It's Independence Day, and most of us will celebrate it in the traditional way: dodging death rays while hoping our president and a handful of plucky fighter pilots, with the help of a genius cable repairman, can save us from extinction by killing the alien invaders.
If only it were that simple. It would be easier to meet the challenges of our changing climate if there really were a villainous, alien Them at the heart of it all. But there's not. There's Us: our attitudes and values. And history suggests we're the most implacable foe we ever face.
More below the fold....
Nature's Values (Non-Cynical Saturday)
Note: Thanks to organizing efforts by Patriot Daily News Clearinghouse and Land of Enchantment, and with support by Meteor Blades, this is DK GreenRoots week, with diarists and series asked to look at environmental issues. Here at Morning Feature, we're both privileged and pleased to join in that effort. Wednesday we looked at the plight and promise of the grey wolf. Yesterday we explored the carbon footprint of mass transportation. Today we finish the series. A complete list of this week's GreenRoots diaries, and an invitation to join the DK GreenRoots campaign, are at the end of today's diary.
When I began researching this week's series, I was surprised to find I'd stumbled upon stories of hope rather than gloom.
Thanks to the Endangered Species Act of 1973 and reintroduction programs begun in the 1980s and 90s, the grey wolf population has rebounded. And we are discovering benefits we did not envision in 1973, or even in the 1990s. Science now shows that the grey wolf is to its habitat as the Everglades are to south Florida: the essential link in a complex ecosystem. Forests, fisheries, and other species are recovering in surprising ways now that the grey wolf has returned to its home. There are challenges, to be sure. Ranchers face wolf predation, and we can and must take steps to mitigate those challenges. But to my mind, they are good challenges, inevitable when humans live and raise livestock in wolf country, much like the challenges we Floridians face living and raising families and pets in alligator country. We must accept the challenges as part of life, avoiding harms when we can and mitigating the rest.
Similarly, new research by UCal Berkeley professors Mikhail Chester and Arpad Horvath shows that green mass transit is not something that has to hover on the horizon of time. While well-designed light rail networks are greener overall, they're not the only green transit solutions. When Chester and Horvath factored in the energy consumed and greenhouse gases emitted in building, operating, and maintaining transit corridors and terminals, and examined the data per person-kilometer-traveled (PKT), a car/van pool with full occupancy competes with the most advanced light rail systems. The difference is not some miraculous new energy or transit technology, or a total redesign of residential patterns. We can do better than we thought with the resources and technologies we already have, if we change our attitudes on our time and travel.
Human values: boundaries, simplicity, and efficiency.
We talk a lot about values in American political dialogue, and they've been a common topic here in Morning Feature as well. Usually they arise in the context of human values - families, cultures, or common values we'd like to see worldwide - and those are important. But in the 21st century, with environmental challenges of climate change, peak oil, peak water, etc., a common theme I've seen is our ignorance of nature's values. Despite our highly-evolved brains, complex language capacity, and the advances those have made possible, Homo sapiens sapiens are still animals inhabiting this amazing ecosystem we call earth. We've tended to focus on how to adapt that ecosystem to our values, but I think our survival hinges on adapting our values to nature's values. We need to learn and respect our place in the natural order of life.
As humans we tend to value boundaries, simplicity, and efficiency. Those values make our lives more predictable and productive. Collectively they add up to the word "convenience." We shouldn't sneer at that word. The conveniences we've made for ourselves - not having to spend all day every day searching for food, water, and shelter - gave us the time to develop the arts and sciences that define human civilization. Take all of those conveniences away, and there would be fewer artists or athletes, fewer philosophers, physicians, or physicists. Our lives would be poorer, and shorter. Convenience is the well-spring of civilization.
Nature's values: openness, diversity, and resilience.
Civilization has come at a price. Convenience is not among nature's values, and esteeming it too highly has put us in conflict with our planet. We want boundaries, simplicity, and efficiency. Nature values openness, diversity, and resilience, because the natural state is a state of change. Our complex universe is not a deterministic machine that yields the same outcomes from the same conditions each time. It is fundamentally stochastic and transitional. Successful ecosystems and the species within them adapt to change, and science suggests they do that by not putting too many eggs in any one basket ... indeed by not having many isolated baskets at all.
In a thriving ecosystem, new conditions that threaten one population often benefit another, and the give-and-take between them yields a new equilibrium. But those equilibria are always temporary, and ecosystems or species that invest too heavily in the current equilibrium are often wiped out when that inevitably changes. One Size Fits All and Once And For All are not values nature respects. Quite the contrary, they stand as predictors of extinction.
So while some level of convenience is a precondition for civilization, too much dependence on convenience is a recipe for disaster. Despite our many advances as a species, we're still no match for the awesome power of nature. In any no-quarter showdown between Man and Nature, Nature will win and we humans will join the dinosaurs as relics of a failed process.
The miracle that saves us will not come from a laboratory. It will come - or it won't - in our changing attitudes. It will come when we accept that challenges cannot be eliminated but only accommodated and the harms mitigated. It will come when we acknowledge that change is inevitable and we can't expect One Size Fits All or Once And For All solutions. It will come when we recognize that nature values openness, diversity, and resilience, and we must adapt our human values to nature's values.
Or it won't come, and our species will not survive.
Those who see human attitudes as fixed and immutable will read that as a prophecy of doom. Those who think the very biological traits that have enabled our success thus far - our highly-evolved brains and linguistic capacity - can help us change our attitudes ... will read those as words of hope.
It would be easier if our gravest threat were marauding aliens with death rays. It would be easier if there were a villainous Them to defeat in a climactic battle. But there isn't. There's only Us, and our attitudes.
Happy Independence Day!
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If you are interested in environmental issues, please join DK GreenRoots, a new environmental advocacy group created by Meteor Blades. DK GreenRoots is comprised of bloggers at Daily Kos and eco-advocates from other sites. We focus on a broad range of issues. We alert each other to important eco-stories in the mainstream media and on the Internet, promote bloggers at one site to readers at other sites and discuss crucial eco-issues. We are in exciting times now because for the first time in years, significant environmental legislation will be passed by Congress. DK GreenRoots can also be used to apprise members of discussions and strategy sessions happening in Meteor Blade’s Green Diary Rescue thread, which is also our workroom. |
Schedule for DK GreenRoots All listed times are PDT. Pictures thanks to LaughingPlanet
Sunday June 28:
11 am: Mr. President, go and see for yourself by Devilstower
3 pm: Kermit was right, it ain't easy by jillian
7 pm: Obama Wants Green Bottom-Up Politics by Patriot Daily
Sunday Series:
Overnight News Digest (Science Saturday) by Neon Vincent
Sunday Talk by Silly Rabbit aka Trix
Free Food Foraging by Wide Eyed Lib
How Regulation Came to Be: Donora by dsteffen
The Week in Editorial Cartoons: The Crying Game by JekyllnHyde
Overnight News Digest - Ole Man River and the Big Muddy by Oke
Monday June 29:
2 am: Now it's "Cleaner" Coal? by Zwoof
6 am: CBS Jumps a Whale Shark by DarkSyde
7 am: News from the Arctic: 29 June 2009 by billlaurelMD
1 pm: With Assistance, Foxaganda Finds Another Denier by Meteor Blades
9 pm: Obama Says Mountain Crimes Can Be Regulated by Jeff Biggers
Monday Series:
Science Tidbits by possum
Maccas Meatless Monday - Action Diary by beach babe in fl
Books by Kossacks by sarahnity
Got a Happy Story? by Eddie C)
Labor Diary Rescue by djtyg
Overnight News Digest: Eco Week-O by jlms qkw
Green Diary Rescue by Meteor Blades
Tuesday June 30:
11 am: Ecotourism: Not an oxymoron by LaughingPlanet
3 pm: Walking Gently in the Footsteps of my Ancestors by Got a Grip
5 pm: Coast Redwoods and Climate Change by maggiejean
7 pm: Climate War: the United States and China by Magnifico
Tuesday Series:
Cheers & Jeers Tuesday by BiPM
Glacier Park 1, Strip Mines 0 (Healthy Minds & Bodies) by RLMiller
The Left Wing: Owl Farm by Texas Revolutionary
Top Comments: The Local Green Economic Stimulus Edition by Elise
Overnight News Digest by wader
Green Diary Rescue by Meteor Blades
Wednesday July 1:
5am: Beware the Silver Bullet ... by A Siegel
9am: Good Green Jobs: Moving from Rhetoric to Reality by ChangeToWin
noon: The Video that Could Save Your Life by FishOutofWater
1 pm: Go Ahead, NPS, Seize These Cal State Parks, Please! by RLMiller
3 pm: The Insanity of Bottled Water by Asinus Asinum Fricat
5 pm: Keep an eye out for bear - Shenandoah NP photodiary by it really is that important
7 pm: Marine Life Series: Responsible Shrimp Buying by Mark H
9 pm: Soil organic carbon pools in the northern circumpolar permafrost region by shpilk
10pm: Green Transit and Hybrids: Planes, Trains, and Automobiles by Vikingkingg
Wednesday Series:
Bookflurries: Bookchat: The Setting as Character by cfk
Siglines! Caring for the environment by Wee Mama
Green Diary Rescue by Meteor Blades
Thursday July 2:
11 am: My Lake has Singing Sands by Muskegon Critic
3 pm: Poverty Near the "High Hazard" Coal Ash Sites by Bruce Nilles
5 pm: Green Social Networking by boatsie
7 pm: Blood Stains on Green Technology by rb137
9 pm: Food and Energy Independence by Jill Richardson
Thursday Series:
Morning Feature: Wolves and Predators by NCrissieB
Labor Diary Rescue, 7/2/09 by djtyg
Write On! Have you been stripped? by SensibleShoes
Considered Forthwith by Casual Wednesday
Health Series Meets DK Greenroots! by TheFatLadySings
Top Comments by Elise
Green Diary Rescue by Meteor Blades
Friday July 3:
4am: A President Breaks Hearts in Appalachia by teacherken
8am: ExxonMobil Is Still Funding global Warming Denial Groups! by The Cunctator
9am: The Beef with Beef: Global Warming and Cancer by Turkana
11:30 am: Your Money or Your Life - DK GreenRoots by TXsharon
4:30 pm: Myopia in Paradise: DK GreenRoots by Meteor Blades
5 pm: DK GreenRoots: Spirit of Brash Optimism by Land of Enchantment
7 pm: GreenRoots: Obama WH Says "Make Us Do IT" by Patriot Daily News Clearinghouse
Afternoon/evening: MTR diary by Devilstower
Friday Series:
Morning Feature: Mass Transit - Our Lives and Footprints (Plus Kossascopes) by NCrissieB;
Mojo Friday - DK GreenRoots & NFTT Edition by rbutters;
DK GreenRoots & Frugal Fridays: Saving Some Green by Going Green by sarahnity;
Friday Night at the Movies: DK Greenroots Eco-Movies by Friday Night at the Movies (Land of Enchantment);
Overnight News Digest: Oke's Virtual OND by Oke (kindly posted by wader);
Green Diary Rescue & Open Thread by Meteor Blades.
Saturday July 4:
11 am: Diary by Jerome a Paris on wind power
3 pm: Diary by buhdydharma
5 pm: Diary by Land of Enchantment on climate
7 pm: Diary by Stranded Wind
time uncertain: Diary by Turkana
Saturday Series:
Morning Feature by NCrissieB;
Daily Kos University by plf515;
Dawn Chorus Birdblog by lineatus;
Saturday Morning Garden Blogging by Frankenoid;
Saturday Morning Home Repair Blogging by boatgeek;
Top Comments by carolita
Plus there'll be music on environmental themes in jotter's High Impact Diaries every morning, along with schedule updates. We can make more slots as needed - anyone who has an environmentally-related story they want to post this week, we’ll create a place on the schedule for you.