Even though our moderator nevers allows my posts, I'll pitch this in...
Hi folks!
While I was raised on Colorado Rocky Mountain High 60s liberalism - looking
forward to the day I could buy some land in the mountains and bury the deed
("Giving the land back to nature!") - longer and deeper thought on how to
accomplish the whole Save The World thing has lead me to the opposite
conclusion: mankind needs to take complete responsiblity for running the
ecology if we want to save it. The naive psuedo-religious view that the
ecosphere is some conscious being that knowingly regulates itself is so much
mystical malarkey, and the righteous fervor of the self-appointed ecowarriors
is in no way ethically superior to the zealotry of any other type of hypnotic
ditto-heading sect.
I live in the woods on a lake: the deer, otter, bears, moose, beavers are my
neighbors and a daily part of my family's life. With worrisome regularity I
see privileged inner-city vegan kids come up armed with all the real-world
experience of the latest wave of Disney cartoons ("animals that eat plants are
Good and deserve to live - animals that eat meat are Bad, and deserve to starve
to death"). These kids inevitably wax poetic about the horror of a deer being
shot by a hunter and I find myself attempting to inform them about the
realities of deer lifestyles - that they are born, sometimes survive to
adulthood and inevitably fill the role of food source after slowly dying of
starvation when they can no longer feed themselves (or while being torn to
pieces by a pack of wolves). That Bambi's dad did not really come to back Make
him a Man (oops! Man and men are bad, so that must have been a scripting
mistake...), but unlike a human Bambi's dad would abandon him and fight to
expel him from the herd.
In the West we have developed this insolated ideal that if it weren't for
humans the world would be a garden of Eden - that all we need to do is stop
doing everything and the Glory of Nature will reassert itself.
Pampered, delusional, suicidal Me Too groupthink...
The Glory of Nature is for all things to live and die. For this particular
ecosphere and all in it to perish in the flash of a comet strike or the slow
roasting of the planet as our star expands. The *only* natural force that can
make any positive change to the short or long term survival of one or all of
our genetic kin is Human Intent.
We need to get past the wanking self-gratification of public auto-flagellation
and take responsibility for figuring out how to save the world. In my opinion
this includes the current model of generating resources and awareness by
regulating hunting and fishing (neither of which I engage in [not
ADD-compatible activities...;]), as Brian aptly describes **. It may include
activities that are not to our liking, but a responsible caretaker measures his
success not in the pleasure of the moment but in the review of decades of
dedication.
If saving the Redwoods meant cutting down all the large trees *** we should cut
the damn things down. If saving the seals means killing a thousand seal pups
then we should get out the clubs. If saving the planetary ecosystem means
wiping out a dozen species of cute mammals in the process then we need to be
all grown up and take the hard job of making that decision.
Were we to take the current affluent western liberal tack forever I would
expect us to still be patting each other on the back for being so enlightened
as we fly the ecosystem into a brick wall. Thankfully, I have a huge amount of
faith in the aggregate effects of individual human intelligence and character
and believe we are working through our current social shallowness via debates
just like this one (oddly enough...) .
-cheers!
-chris "don't have a gun but would die for your right to shoot me with one"
blask
** A perfect example is the case of the Rocky Mountain Bighorn Sheep. With a
population of 36 in Colorado when I was a kid after disease spread via feces, a
hunting license was issued (amongst great outcry) and the survivors were made
to move about, therefore stopping the disease. Today Bighorn Sheep are listed
as "lower risk" and Colorado has a healthy population.
*** I'm making an extreme argument, not suggesting these are necessarily likely
scenarios
________________________________
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] on behalf of Drsolly
Sent: Wed 8/29/2007 9:41 AM
To: Brian Loe
Cc: funsec
Subject: Re: [funsec] wow - is a "shadow" politician still a politician?
> I'm not sure where this fits in the discussion but, yeah, that SOUNDS
> like a ridiculous program. The article did not read all that unbiased
> so I have to reserve judgment to some degree - as I do with any news
> story.
>
> On the other hand, the saving of several species of migratory birds
> has come by way Ducks Unlimited. Further, in the US, EVERY TIME you
> buy anything to do with hunting or shooting (to include ammo and guns)
> you have contributed to the care of our parks and conservation
> departments. If everyone in the country stopped buying hunting and
> fishing stuffs tomorrow they would have to close our national parks.
Huh. So there's no other way that this could be financed.
> Never mind the arguments any government conservation agent will give
> you about bettering the herds of wildlife and creating habitat -
> without hunting there wouldn't be a conservation department in your
> state, AND you'd wipe out the populations of several large game
> species.
This sounds *so* like the arguments used by foxhunters to defend their
fun of chasing a small brown fox using a huge pack of dogs and cavalry.
I expect the Spanish use the same arguments about bullfighting, and the
bear-baiters, cockfighters and dogfighters were likely the same.
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