I am reading a most interesting book! (see subject line by Evan Eisenberg)
He starts by talking about the alliance of man and grasslands and how we
favoured annuals over perenials to get their seed which was good for food
for humans. This of course led to farming and farming led to an expansion
of humans from a mere 5 million to close to 6 billion. But the joker is in
the soil. After 20 mind numbing pages detailing the amount and variety of
life within a cubic meter of topsoil, I feel almost too respectful to walk
on the land. So let me take a few minutes to share a few paragrapghs with
you my friends.
Quote: Page 33
While different kinds of farming do different kinds of damage, the basic
problem inheres in farming as we know it: the alliance between humans and
annual grasses. Annual grasses, remember, are pioneer species which throw
their energy into setting seed, rahter than into their root systems. When a
hillside that once hosted trees or perenials grasses is cleared and planted
with annual grasses, the earth loses its moorings. For the soil comunity,
it is like having one's city plucked away by a giant hand and replaced with
cellophane tents. And since annual grasses do best in "disturbed" soil, we
as their allies are bound to keep disturbing it: the more so in that we have
to keep disturbing the other annuals - the ones we call weeds - that thrive
in soil we have disturbed
NOTHING SUCCEEDS LIKE FAILURE
How can an alliance that is so successful be so unsuccessful? How can an
ecosystem spread so quickly when it is so unstable? - when it is not really
an ecosystem at all?
The alarming fact of the matter is that in ecology, as in other realms,
nothing succeeds like failure. It is often the most unstable systems that
expand most ferociously. A stable system by definition, does not need to
expand - though it may do so anyway, at its leisure. An unstable system is
like a giant with tiny legs who must keep running just to keep from falling.
An obvious example is fire, an aerobic creature that quickly wolfs down the
food around it and lopes outward in search of more.
Agriculture is such a system. (TL: And so is capitalism!) It depletes the
soil it is on and moves out in search of more. The more destructive a form
of agriculture is, the more quickly it expands. (TL: The phony capitalism of
investment, return on investment, financial instruments, stock and profit
also share the quality of the need for quick expansion of the money supply.)
But even relatively benign forms can expand fairly quickly, because the
number of humans can rise geometrically. (TL: Not only to the rich get
richer but there gets to be more of them and the collary of this is that the
poor get poorer and there is more of them too.)
A similar logic guides parasites and pathogens. A pathogen is most virulent
when it is able to move easily from one host to another, for then it can
kill with impunity-milking one host dry, then moving on to the next. (TL:
In this analogy, globalisation could be considered a pathogen.) When it is
confined to a small population, or finds its movements blocked in some way,
it is forced to moderate its demands. It must exploit the host more gently,
making sure that he stays able-bodied enough to keep himself-and his
pathogens-alive. (A likely example of this can be seen in Japan, where the
scrupulous use of condoms may have led to the evolution of milder forms of
human T-cell leukemia/lymphoma virus type 1, or HTLV-1, a relative of HIV.)
(TL: This could also happen in an economy with such devices as a Tobin Tax
and other legislative adjustment that would moderate the speed and force it
to "expoit it's hosts more gently".)
In their expansion, most life forms follow the same rule as parasites. The
greater their demand on their "host"-for which read "environment," both
living and nonliving-the greater their need to expand. Conversely, the more
room they have to expand, the more crippling the demands they can make on
their suroundings. To reduce it to a nursery rhyme: The more you demand,
the more you expand. The more you expand, the more you demand. (TL My
posting yesterday, in which I was ruminating on the concepts of Theobold and
the capacity of capitalism to create more goods than there is a demand for
creates the need for more expansion, ie jobs, new products, new markets,
etc.)
Sooner or later, you run out of room. At that point, you either learn to
treat your host more politely, or you drag your host with you to extinction.
(TL: Has that point been reached in both population growth and economic
growth?) Has that point been reached by the alliance of grass and man? In
parts of the world where peoples were confined by geographical barriers or
by the pressure of other peoples, it was reached some time ago. In some
cases the result was amore careful husbandry of the soil, in others famine
and the extinction of cultures. The same point will soon be reached by
human-kind at large, and the same choice will have to be made.
Some scientists and economists tell us not to worry, as there is still
plenty of virgin land that can be brought under cultivation. They are
wrong. Much of the soil in the humid tropics is lateritic, and bakes as
hard as brick as sson as it is stripped of its forest cover. In drier
regions, land can be made arable only by means ofirrigation projects that
often cause grave ecological harm. Mountainous regions, when pricked by the
plow, hemorrhage soil. Even when virgin land seems to invite our see, we
had better think twice. We and or allies have already junked so much of
nature that he machinery is starting to sputter. For the soil cummunity is
not the only one that we have trampled, and whose work we do not know how to
do.
