I read a story the other day on Yahoo news about how conservationists had to actually kill trees in order to save the lives of an endangered bird. I bet environmentalist foes are amused by the irony.
It's only logical. Killing trees in and of itself is not bad for the environment, natural forest fires are an important cleansing mechanism. To protect the eco-system, we have to on guard against over and under population.
Species, animals, plants, microbes - all sentient beings die eventually. Every time we scratch
our skin, some microscopic critter feeding off our dead skin cells has perished. When we walk, we sometimes step on bugs. Even if we do nothing
voluntarily, our white blood cells are fighting off infections, that is, killing invading organisms (it's amazing how much warfare is done on
a microscopic level).
Environmentalism, as I understand it, does not advocate the idea that killing is 100% avoidable. Even Jains must acknowledge that. Environmentalism is based on the more reasonable observation
that the eco-system is out of balance, mostly as a result of human civilization. It's happened to others, not just us. The Mayans and the Vikings had this problem, almost making themselves extinct. The inhabitants of Easter Island did make themselves extinct. But those were smaller scale tragedies, the world population is bigger than it has ever been. I vaguely remember a disturbing fact about species extinction (to all biologists out there, I apologize in advance if I seriously mess this up). Not too long ago, it was normal that 4-6 species a year would become extinct. In the past few decades, hundreds of species have been dying each year.
Humans did not have always have the burden of control, the eco-system ran on its own for millions of years without one species dominating the whole. Yes, there were species on top of the food chain before homo sapiens became handy, and humans aren't the only tool-making animal. But humans have increasingly been trying to alter the environment so that now we have to regulate everything.
I was thinking of this the other day as I sat outside my office and was eating my lunch. In order to keep the grass around the property healthy, people can't walk on it. To keep it growing it must be mechanically watered and fertilized. If the property was kept wild, we wouldn't need to do this. Not that this is all bad; supplying this endeavor creates jobs and sustains a little economy. Everything has a purpose. But I was thinking of what "wild" really meant.
A wild land is one that we don't control. Wild is chaotic. People in civilization find uncontrolled environments ugly, certainly, suburbanites shun the creep with the weeds and five foot grass stalks around his yard. Such appearances lower property values.
Nature is now an object and a commodity, never mind that it sustains us, we just want a tamed pet to look at. Certainly, though, plenty of wild places are beautiful. Really, it's a pain in the ass
to keep up even a small yard, imagine having to do this for the whole earth. That seems to be the trend in the coming millennium. Back to the
little plot of land, I wondered - If grass is so fragile, how could it have survived millions of years of animals trampling all over it? Why do we need to water it when the rain does that already? Animals are usually nomadic, and the dwellings they do build can't overburden one spot. When grassland has huge numbers of people in a small space walking on it every day, the grass dies. This was a problem at my college, I remember, in that students hustling to class often made short cuts, and cut dusty paths through nice lawns.
Grass could evolve to handle the stress of human traffic, or we could bio-engineer super-resistant grass. That's the techo-geek argument - technology solves everything. Yes, it does, but then we create other problems. We're out of touch with an eco-system that never has seen the likes of these developments, at least, not in this world-age.
Since I'm a believer in yugas (universal-cycles) I think things will eventually be OK. Our survival depends on what actions we take now (usually, most people don't think in terms of what's best for all, so to drive the point home you have to appeal to selfishness - save the earth to save your own ass). But we can be optimistic. The cosmic time scale is staggering compared to our puny little lives. The universe can have a happy ending folks. But it'll take a long time to get there, billions, no I think trillions of years, according to Hindu theory. Until then, let's not destroy things too much.
There's a saying - you break it, you buy it. If you destroy a piece of merchandise, you owe the store. That's my attitude towards the environment. Nothing is free, it always costs you.
Posted by tonygalli
at 2:38 AM EDT
Updated: Sunday, 14 August 2005 12:01 AM EDT