March 21, 2011

Nature Never Forgives

The scope and depths of ignorance of people’s knowledge of the complexities of life
on Earth – the inter-dependency of all forms of life on other forms of life - is considered,
by scientists, as truly staggering. The role of science in this modern age - a modern age
aimed headlong into a future based on technology systems, human population explosion,
climate change and the extinction or clinging-for-life of more species in the past 100
years than in the previous 25 million years - the role of science here is equally rushed –
with good reason - to evaluate, determine how systems really work together, how life is
sustained – before it is all too late.

Take one area for example: Fisheries management. Dr. Sylvia Earle, America’s world
expert on undersea exploration on the BBC “The Forum” discussion radio show: “There
is no excess in Nature. Yet we assume there are so many herring out there just waiting for
us to catch, and that Nature is so robust that no matter how many herring we take they
will always come back.” And this concept, based on falsehoods and supposed science
developed from bible studies, leads us to “maximum sustainable yields which is
embedded in our laws now... And yet there is no such thing as being able to infinitely
take from a wild population at a level that is commercially valuable and have them keep
going. And yet we still hold on to this theory because it looks so good on paper. We love
the theory, and yet we have seen in just my lifetime the collapse of 90% of many of the
big fish we extract: tuna, sharks, herring, cod… and still we disregard the signs, the
science, the truth.”

The truth is humans are not very good at knowing their own self interests, we prefer
that which we think worked in the past and we are always frightened to see a different
future. We prefer the easy over the difficult, the expedient over the safe and secure. We
hanker after the past, 50’s music, 60’s muscle cars, entertainment over fact, news
interpretation over factual reporting, sex over passion, surface beauty over intellect,
abundance over quality, luxury over practicality, glitz over substance, and the present
abundance over what may come.
 Yet humans are the only creatures capable on Earth to evaluate the real risks to all life
on Earth. There is no other creature on Earth capable of assessing and sculpting the
environment and resource depletion of this our single planetary home. And there is one
rule that is worth remembering, Nature doesn’t teach lessons to allow species time to
remedy their way. Nature deals with problems of imbalance and over-consumption in a
simple way: extinction.

“Unknown knowns…” to quote a strange phrase coming from Donald Rumsfeld.

There are things that people know in scientific society, facts that are currently
unconnected one scientific discipline to another. Like intelligence in Rumsfeld’s era, one
science agency is not talking to the others. Partly this is caused by castle protectionism
one science to another, partly this is a budgetary problem, but mostly it is the ignorance
of the politicians and leaders of any real science, politicians who see no need or affect for
such scientific cooperation to the benefit of the next election cycle. They pass the buck.
Problem is the buck may be picked up by Nature’s method of working with problems:
extinction.

“The ocean is the blue heart of the planet,” Dr. Sylvia Earle, “and we should think of
it as if our lives depend on it, because our lives do.” In the absence of real knowledge,
real connected science, we should act on this principle: Paranoia pays off. It is better to
be alive acting on paranoia rather than being a false optimist and becoming extinct.