OpenSpace4Life

    "Believe it or not, nuclear reactors have existed since long before man, and a fossil natural nuclear reactor was recently discovered in Gabon, in Africa. . . . Thus life probably began under conditions of radioactivity far more intense than those which trouble the minds of certain present-day environmentalists. . . . The present dangers are real but tend to be exaggerated. These rays are part of the natural environment and always have been."

    "Towards the end of 1975 the United States National Academy of Sciences issued a report by . . . those expert in the effects of nuclear explosions and all things subsequent to them. The report suggested that if half of all the nuclear weapons in the world's arsenals, about 10,000 megatons, were used in nuclear war the effects on most of the human and man-made ecosystems of the world would be small at first and would become negligible within thirty years. Both aggressor and victim nations would of course suffer catastrophic local devastation, but areas remote from the battle and, especially important in the biosphere, marine and coastal ecosystems would be minimally disturbed.
    "To date, there seems to be only one serious scientific criticism of the report, namely, of the claim that the major global effect would be the partial destruction of the ozone layer by oxides of nitrogen generated in the heat of the nuclear explosions. We now suspect that this claim is false . . . There was, of course, at the time of the report a strange and disproportionate concern in America about stratospheric ozone. It might in the end prove to be prescient, but then as now it was a speculation based on very tenuous evidence."

    "So strongly expressed, however, has been public concern over the dangers of genetic manipulation involving DNA itself, that it was good to have no less an authority than John Postgate* confirm that . . . there must be many taboos written into the genetic coding, the universal language shared by every living cell. There must also be an intricate security system to ensure that exotic outlaw species do not evolve into rampantly criminal syndicates. Vast numbers of viable genetic combinations must have been tried out, through countless generations of micro-organisms, during the history of life.
    "Perhaps our continuing orderly existence over so long a period can be attributed to yet another Gaian regulatory process, which makes sure that cheats can never become dominant."

Yes, believe it or not, all of these quotes are from Gaia: A new look at life on Earth by James Lovelock, first published in 1979. In his preface to the 2000 edition he admits that he made some mistakes, but doesn't mention any of the above passages, although the theory of nuclear winter established in the early 1980s is a compelling reason to believe that full-scale nuclear war would be a global catastrophe for all land-dwelling multicellular organisms.

The preface also chides environmentalists for "attacking all science-based large companies of the First World especially where there was a link, however tenuous, with a threat to humanity," since "Our much too vociferous advocates, the consumer lobbies, and we the consumers are equally responsible for the gaseous greenhouse and the extinction of wildlife. The multinational companies would not exist if we had not demanded their products and at a price that forces them to produce without enough care for the consequences."

* The linked article is problematic in that it doesn't properly address the danger of genetically modifying plants and animals, which have much larger genomes and reproduce far more slowly than bacteria, and so experience a far lower rate of natural genetic mutations with major phenotypic effects.

Francis W. Porretto is a "classical liberal" who apparently believes that all of the scientists who promote action on global warming are people with a juvenile mentality who are perpetuating a complete myth. Yet in his very next post, Porretto wrote down these quite moderate "Commandments Of Beneficial Conservatism":

1. No one is as smart or knowledgeable as he needs to be.


2. That goes for you too, hero, so show a little respect.


3. Other people are not mere means to your ends.


4. Other people's opinions and tastes do not require your approval.


5. No one owes you one damned thing just because you're alive; the converse is also true.


6. Things are the way they are for a reason. You're expected to learn the reason before you open your yap to complain about them.


7. If the reason is still sound, don't monkey with the works.


8. If the reason has become unsound, or has been superseded by developments, it's still wise to make changes slowly, and with full attention to the consequences.


9. Many things, once done, cannot be undone. About these, be supremely cautious.


10. Admit your mistakes and make good on them; to do less is to be less than a man.

Only number 5 shows a clear streak of rugged-individualist ideology; the rest are principles many progressives could embrace (as long as we could change the word "man" to "wo/man" or "adult" or something...)

Just think: if we could have somehow instilled these principles in corporate leaders, they might not have been so quick to saturate the global market with potentially dangerous products such as genetically modified foods, chemicals with no known antidote, or even cell phones. (Call me paranoid if you want, but the fact is that it's still too early to tell for certain.)

And if politicians in Washington took rules 6-10 to heart, for instance, they might not have been so quick to radically weaken the rights of terrorism suspects for the sake of an election-year political ploy. They might never have made the irreversible decision to legitimize preventive warfare by invading Iraq (or failing that, at least they might have planned better for the likely outcomes). In this alternate timeline we might even be halfway through the shift to sustainable energy sources by now. Yes, change needs to be cautious, but whatever your views on global warming, it's been quite clear for several years that our oil dependence was a mistake that contributed to terrorism. Let's not perpetuate that mistake any longer than necessary.

If you've watched the movie Advertising and the End of the World and were confused by the graph showing the curves representing "natural resources" and "production" intersecting in about the year 2070, here's an explanation.

"Probably the best index of the scale of the human economy as a part of the biosphere is the percentage of human appropriation of the total world product of photosynthesis. Net primary production (NPP) is the amount of energy captured in photosynthesis by primary producers, less the energy used in their own growth and reproduction. NPP is thus the basic food resource for everything on earth not capable of photosynthesis. Vitousek et al. calculate that 25% of potential global (terrestrial and aquatic) NPP is now appropriated by human beings (BioScience 1986 vol. 34, no. 6, pp. 368-73). If only terrestrial NPP is considered, the amount rises to 40%. The definition of human appropriation underlying the figures quoted includes direct use by human beings (food, fuel, fiber, timber) plus the reduction from potential NPP due to alteration of ecosystems caused by humans. The latter reflects deforestation, desertification, paving over, and human conversion to less productive systems (such as agriculture). Taking the 25% figure for the entire world, it is apparent that two more doublings of the human scale will give 100%. Since this would mean zero energy left for all nonhuman and nondomesticated species, and since humans cannot survive without the services of ecosystems, it is clear that two more doublings of the human scale would be an ecological impossibility, even if it were arithmetically possible. Assuming a constant level of per capita resource consumption, the doubling time of the human scale would be equal to the doubling time of population, which is on the order of 40 years."

1986 + 40*2 = 2066, which is close to 2070. But wait, there's more.

"Of course economic development currently aims to increase the average per capita resource consumption and consequently to reduce the doubling time of the scale of the human presence below that implicit in the demographic rate of growth. Furthermore the terrestrial figure of 40% human appropriation is really the more relevant one since we are unlikely to increase our take from the oceans very much. Unless we awaken to the existence and nearness of scale limits, then the greenhouse effect, ozone layer depletion, and acid rain will be just a preview of disasters to come, not in the vague distant future but in the next generation."

-Herman E. Daly and John B. Cobb, Jr., For the Common Good.

For some idea of what such a future might be like, see the novel A Friend of the Earth by T. C. Boyle.

"No one knows how many other species are this close to extinction. We don't even know how many species of animals and plants there are altogether in the world. A staggering 1.4 million have been found and identified so far, but some experts believe that there are another 30 million yet to be discovered.
. . .
Many animals and plants are disappearing before we are aware of their existence, perhaps hidden away somewhere in the depths of an unexplored sea or in a quiet corner of a tropical rainforest.
. . .
As zoologists and botanists explore new areas, scrabbling to record the mere existence of species before they become extinct, it is like someone hurrying through a burning library desperately trying to jot down some of the titles of books that will now never be read.
. . .
For millions of years, on average, one species became extinct every century. But most of the extinctions since prehistoric times have occurred in the last three hundred years.
. . .
It is the sheer rate of acceleration that is as terrifying as anything else. There are now [in 1990] more than a thousand different species of animals and plants becoming extinct every year.*
. . .
Even so, the loss of a few species may seem almost irrelevant compared to major environmental problems such as global warming or the destruction of the ozone layer. But while nature has considerable resilience, there is a limit to how far that resilience can be stretched. No one knows how close to the limit we are getting. The darker it gets, the faster we're driving."

-Mark Carwardine, Last Chance to See


* Keep in mind that today, the estimate is well over 20,000 species per year. I still don't know how that estimate is arrived at, i.e. whether they only count known extinctions or whether they try to factor in the ones we didn't observe directly.

(originally posted December 27, 2003)