Wildlife-urban interface: evidence of a species gone awry
Fostering Ecological Hope
Today from Margaret Swedish:
We blogged previously about the California fires and the craziness of we US Americans who have trouble with the realities of actual limits — natural limits, limits of our biosphere. At work in the ‘can-do’ spirit of this society is that sense that Nature is to be conquered, not lived within, as if we are not part of it, but rather over and above it.
It is a sickness, and it is killing us — by killing our natural world.
It is not an indomitable spirit of resilience against the odds, but rather a societywide mental illness.
I know that sounds strong, but when one keeps on doing destructive behavior — and it proves destructive over and over again, and still one keeps doing it — that fits well within the descriptions of addictive behavior disorders.
We are addicted to economic growth, to paving over the wonders of the natural world with more human ‘development,’ can’t even imagine telling developers that they cannot behave like this anymore. We are addicted by our history and economic values to a sense of grandiosity about the US human being, that we will never be subject to limits, that freedom is equated with doing whatever we want whenever we want as long as we have the money and the will to do it.
Here’s an op-ed from the Washington Post’s Outlook section on Sunday, Blazes on the New Frontier. It describes what this guy calls the ‘recolonization’ of our nation’s rural countryside. It presents a picture of what we are doing in what is called the “wildlife-urban interface,” in other words, the increasingly inappropriate way in which we are developing human communities at the edge of the wilderness.
And what we have been and still are witnessing in California is one result.
Meanwhile, the human population balloons and will continue to do so for another few decades — we will grow from 6.5 billion to more than 9 billion in 40 years. Anyone can see that this is not only not sustainable, but is also suicidal at a species scale.
If we put this attitude up against the new report from the United Nations Environment Program, the Global Environment Outlook Report (GEO-4) that I mentioned in a previous blog, we see the crisis that is upon us. The biosphere all around us is deterioriating, ‘decaying,’ because we will not let Nature alone.
In case you’re interested, Andrew Revkin, ecology writer for the New York Times, has started a new blog on their web site, called Dot Earth. It appears to be focused on his concerns around the growing human population and our human stresses on the planet. This should be an interesting converstion to follow, and you can, of course, participate.
Meanwhile, let’s start thinking about how we cure ourselves of our mass psychosis, shall we?
[tags] California wildfires, inappropriate development, wildlife-urban interface, Andrew Revkin, New York Times Dot Earth, United Nations Environment Program, Global Environmental Outlook, GEO-4[/tags]
October 31st, 2007 at 12:25 am
Dear Dr. Steven Earl Salmony,
Why do not you take the lead. Probably the other leaders are eating grass, that’s why these ecological problems. One has to motivate one self for such isuues of concern. Probably the so called all leaders are after bossing over others and braying at them. The governement officials I call them as —- are good for nothing.
November 3rd, 2007 at 6:39 am
GUIDEPOST…..
http://www.liveearth.org/?p=314
November 3rd, 2007 at 9:58 am
Want to draw attention to two good links here: the one for http://www.liveearth.org/?p=314,
and the other for Sustainability Southeast (http://sustainabilitysoutheast.org/). The latter has some very interesting features, including lectures on the relationship between food production and population growth.
Thanks, Steven
November 7th, 2007 at 11:01 am
Please examine the work from Jack Alpert, Ph.D. of the Stanford Knowledge Integration Laboratory.
Basically, Dr. Alpert’s work calls out to the human community to immediately begin reversing the current trend of skyrocketing absolute global population numbers by implementing a program of rapid population decline. Rather than near exponential population expansion, he is advocating rapid population contraction.
What his work indicates is the need for a worldwide, “ONE CHILD PER FAMILY” initiative. He is not the only person to be advocating such a plan of action. Alan Weisman, the author of The World Without Us, has come to precisely the same conclusion.
Just for a moment, imagine that the a majority plus one of the human community accepted the idea that what we are doing now by adamantly advocating and relentlessly pursuing certain distinctly human overgrowth activities would eventually lead to the collapse of either human civilization or Earth’s ecology or both. Let us also suppose that this majority plus one agreed that the ethical thing to do was not to keep doing what we are doing now, but something different. If having multiple human offspring was unethical and having not more than one child per family was ethical, in part because such a program of action would have survival value for the human species, its global economy, other species and the integrity of Earth, then it seems to me that humanity would naturally and democratically move in a new direction, along another path, perhaps to a good enough future for our children and generations to come.
This perspective makes one thing crystal clear: if humankind chooses to follow the current primorse path of endless economic globalization, endless per human consumption and endless population expansion, a colossal wreckage of some kind is in offing.
In light of the great work being done by the contributors to this discussion by the members of the SEH community, I would like to ask humbly that you turn your attention to a website, one I presented some time ago.
http://www.skil.org
Once there, I would like to suggest that you begin by reviewing what Jack calls SKIL Notes. There are now 45 of them and they are mercifully short. These Notes show a certain careful and skillful development of thinking about resolving THE PROBLEM that presents itself to humanity now as the proverbial ‘mother’ of all global challenges, I believe.
Always, with thanks,
Steve