Hi Hakan, Joel >Dear Joel, > >This information was provided earlier by Keith as an argument >on this issues. Since it is the round for last word, I like to >clarify my understanding of the discussion. > >Motie who is deeply involved with forest management in the area >where he lives, have some local and particular problems. This >has to do with how his particular forest works and how different >interest groups acts with regards to his forest. When I say his >forest, I mean the forest that he has interest in. Motie made it >clear from the outset of the discussion, that he was talking >about his forest and his opinion of what happened there. > >Discussing the issue from the outside, made me bringing up >several points about forest management that was within my >knowledge and experiences. During this exchange, I became >fully convinced that Motie knew very well what he talked about >and he was a responsible and caring representative for the >forest management interests in his forest. I did of course not >know his forest and my arguments and convictions had in this >case to be of general nature. > >Keith who is a knowledgeable man in this field, picked up on >the global aspect, but not without first recognizing Motie's >competence and that he was the best one to talk for his >forest. > >Said this, I like to add the following last words, > >Our nature is a sensitive environment that through millions >of years developed a balance between the species. When >some species started to dominate to a level that was not >sustainable, things happened on both short and long term >that corrected it. We now have a specie that are growing >out of proportion, we call them humans and on short term the >nature already started to try to apply corrections, long term >nature will succeed.
We're several distinct species now Hakan, or varieties rather. There have been a number of reports recently on adverse effects of "primitive" societies on their environment. I'm not convinced that these changes indicate unsustainability. First, there haven't been any primitive societies for thousands of years, though we might now regard their technology and their level of "development" as primitive compared with ours (and is it really? - depends on the criteria, and the jury's still out on our criteria). The traditional societies have the accumulated experience of hundreds of generations and are all very sophisticated in their relations with their environments, not primitive. Second, there certainly have been societies that failed to maintain a balance with their environments. See for instance "Conquest of the Land Through Seven Thousand Years" by W. C. Lowdermilk, 1939: http://journeytoforever.org/farm_library.html#lowdermilk Societies have failed to do it, and vanished, whole civilizations have failed, tribes have failed. But humanity quite clearly hasn't failed. These lessons are all there to be learnt, the failures and the successes. The great majority of humans still live in comparative harmony with their environments. So, who doesn't? First and foremost, glaringly, industrialized man doesn't. Industrialized man wants and takes an unsustainable share of resources, and, not unnaturally, that's also an inequitable share. I haven't checked, but maybe there's about a billion of them, though within that billion are many whose lives are not particularly unsustainable, nor particularly greedy. Then, at the other end of the scale, are the victims of the inequity, whose lives are unsustainable because they are too poor and hungry to survive, though they're too powerless to have that much of an adverse effect on the environment - certainly not when compared with the industrialized billion. Again, there are about a billion of them, or rather more. That leaves more than 4 billion. A lot of them live in cities which are not very sustainable, but again, a lot of those don't live particularly unsustainable lives. So we're left with a majority that's not doing too badly, and neither is the environment because of them. Cities - city man is more or less a different species. Is he though? It depends on the city. London, just to feed itself - or be fed rather, like a helpless infant - needs an area bigger than Britain, and the food isn't the half of it. But many 3rd World cities more or less feed themselves, via city farms. It's estimated that London could also do that. I'd say it's going to have to, along with all the other big-baby cities. What do you find there? What I find is waste waste waste, needless, wasteful, murderous waste. Sloppy, lazy, stupid, and, indeed, primitive. What kind of "humans" do this? Is it a type of human we're talking about at all, or just a human institution, or institutions? There've been big cities for a very long time that weren't particularly unsustainable. What's changed? I'd say the major factor is corporate interest - out of control corporations, that usually know perfectly well what they're doing, plus not very accountable bureaucracies that naturally ally with them. They employ humans, but they themselves are not human. Much or most of our unsustainability must be ascribed to them and to their influence over us and control of us and what we do. The question is, do we need them? Can we - we industrialized ones - survive without them? Or, can they be controlled? If controlled and brought firmly - very firmly! - back into the realms of responsible behaviour, how distant then would the goal of sustainability be for our societies? And what changes, how much change, would achieving it require? The challenge of our era. >The impact of the humans is severe and during a very short >time period they have caused enormous damages. Its survival >will be totally dependent on responsible and sustainable >management of nature. If we leave the solutions to nature, >it will be very painful for the future humans that have to take >the consequences of todays excesses. Mostly not for the 3-4 billion who're not doing too badly, but certainly for the billion at either end of the scale. But of course the problems have been spilling over for quite some time, like global warming. It sure is one world. But maybe most would still survive and be able to reestablish a balance. >The environmentalist that wants to leave things only to >nature, must also belive in the natural thinning of the human >population. That's not a majority environmentalist view, but many of those people do want that, yes. Junk science. I've seen estimates of the Earth's "carrying capacity" ranging from a low of 500 million to a high of 32 billion. It's been said here - if the industrialized nations turn to growing biofuels, that will condemn millions in the poor countries to starvation. Why? The biofuels will replace the food the industrialized nations now provide to these basket-case countries. However, soy and corn, for instance, feed rich cattle mostly, and poor people vanishingly little, but that fails to impress them. America is the world's biggest-ever food importer, with much of it coming from these same poor countries, and the other industrialized countries aren't far behind, but that also fails to impress. That is exactly what David Pimentel claims, in the face of all evidence. >They should fight against medicines, transport, >feeding starving people and all the other things that work >against the natural control of the human population. I'd say they should fight against what makes the unsustainable sectors so unsustainable, but oh so often, though they themelves invariably belong to that sector, they point instead at "overpopulation" in the 3rd World. It's very odd indeed how it escapes them so thoroughly that, first, poverty is still growing faster than the population is in the poor areas, and that, second, reducing poverty invariably reduces population growth, and environmental damage with it, as the two things, overpopulation and environmental damage, are very largely both symptoms of poverty in these regions, and that's the real problem. And the major cause of it is exploitation. The poor have to support the rich, as always. While the rich blame the poor, as always. >Personally I prefer a managed sustainable world, even >if it is no chance that I will ever see it. But we all have to >work against this goal and show some kind of responsibility >in trying to find a comfortable level for future humans or at least >give them a chance to survive. We're the problem. We have to take care not to ascribe the damage we do to the whole of humanity, and we're not very good at it. "This Ecological Footprints of Nations 2002 issue brief reports on the ecological impact of 146 nations." There's still a lot wrong with footprinting, but it gets better, and it's a useful indicator. See: http://www.RedefiningProgress.org/media/releases/021125_efnations.html http://www.RedefiningProgress.org/publications/ef1999.pdf. "The global Ecological Footprint in 1999 (the latest year for which data is available) is 5.6 global acres, while the Earth's biocapacity was 4.7 global acres. The United States recorded an Ecological Footprint of 24.0 global acres, nearly doubling its national biocapacity of 13.0 global acres." "At a population of 10 billion, there would be merely 2.8 global acres [1.1 hectares] of biocapacity available per person, less than what people use today in Indonesia or Peru." In 1907, the estimable Prof. F.H. King of the USDA found in China "a maintenance capacity ... of 240 people, 24 donkeys and 24 pigs to one of our [US] 40-acre farms which our farmers regard as too small for a single family." That's six per acre, 15 per hectare. Far from grinding poverty and misery, King found cheerful and hardworking people. In Japan he found a population rate of more than three people to each acre (7.5 per hectare), "and yet the total agricultural imports into Japan in 1907 exceeded the agricultural exports by less than one dollar per capita". Again he didn't find grinding poverty and misery. It's been shown the the Chinese traditional farming system in use in both China and Japan then, and still in use throughout east and southeast Asia today (including Indonesia), is characterized by (1) high productivity of land, (2) negligible use of fossil fuel energy, (3) negligible pollution of the environment, and (4) high use of labour. (Labour use can also be low, however, very flexible.) A comparison with modern Western (ie industrialized) methods found the opposite, in all four cases. It was also proposed that the Chinese system was relevant to production throughout the tropics, and is increasingly being used throughout the tropics in various forms. (Backhurst 1983, et al.) My own work has confirmed this, and not just for the tropics - it is an infinitely adaptible system. In fact it's rather similar to modern organic growing systems such as John Jeavons's Biointinsive system, now being used with success in many tropical areas, along with other such systems, including Fukuoka's from Japan - successful especially when happily married with traditional techniques. Food production and fuel production fit together easily in such systems. I think it would be quite easy to make such a critique of all the other aspects of the alleged unsustainability of humans. What if we started applying real science to these matters, really turned the full weight of our scientific and technological might to the problems of sustainability - instead of subjugating nearly all of it, and the necessary resources along with it, to furthering corporate interests and the military? Or just frittering it away. Here's one example, from a previous message: "American and European annual expenditure on pet food: $17 billion per year. Estimated annual cost of providing universal healthcare and nutrition for everyone in the world: $13 billion per year." - United Nations Development Programme, Human Development Report, 1998. http://www.undp.org/hdro/1998/98.htm) That's relevant, considering the link between poverty on the one hand and population growth and environmental damage on the other. Anyway, the environmentalists who want to thin out the population (other people's mainly) may not be a metaphor for the environmentalists' attitude to trees and forests. I think the fringe that wants to remove the humans from the "pristine" forests is just a fringe. Maybe it's the same fringe as the one that wants to think out the people. Most environmentalists involved in forest issues want management, but they want real management, not just a cover for exploitation. The 1% in the GAO report is interesting. Who is it exactly that is blowing up such a big fuss over such a minor issue? And now new laws are being pushed through that play on those very (mis)perceptions. Hm. Reminds me of the message I posted a few days back, "Sound familiar? - Global Smokescreen", on the oil industry's "Global Climate Science Communications Action Plan" campaign of four years ago. regards Keith >Hakan > > >At 08:53 PM 12/15/2002 -0600, you wrote: > >Sorry to dredge up an old thread, but I just came across this in The > >Wilderness Society's magazine for 2002-2003: > > > >"Some politicians maintain that conservation groups profess to support > >forest thinning and other preventative measures but then appeal the lion's > >share of the actual plans. <snip> Yet in 2001 the U.S. General Accounting > >Office (GAO) found that during the six-month period it reviewed, just over > >one percent of the Forest Service's proposed projects were challenged." > > > >The article quoted environmentalists who propose retaining the largest trees > >and cutting only the small-diameter trees, focusing first on communities > >that have sprung up near forest land. The timber industry, however, insists > >on going after big trees in remote areas. > > > >One other point: some of those dead trees that have been oft-mentioned > >lately are "bug factories" that are very beneficial to eco-system health. > >Case in point: the three-toed woodpecker, which has recovered due to being > >able to eat those dead trees' inhabitants. > > > >Once again, it is the environmentalist view that is promoting thinning of > >dead brush and small-diameter trees, which improves fire safety for humans > >living in or near the forest, while leaving the forest healthy and intact. > > > >Sorry to start this up again, but I just HAD to... > >-Joel R. > > > >(The Wilderness Society's well-rounded view is at www.wilderness.org ) Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Biofuels list archives: http://archive.nnytech.net/ Please do NOT send Unsubscribe messages to the list address. 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