> I often hear people say that all we need are the few dozen species of plants
> we eat, some cattle and pigs, maybe a few species of flowers just for fun,
> the rest of the biosphere be damned. My strongest negative reaction to that
> vision of the future is an emotional and personal one and I have trouble
> knowing for sure whether or not I have any particular right to force my
> love, fascination and respect for the natural world on others. But the next
> reaction is a more practical one, in that I think this would be a truly
> difficult feat of bioengineering technology to create and live in such a
> world. I just think the unforeseen difficulties and consequences would be
> enormous.
You probably heard me say something similar. Biodiversity is valuable,
but
1. I just don't see how the planet would become unlivable because
mosses in Iceland or lice in Brazil die out. Something like 99.9% of
all species that have ever lived, have died out. More importantly,
what's the mechanism for the planet becoming unlivable?
2. Biodiversity is definitely not very productive: The oceans may be
very biodiverse, but as far as photosynthetic activity is concerned,
most of it is as barren as the Sahara, and total fish take from 3/4 of
the world's surface is 100 million tonnes (and falling due to
overfishing), while grain production from a fraction of the Earth's
land surface is 2 billion tonnes.
For high productivity we invariably rely on just a few species, that's
what fish farming, tree farming, agriculture are all about. In the case
of many fermentations, most of the effort is in keeping undesired
natural species out of the fermentation tank.
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