after all, nature takes care of itself and has done and will do for a long long time to come. Conservation like this is simply gardening outside garden fences in the wild.

As for wolves, that's tricky. I see the point of keeping the wolves from killing and eating livestock, and in some cases it might be necessary to kill the odd wolf. But not to manage them on any large scale. There is an even better way of "managing" wolves without killing them so I've heard and they do it here in Spain where there are wolves; shepherds add female donkeys to their flocks and these will aggressively defend their flock from the wolves.

Managing nature cannot be done. It isn't needed to be done. Managing your own place in nature is essential because otherwise nature will take you over; veg patch overrun by weeds or dug up by boar, chickens killed by fox, plants will growing in roof tiles and cause damage to buildings, trees too close to house during forest fire. These are the things that need managing, but not Nature itself.

[Aitrus]

Thanks you guys for the thoughtful responses. I think an apology on my part is in order.

I keep forgetting that this is a largly European venue, and many outside the US don't understand the invasiveness of the EPA and other environmental movements that are going on over here, and how they invade our privacy or force unpalatable things on us in the form of taxes, rules and unwanted education for our children. I saw the "Environmental Issues" and "Action Alerts" sections and I thought that there a large number of activists on the forum, and my questions were directed at them. It was my mistake. I was not trying to insinuate anything or insult the members of the board. I just wanted to get honest answers from activists about why they do what they do. I see now that many here on the forum would agree, at least partially, with my sentiments.

Thanks again for taking the time to answer my questions, or at least inform me that my queries were somewhat mistaken.

[Aelfarh]

Sometimes I think that we are indeed a virus as the matrix film put it. We seem to believe that we can manage nature and control it, and use its resources without any responsibility.

Now, does nature need us? of course not, even if we drive our world to and end (and by our world I mean a planet that could be sustainable for human life) and become extinct, life will go on on this planet, as it has been long before humans, and it will, long after us.

[Corwen]

I think that Mother Nature's a big girl, fully capable of taking care of herself.

Apologies for being slow to reply, I only just noticed this thread.

I think you have chosen some very skewed examples to promote a view which I think (if I understand you correctly and you express yourself rather ambiguously) is total rubbish.

We have already caused untold damage to Mother Nature, tens of thousands of species driven to extinction, we have changed the climate, the oceans and thus sea-birds, fish, turtles etc are full of plastic (been to the beach lately?). We have drained wetlands, replaced ancient forest with clearcut or timber monocultures, I could go on. Yet you think Nature is big enough to take care of itself? Where do you live that you haven't noticed? We have f*cked this planet over to a vast degree and if we carry on doing that there won't be any nature left soon. I live in one of the least populated areas in Southern England and still there is hardly a scrap of genuinely wild, unhumanised landscape for miles. Even the nearby New Forest, touted as a wildlife sanctuary, is a heavily man made landscape. Human actions tend to make complex and interrelated systems into simple isolated ones. Simple isolated ecosystems are much more vulnerable to destruction, by climatic changes, by disease or random fluctuation.

Therefore what we need to manage is our own behaviour, and work hard to conserve what is left of untouched land in it original complexity, and intervene where possible to protect species on the edge and to join small pockets of wild land into larger more wildlife friendly areas. Captive breed and release can save species and have positive effects on ecosystems, see the recent release of beavers in Scotland for an example. Yet you would presumably see all this as unnecessary management?

I certainly don't agree that Greenpeace and similar groups are in any way self serving. If it wasn't for groups like Greenpeace there would be no whales left in the sea, and untrammelled capitalism would have destroyed what is left of the natural world at an even greater rate than it has.

[Merlyn]

Hi Aitrus,
I can agree tht the EPA is misguided often, and more directly lame in what it does.

Merlyn

[Aitrus]

I think that Mother Nature's a big girl, fully capable of taking care of herself.

Apologies for being slow to reply, I only just noticed this thread.

I think you have chosen some very skewed examples to promote a view which I think (if I understand you correctly and you express yourself rather ambiguously) is total rubbish.

We have already caused untold damage to Mother Nature, tens of thousands of species driven to extinction, we have changed the climate, the oceans and thus sea-birds, fish, turtles etc are full of plastic (been to the beach lately?). We have drained wetlands, replaced ancient forest with clearcut or timber monocultures, I could go on. Yet you think Nature is big enough to take care of itself? Where do you live that you haven't noticed? We have f*cked this planet over to a vast degree and if we carry on doing that there won't be any nature left soon. I live in one of the least populated areas in Southern England and still there is hardly a scrap of genuinely wild, unhumanised landscape for miles. Even the nearby New Forest, touted as a wildlife sanctuary, is a heavily man made landscape. Human actions tend to make complex and interrelated systems into simple isolated ones. Simple isolated ecosystems are much more vulnerable to destruction, by climatic changes, by disease or random fluctuation.

Therefore what we need to manage is our own behaviour, and work hard to conserve what is left of untouched land in it original complexity, and intervene where possible to protect species on the edge and to join small pockets of wild land into larger more wildlife friendly areas. Captive breed and release can save species and have positive effects on ecosystems, see the recent release of beavers in Scotland for an example. Yet you would presumably see all this as unnecessary management?

I certainly don't agree that Greenpeace and similar groups are in any way self serving. If it wasn't for groups like Greenpeace there would be no whales left in the sea, and untrammelled capitalism would have destroyed what is left of the natural world at an even greater rate than it has.

Thanks for taking the time to write that out, Corwen. It's very much appreciated.

However, your arguments, while chock full of emotion, are lacking in logic. Weren't the ancient druids the local sages and judges for their people, using wisdom and thought to lead and advise? Let us do the same.

You say that I have chosen very skewed examples to promote a view that you think is rubbish. My examples did nothing more than show my belief that there are those who believe the world is in trouble, and in trying to fix those "problems" only succeede in making it worse by causing other problems. I also showed that Earth is constantly changing, and we humans are a part of that change. We are not outside the Circle, but a part of it. Everything we do is part of Earth's natural evolution.

Your arguments, however, paint humans as the Bad Guys, doing Evil things to Mother Earth, and we should be ashamed of ourselves. You suggest that we are wrong to be at the top of the food chain. We are no more evil than the other animals on this planet that change their environment to suit themselves. Such as beavers, for example, or gorillas.

You asked where I live to have missed the "damage that humanity has caused". I was born and raised in central Alaska, have lived in Florida's Panahandle, have visited all over the US, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Mexico, Canada, and Hawaii. I now live in Eastern Washington state, near Idaho and Canada.

In all my travels I have seen one thing constantly over and over again: humans that are both aware and unaware of their surroundings, and nature's adapting to humanity's presence. I see those that are doing their best to help, and doing it the right way. Recycling programs, planting trees, etc. I see those that trash the wilderness when the go camping and hiking. I also see those that go overboard to make up for the things that "evil humans" have done by working to enact legislation that hurts individual freedoms (which, being English, you may not understand) or vandalizing private property (PETA and Greenpeace).

It may be that since you live in Southern England, a small place that's been populated by lots of humans for thousands of years, you must be seeing the effect of all that living in such a small area. You think that there's hardly any wilderness left when in fact the vast majority of Earth's landmass is unpopulated. The next time you take a plane trip, look outside the window. Outside the metropolitan areas there are vast amounts of land which don't have roads, powerlines, people, etc. True, there may be small towns or the odd country road or powerline, but it is no way built-up. Perhaps this is a rare ocurrence in Europe, but in the West it is commonplace. And many places are still wild in the sense that you would be a fool to go hiking unarmed and unprepared. Almost all of Alaska, Canada and South America are that way. Here in America we hear reports all the time of people getting mauled, getting lost, or dying of hypothermia due to being unprepared.

I agree with you that we need to manage our own behavior. My stance, however, is that we need to manage ourselves, not the environment. We have proven that we are incapable of fixing one thing without harming another. We can't manage anything in it's "original complexity" because there is not "original complexity". Earth has been changing for billions of years, so who are we to demand that She stay static in Her current phase? We humans are simply changing one change of clothing to another. Nothing we do is "unnatural" because we are a product of Earth, all the things we use to build with come from Earth. In time, they will crumble and go back to where they came from, but for now their form and use serves us.

Blaming everything on capitalism is just looking for a scapegoat. If it weren't for capitalists we would still be living in the Dark Ages and dreading plague every year. Where were the likes of Greenpeace and PETA back in the Renissance or the beginnings of the Industrial Age, the times when we humans were beginning to really take off technologically?

I say again that Mother Nature is a big girl, fully capable of taking care of her problems herself. She gave the Dinosaurs a good run, then took it away. She did the same with the dodo bird, which was well on it's way to excinction when we first encountered it, not to mention the hundreds of thousands of species that came and went before we were ever here. She let humans advance after the thaw of the Ice Age. When she gets tired of our antics, she'll get rid of us the same way. It's all part of the Circle. Change is part of who Earth is, and trying to prevent that change is trying to be outside that Circle. By trying to manage Her, we only show that we are ignorant of Her and Her ways.

Moderation is the key. If we are moderate in our living, and moderate in our actions, then the balance is maintained. Too much industrialization is just as bad as too much activism, and we have lots of both these days.

[Corwen]

Thanks for taking the time to write that out, Corwen. It's very much appreciated.

However, your arguments, while chock full of emotion, are lacking in logic. Weren't the ancient druids the local sages and judges for their people, using wisdom and thought to lead and advise? Let us do the same.

Yes, emotion, well I care about things, but I don't think that makes me or my arguments illogical. Emotion and logic aren't polar opposites, they must come together for wisdom. The Ancient Druids? I'm not an Ancient Druid, I'm a Modern Druid.

You say that I have chosen very skewed examples to promote a view that you think is rubbish. My examples did nothing more than show my belief that there are those who believe the world is in trouble, and in trying to fix those "problems" only succeede in making it worse by causing other problems. I also showed that Earth is constantly changing, and we humans are a part of that change. We are not outside the Circle, but a part of it. Everything we do is part of Earth's natural evolution.

Your arguments, however, paint humans as the Bad Guys, doing Evil things to Mother Earth, and we should be ashamed of ourselves. You suggest that we are wrong to be at the top of the food chain. We are no more evil than the other animals on this planet that change their environment to suit themselves. Such as beavers, for example, or gorillas.

Some interventions certainly have made matters worse, introducing foreign species etc, and lessons have been learnt. However the unthinking exploitaton of resources has done many orders of magnitude more damage. I suggest no such thing, for one thing I don't think food chains are accurate descriptions of reality (a web would be a better analogy), secondly if there was a food chain we certainly wouldn't be at the top (ask any malaria parasite). Neither did I use the word evil anywhere. We have been foolish, exceptionally foolish, but the main 'sin' of which we are guilty as a race is hubris. Humans, as other animals do, have changed our environment to suit ourselves. However humans have now changed that environment not only to the detriment of all other species, but to our own detriment too. We are unique only in the scope of change we can create, and the magnitude of the threat it has produced for other types of life and ourselves.

You asked where I live to have missed the "damage that humanity has caused". I was born and raised in central Alaska, have lived in Florida's Panahandle, have visited all over the US, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Mexico, Canada, and Hawaii. I now live in Eastern Washington state, near Idaho and Canada.

In all my travels I have seen one thing constantly over and over again: humans that are both aware and unaware of their surroundings, and nature's adapting to humanity's presence. I see those that are doing their best to help, and doing it the right way. Recycling programs, planting trees, etc. I see those that trash the wilderness when the go camping and hiking. I also see those that go overboard to make up for the things that "evil humans" have done by working to enact legislation that hurts individual freedoms (which, being English, you may not understand) or vandalizing private property (PETA and Greenpeace).

I'm not sure what you mean by "which being English, you may not understand". I come from a left wing English radical tradition which traces its roots back to the Diggers and beyond, without a clear parallel in the US, so I guess we both have barriers to understanding the other. You are right to sense that individual freedom isn't at the top of my agenda. The cult of the individual is uniquely American (though sadly spreading), and we have seen what it has done to both the planet and your own society when coupled with consumerism. All too often 'individual freedom' is code for an attitude that in practise means I'll do what I like regardless of the consequences to you or the wider world. I value individual freedom where it does no harm, but we necessarily have structures to limit freedom so we can all live together in a community, these structures are called laws. I like laws in principle, though sometimes they need to be reformed. Changing laws and thus changing society is part of a communitarian duty I believe we all have, I'm sure you can sympathise with that as it is a strong ethic in the US. Sometimes we need laws which limit individual freedom for greater social good. Sometimes we have to break laws, or protest, in accordance with conscience, in the hope that those actions will precipitate reform. Its not a black and white issue, but the process is essential to a healthy society.

I don't actually believe in private property. By which I mean I don't think it is should be the logical first principle from which all other codes of law and trade should be derived. Private property is a legal fiction, like the Corporate 'I'. Far better is the idea of global commons, everything belongs to everyone and no-one until it is proved otherwise. In England we had until recently large tracts of 'common' land some of which was used by everyone for the public good, and some of which was 'waste', unused and unowned wild land. Unfortunately almost all of this land was taken into private ownership by our ruling class of cleptocrats, but it is still a model worth pursuing.

It may be that since you live in Southern England, a small place that's been populated by lots of humans for thousands of years, you must be seeing the effect of all that living in such a small area. You think that there's hardly any wilderness left when in fact the vast majority of Earth's landmass is unpopulated. The next time you take a plane trip, look outside the window. Outside the metropolitan areas there are vast amounts of land which don't have roads, powerlines, people, etc. True, there may be small towns or the odd country road or powerline, but it is no way built-up. Perhaps this is a rare ocurrence in Europe, but in the West it is commonplace. And many places are still wild in the sense that you would be a fool to go hiking unarmed and unprepared. Almost all of Alaska, Canada and South America are that way. Here in America we hear reports all the time of people getting mauled, getting lost, or dying of hypothermia due to being unprepared.

I'm afraid I won't be able to take your advice about looking out of the plane window as I don't fly for environmental reasons. However whilst you are right that there are large tracts of what looks like wilderness (though these are shrinking fast), human influence has spread everywhere. When you find high levels of toxic pollutants in polar bears living in the high Arctic then it is obvious that the harm we have caused is a global matter. This is before we even get onto the subject of climate change. The great majority of biologists believe we are living in a human caused mass extinction along the lines of that which wiped out the dinosaurs. According to work done by Harvard professor E. O. Wilson if current extinction rates continue into the future then by 2100 we will have caused the extinction of half of all species on planet Earth.

I agree with you that we need to manage our own behavior. My stance, however, is that we need to manage ourselves, not the environment. We have proven that we are incapable of fixing one thing without harming another. We can't manage anything in it's "original complexity" because there is not "original complexity". Earth has been changing for billions of years, so who are we to demand that She stay static in Her current phase? We humans are simply changing one change of clothing to another. Nothing we do is "unnatural" because we are a product of Earth, all the things we use to build with come from Earth. In time, they will crumble and go back to where they came from, but for now their form and use serves us.

Blaming everything on capitalism is just looking for a scapegoat. If it weren't for capitalists we would still be living in the Dark Ages and dreading plague every year. Where were the likes of Greenpeace and PETA back in the Renissance or the beginnings of the Industrial Age, the times when we humans were beginning to really take off technologically?

Whilst I agree that nothing we do is 'unnatural' because we are part of nature, we are a cultural species and we have choices about whether to carry out wise actions that increase the diversity of life on Earth, and improve the lot of our descendants, or whether to carry out foolish actions, squander resources, destabilise the climate and biosphere and jeopardise the lives of those who will come after, and those we share the planet with today.

Because of capitalism half the world still lives in the Dark Ages fearing the plague, the only difference is that that half also has to work to make our lives easier, plus the wealthy half is changing their weather making their lives even harder. Remember half the world's population still lives on less than $2 a day. I know that the US news media s very skewed on its coverage of global events, but there is no reason for such ignorance of the true state of human life on this planet in this information age.

As for Greenpeace at the beginnings of the Industrial age, whilst that is a rather pointless question (why would protest groups arise before the problem they are protesting about) there were certainly movements and individuals pressing for a more equitable way of life, respectful of humans and other non human beings. Off the top of my head here's a few ideas, how about pretty much all Buddhists, vegetarian Pythagoreans, the Essenes, Manicheanism (non-violent vegetarian ascetics), St Francis and his pan-psychism, Lollards, Ranters, the Diggers, the Levellers, Chartists, Voltaire- Rouseau- Locke (all promoters of animal rights), Tom Paine and all his worthy descendants etc etc. I could go on...

I say again that Mother Nature is a big girl, fully capable of taking care of her problems herself. She gave the Dinosaurs a good run, then took it away. She did the same with the dodo bird, which was well on it's way to excinction when we first encountered it, not to mention the hundreds of thousands of species that came and went before we were ever here. She let humans advance after the thaw of the Ice Age. When she gets tired of our antics, she'll get rid of us the same way. It's all part of the Circle. Change is part of who Earth is, and trying to prevent that change is trying to be outside that Circle. By trying to manage Her, we only show that we are ignorant of Her and Her ways.

Moderation is the key. If we are moderate in our living, and moderate in our actions, then the balance is maintained. Too much industrialization is just as bad as too much activism, and we have lots of both these days.

You can look at it that way, that we will extinct ourselves, and that that is all part of the process. Its true, you could be fatalistic and see it that way, but it is a rather pointless argument usually used as a defence for doing harm, a little bit like saying, 'My kid will learn to walk on crutches pretty well eventually, so it doesn't matter if I break his legs'. But I don't see that as inevitable, and I prefer to act to protect the things and persons (human and other than human) I care about. Complexity is the virtue above all others that nature seeks to create, and our actions are replacing a rich and complex ecosystem with an impoverished one. We may even be nearing a climate tipping point where the planet may swing into another stable mode, one which does not sustain life.

As for moderation, what you perceive as moderation in industry and individual lifestyle is already tremendously extreme as far as its impact on the wider world is concerned. Your moderation sensor needs recalibrating. Living like the deepest green you can imagine is moderation, living like the average American is not. As for too much activism, the world and its power structures are completely dominated by those whose actions would bring us to disaster, current levels of concern and activism are not enough to save us, though it saddens me to say so the greens are losing the battle to sustain the diversity of life on this planet. We need more activism, not less.

[Aelfarh]

I deeply agree with your last post corwen, I will just add that when you say:

Because of capitalism half the world still lives in the Dark Ages fearing the plague, the only difference is that that half also has to work to make our lives easier, plus the wealthy half is changing their weather making their lives even harder. Remember half the world's population still lives on less than $2 a day. I know that the US news media s very skewed on its coverage of global events, but there is no reason for such ignorance of the true state of human life on this planet in this information age.

You're being very conservative on your numbers, the "first world" is a deep minority, not even the half, not the thirds of this planet who uses more resources than everyone else, specially the people from the States.

[Aitrus]

Thanks Corwen again for letting me know your thoughts.

You have your opinions based on your upbringing, education, life experiences and social circles, as do I. I think it's clear that while we're not on polar extremes of the debate, we're certainly not close. As with most things, the truth is probably someplace near the middle.

I think we'll have to agree to disagree on this one. There's no way either one of us can convince the other, so we'll just have to let it be.

It's been good chatting with you.

[Corwen]

Thanks Corwen again for letting me know your thoughts.

You have your opinions based on your upbringing, education, life experiences and social circles, as do I. I think it's clear that while we're not on polar extremes of the debate, we're certainly not close. As with most things, the truth is probably someplace near the middle.

I think we'll have to agree to disagree on this one. There's no way either one of us can convince the other, so we'll just have to let it be.

It's been good chatting with you.

Likewise.

I think we are both people of strong opinions, and having aired them as you say its probably better to agree to disagree!

Although our politics differ, judging by your introduction on another thread, we do have things in common, I'm also a hunter and interested in bushcraft/primitive living skills. I suspect that if we were sitting by a fire cooking shellfish we'd have a better time than talking politics over the interweb...

[Aitrus]

Sounds good.

You can keep the shellfish. I'll take some freshly harvested trout, rabbit or bushy-tailed tree-rat. I'll bring the cider, you bring the dessert.

[Jake]

What an interesting discussion! Aitrus and Corwen, kudos to you both.

My personal perspective on these issues is almost identical to Corwen's but I would like to offer a small (and I guess mostly off-topic) word of caution if I could. A very salient point was made about the US corporate media but please bear in mind that both the US and other national media may present just as skewed a picture of US society. We are not as monolithic a culture as may often be portrayed. This also works both ways, I think. Having grown up in the 80s, it took me some time to get past Thatcher as the 'face of Britain' in my mind.

I come from a left wing English radical tradition which traces its roots back to the Diggers and beyond, without a clear parallel in the US...

But there are tons of parallels, it seems to me! So many communities in the history of this country, from small utopian religious colonies to entire states, were founded on the same or similar principles held by groups like the Diggers and the Levellers. It seems pretty clear as well that the US Constitution owes its existence at least partially to these ideals and almost entirely to those of others named here like Locke and Paine.

And even though it's true that we're still knee-deep in Horatio Alger's vomitus, the communitarian ideal is not so dead in this land of the cult of the rugged individual as it may seem. The Intentional Communities website lists 1,606 "ecovillages, cohousing communities, residential land trusts, communes, student co-ops, urban housing cooperatives, intentional living, alternative communities, cooperative living, and other projects where people strive together with a common vision" in the US: http://directory.ic.org/iclist/geo.php

Sure, some of them might consist of less than 10 people like the small farm I lived on for a while, but still the UK only has 91. I think we all have more work to do.

[Avariel]

Hey Aitrus, I had no idea anyone in spokane even knew what druidry was, let alone studied through OBOD! Nice to see a neighbor on here, I live in Cheney

In regards to Mother Nature managing "HERSELF" I think we have to take into account that various species of animal manages nature, and that "managing" of resources to a certain extent is actually quite natural (i.e. beaver's creating dams come to mind, birds creating nests, etc.) The huge difference in Native culture and their management of nature and most western culture is that the Natives understood a sense of balance in what they took and created and "managed." In my studies it seems a lot of problems created today are from overuse, overextension of resources, and of destruction of habitat to fulfill this need of "MORE" that a lot of humans have. To be perfectly honest, no one freaking NEEDS cars, huge massive mansions, strip malls, tennis courts, cell phones, internet, plastic water bottles, etc; these are examples of many things that, in order to exist, resources need to be mined/harvested/gathered to a whopping extent, an extent that's ultimately damaging to the carefully balanced ecosystem set in place.

Now Corwen makes a point that I don't think you can ignore; you can say that Mother Nature can "come back" from the abuse being whalloped on Her, but in reality we don't really know that. To our knowledge, there's never been a civilization that's advanced THIS far on the technological scale and thus required THIS MUCH natural resource to maintain that level of advancement (or even advance beyond that) so we don't know if the Earth will bounce back like a 20 year old pregnant woman after her first child. And to be honest, it seems irresponsible to me to, for instance, go along with the mindset that "We can tear down that forest, put up a strip mall, and eventually thousands of years from now once all humans are gone it'll fall apart and be reclaimed by another forest, so it all works out in the end."

However, you make a good point in that our management style has had it's ups and downs, but I wouldn't go so far as to say we're not doing any good. We've saved a lot of species from dying out (chinchillas!) completely once we realized that some species had already died out because of our actions. So it's a matter of tailoring our actions to better suit a balanced natural ecosystem, and perhaps eventually removing our reliance on certain incredibly harmful technologies (both because of their pollutive qualities and because of the destruction caused by mining or harvesting for the resources needed) in order to ALLOW for Nature to "bounce back" as you put it. Because I agree with you that she probably will, eventually, if we stop and possibly reverse what we're doing now, but if we KEEP doing what we're doing and just ignore any change because we assume it'll eventually be all right in the end somehow, then there won't be any nature left to bounce back.

[Aelfarh]

Now Corwen makes a point that I don't think you can ignore; you can say that Mother Nature can "come back" from the abuse being whalloped on Her, but in reality we don't really know that. To our knowledge, there's never been a civilization that's advanced THIS far on the technological scale and thus required THIS MUCH natural resource to maintain that level of advancement (or even advance beyond that) so we don't know if the Earth will bounce back like a 20 year old pregnant woman after her first child. And to be honest, it seems irresponsible to me to, for instance, go along with the mindset that "We can tear down that forest, put up a strip mall, and eventually thousands of years from now once all humans are gone it'll fall apart and be reclaimed by another forest, so it all works out in the end."

I do think that both have a point here. It's true that we shouldn't use the excuse that life goes on with or without us to pollute and destroy our environment, even for self preservation and selfish motives we should take care of our environment to preserve life...our life...here. And for that we should realize that we are all part of this web and interconnected to each other and to the other species of this planet.

But is also true that if we became extinct, most likely because we drive ourselves to that, than for a natural disaster, life would go on on this planet. Life manage to go on, evolve, change and continue after facing big natural disasters that almost erase life from earth, and still it continued. I think is give us too much importance to say that we are going to be able to erase all life from this planet.

[Aylyn]

I think the idea of Mother Nature managing itself, while fundamentally sound, is no longer applicable. In terms of the environment, nature cares nothing for a certain species or individuals of the species. In the past, a disaster in a localized area might have wiped out a lot of the ecosystem, but there was always a lot more around from which the disaster area could berepopulated. This is no longer the case. In Europe, we have made wolves almost extinct, so there is no reservoir from which to repopulate. Those few that manage to wander in from Poland or Russia usually find themselves in densely populated areas where they are not welcome. It is here where human management comes in. The same applies to Natur parks such as Yellowstone: When disaster struck, animals moved elsewhere to find food and shelter. if they do that nowadays, they end up on the fields of a farmer who is less than thrilled with the intrusion.

Looking at a land without powerlines and roads does not mean that the land is truly wild. It usually belongs to a person or corporation and is supposed to bring a revenue in the future. Even where human influence has stopped, the land is still domiated by what humans did to it. Corwen has pointed that out nicly: Most of the British Isles is human-made landscape, even the seemingly wild places like Scotland. The heather landscape we are so famous for was created by the human interest in wool production. If you had walked here 2000 years ago, you would have found forests, and 1000 years ago lots of small farms in the forests.

It therefore is necessary to manage what we have left. How well we do it depends on our understanding of ecology, and that has increased a lot over the last few years, a positive side-effect from global warming. Whether we can pt it in place is amother matter, however. I can give you an example: Regular forest fires are a way to clear underbrush and make way for new growth. In unmanaged forests, this happens regularly when lightming strikes. But we have all seen the pictures from Australia and California, now imagine an ecologist proposing to light a forest fire in Yellowstone, especially during the tourist season. Di you think he would get the permission? Even knowing that in the end it will be beneficial?

We have to keep in mind that full-grown nature, at least in the more populated areas of the world (and which are not) is a rarity, and usually consists of isolated spots. If we do not manage them, they will vanish altogether. So even bad management is better than non at all.

And I can tell you one thing Avariel: as long as there is a single bacterium alive, life will eventually come back. Whether we shoud drive it that far is another matter.

[Aelfarh]

And I can tell you one thing Avariel: as long as there is a single bacterium alive, life will eventually come back. Whether we shoud drive it that far is another matter.

I think that was the point I was making, life has survive biggest and more hard natural disasters (ice ages, meteor clashes, etc.) than this new natural disaster called humanity, so I pretty sure that life will go on, but there's no doubt either that we are erasing thousands of species and putting dangerously our own at risk if we continue with our same behaviour.

[Avariel]

And I can tell you one thing Avariel: as long as there is a single bacterium alive, life will eventually come back. Whether we shoud drive it that far is another matter.

I think that was the point I was making, life has survive biggest and more hard natural disasters (ice ages, meteor clashes, etc.) than this new natural disaster called humanity, so I pretty sure that life will go on, but there's no doubt either that we are erasing thousands of species and putting dangerously our own at risk if we continue with our same behaviour.

Why would you assume that humans are a "natural" disaster when what we're doing is completely unnatural and destructive in a way the world's never experienced before? (that we know of, please no aliens-on-earth analogies). This isn't the same as a massive meteor strike that wipes everything out, nor is it the same as an ice age. We're actually creating completely and wholly NEW bacterium as we speak, as well as creating scenarios where organisms change and evolve based on our interactions with them or the new environments we expose them to. If we create an unnatural world where bacteria has evolved to survive within it, and then destroy that world, are you suggesting that an instantaneous evolution would occur in which primordial bacteria would make a reappearance simply because we're not around anymore? Is it hiding somewhere, or something, waiting for it's reappearance?

And even if this was the case....who cares? Why would we push things to the edge of destruction in the first place? Why not just act responsibly now? It's a lot like that argument against efficient, clean fuels that some people make, in that they refute global warming and it's existence; no huge problem, thus no need for a "solution." (despite the measurable pollutants in the air and the destruction of ecosystem to mine for petroleum) The point being, WHY would anyone be against clean, natural, safer fuel? Global warming or no? Why on earth would you be against that?

And again, why on earth would you be against conservation? I think the original posts's argument was "because we muck things up even more" and that's a pretty heavy blanket statement that doesn't have a lot of bearing on fact. There have been situations where certain practices have backfired, but on the whole conservation efforts have caused more good than bad. AS opposed to doing NOTHING, or doing the opposite (Destruction, which is what we do by our very lifestyles) which just causes a lot of bad.