It is not often that I turn a comment into a complete post, but this comment from Willis Eschenbach on the Trust and Mistrust article today, merits such a promotion. – Anthony
Which death is more troubling? (images: from NOAA, upper, Wikimedia, lower)
Willis Eschenbach
I am surprised at the visceral nature of the rejection of the term “environmentalist”. I had not realized it had gotten that bad. I don’t think I’d want to be one of those if that’s how people feel.
It also appears that the new preferred term is “conservationist”. But as I said, I don’t make those fine distinctions, so I’m not sure how that differs from the “e-word”.
So let me modify my statement, and say that I am a conservamentalist. I would define that as someone who thinks long and hard about the effect of our actions on the tangled web of life that surrounds us.
I was fishing herring in the Bering Sea one season. I heard on the radio that the annual killing of the Canadian Arctic fur seals had begun, along with the obligatory protests that seem to be required these days.
We’d caught about fifty tonnes of herring that day, killing on the order of a million living beings. I remember thinking how if some creature has big soft baby eyes, it gets lots of sympathy. But if a creature is slimy and has cold fish-eyes, its death doesn’t matter. People hated the seal killers for killing a few dozen creatures, while I killed millions of creatures and was ignored.
If I had to pick one word to describe my position on the ecological webs that surround us, it would be “realist”. Life eats life to live. I am not a man who eats the meat and blames the butcher.
I’ve worked a good deal as a builder. I build with wood. I cut down trees to make room for the building I live in. I grew up in the forest, my step-daddy was a timber feller, the royalty of the logging fraternity. I’ve worked killing trees on an industrial scale.
And I’ll also fight like crazy to see the logging done right. with proper roads and proper setbacks, and proper slope limits, and reforestation. I’ve seen what bad logging practices look like and do.
So for me, a conservamentalist is someone who has thought hard about and balanced the needs for wood and cleared land, balanced those needs with the way that wood is harvested. I grew up in the middle of hundreds of square miles of virgin forest. I have a deep and abiding admiration for that raw wildness. And yet, I cut down trees. I just want to see things done carefully and with forethought, see them done properly with respect for the consequences. I don’t elevate some mythical “Nature” above humans, and I don’t forget nature either.
I was a sport salmon fishing guide a couple years ago, on the Kenai River in Alaska, as I described here. Kenai River king salmon are magnificent beings, fifty pounds or more of powerful, glittering, awe-inspiring fish. When one of my clients caught a salmon, I always thanked the fish in a loud voice for giving up its life for us. Life eats life, beings die so that I can live, and I can’t ignore that. I don’t let it keep me from fishing salmon, but I won’t pretend that I am not killing a splendiferous entity. Some of my clients understood.
Heck, I apologize to trees when I cut them down. Yeah, I know it looks dumb, a grown man talking to trees. But it doesn’t stop me from cutting them down by the scores if need be, I’m a realist. Life eats life. Me, I don’t take killing anything lightly, be it redwood or herring or salmon. Someday, I’ll be chopped down in the same way.
So I’m forming the Conservamentalist Party, our motto will be,“Conservamentalists unite! You have nothing to lose but your minds”.
Now, back to the climate…
I just figured it out….Willis is the Dos Equis guy….”and when I drink beer…”
Nice post, interesting discussion. thanks.
Pascvaks (05:34:54) :You have just won the COMMON SENSE prize!
Wow, slip off to bed and wake to some visceral reactions to my beer induced statements. I’m working so I’ll only reply to one I think needs replied to.
Anton (00:33:48) :
James Sexton (21:57:55) wrote:
“You, uhmm, ever watched a cat and a mouse? Most cats don’t actually eat the mouse, they play with it to death…………..”
“Obscene to draw a comparison? Says who, what, where, where, and why? Your letter is ungrammatical, so I doubt you are particularly well-read on animal psychology or anything, for that matter. And how do you know your dog died of lead poisoning? Did you have a necropsy performed? Did it occur to you that perhaps your dog was just playing with the chicks, unaware that he (she) was hurting them in the process? Dogs do the same thing with socks, shoes, and all kinds of things on the ground.”
“I feel sorry for your current black lab. To have a human who regards one as an inferior being is awfully sad. The fact that you think comparing his life to YOURS is obscene tells me how highly you think of yourself.
I would give my life for any of my creatures. As the person responsible for them, I am supposed to place their well-being above my own. When you love someone, that’s what you do. If you think you’re superior to the other, it isn’t love. I don’t know what it is. But, it sucks.”
You can save your sympathy. Using your line of thinking, and the thoughts that seemed to be expressed, I’ve sympathy for your children and society in general if your teaching them that they’ve no more value than the neighbor’s mouser. If that’s the case, I truly wish you don’t reproduce. Small wonder young people grow up with such complex emotional issues and seem to have little regard for societal norms. If animals are people too, then people are of the same value as animals. Nice. No way that thinking can go wrong. Now where have I heard that expressed before? So, yes, OBSCENE, is the appropriate verbiage.
@Willis Eschenbach
‘However, since the buffalo herds were always on the move, you couldn’t build a lifestyle around hunting them that way.’
Why would the natives have been any different than european natives back in the day?
Or better yet perhaps, why would they have been any different than people today?
You yourself did a lot of fishing, there’s whole lot of life styles been built around seasonal fish, but probably it shows more with dolphins and whales. And what about the life styles that has been built up around hunting seasons?
A method such as driving herds out off a cliff would’ve been a tried and proven method, and very effective method of mass hunting. And lots of time and energy would have gone into strategy and tactics to up the bounty. Add to that some common greed…. whether for pelts, meat, or just fame, and you have yourself people building a lifestyle around it all.
You nailed it Willis. I even apologize to worms when I thread one onto a hook… I “save” worms that crawl out onto a road, or will carefully trap spiders in the house then release them outdoors. Same goes for most insects except mosquitoes! (I’m hoping there is a special place in hell for mosquitoes) I quit hunting Grouse/Partridge 25 years ago as I just haven’t the nerve to kill anything anymore… Well, anything except trout and those damned mosquitoes!
Consider me a member of your Conservamentalist Party! I’ll bet you would have several millions of members with the right kind of marketing.
hmmmmmmmm….
wws (04:50:57) :
“Anton wrote: “And how do you know your dog died of lead poisoning?”
I think that one just sailed right over your head. I’d be willing to bet that there was no doubt whatsover.”
Yeh, but I didn’t want to tease.
@James Baldwin Sexton
So your father brought home a bunch of chickens the size and color of tennis balls and similarly animated then left them alone with a dog that hadn’t been taught to leave them alone. So then he shot the dog for not being bright enough to know the difference between a chick and a tennis ball. There was a moron involved in that situation but it wasn’t the dog.
Re: Willis Eschenbach (Apr 7 19:29),
All I’m saying is that we need to be honest and thoughtful about both the immediate and indirect results of our human decisions, and not treat the death of a herring as somehow less than the death of a seal pup, or treat killing something as though it was the same as stacking bricks to make a wall.
This is the stance of an honorable man. As many have noted we live because we feed on things that were once alive. All organic matter that can be absorbed by our body was once alive. From a lettuce salad to a lamb chop, and by eating fruits and grains we deprive billions of new shoots to come out in the sun. Actually only the fruits of plants who use us to propagate their species are death neutral.
We are a pattern of electromagnetic energy riding on death:
The continuous death and replacement of the cells of our body, the death and replacement of the symbiotic species in our body ( I think something like 75% of cells in our body do not have our DNA), the death of invading viruses, bacteria. One could coin: as inside so outside: more macroscopic, insects and pests, and predators on our species, all this going on continuously in parallel with the three times a day need to replace our energy through food sources.
And in turn, we become a food source at death to bacteria that already are symbiots in our guts.
Re: Alexander Feht (Apr 7 14:42),
The last thing we need on this planet is more mysticism. Get over it.
99% of people on this planet are not mystics, so your statement is strange. In addition, formulating a philosophy of life and death and an ethics is inherent in all human societies: we might disagree with the ethics of fundamentalist Muslims for example, but they have developed an ethical system.
Ethical systems that stress universality of the human condition, empathy and respect for fellow humans and living things in general, as Willis is proposing should be encouraged as a way for human societies to advance without destroying what we know as our civilization.
Re: Ted Swart (Apr 7 22:30),
I am truly surprised that in this discussion of the need to be thoughtful about the way we treat other living animals and plants no one seems to have mentioned the worst thing we humans have done, to planet Earth or Gaia or whatever you want to call it, is to overpopulate our home. Nothing can or will come right unless and until we bring population growth to a complete halt.
Studies show that once the economy of a nation goes over a certain wealth, birth rate plummets. Europe is not replacing itself already and there are incentives for people to have a second child.
The solution is: plenty of energy for all nations to develop, and the globe population will stabilize and start diminishing.
Willis Eschenbach (19:05:16) :
Alexander Feht (17:41:06)
Thanks. Willis for setting that one straight. Being part Cherokee/Choctaw, and
knowing a bit about the Eastern tribes, in particular, the Eastern Indians like the Cherokee were actually quite settled, lived in houses, farmed, and had a relatively civil life. Surprised the Europeans.
As far as incivility ask me why my Granma would not take a $20 bill in
change…
Bulldust (22:04:26) :
My environmental message has always been as follows 😉
http://localgeographic.com/pictures/M-03.gif
Thanks for posting the link. Very funny.
J.Peden (01:07:25) :
davidmhoffer (21:24:49) :
As a rule, animals don’t kill except to eat or in self defense. If that isn’t a sense of morals, I don’t know what is.>>
Morals have nothing to do with wild animals generally not killing for sport.
In general, it doesn’t make survivalistic sense for animals to kill for sport, and that’s all there is to it, not “morals” or “choices”.>>
If a fox gets into your chicken coop it will kill one chicken, drag it off to be eaten and not return until it gets hungry again. If a weasel gets into your chicken coop, it will systematically go through the whole flock and kill every last one of them. Why does a weasel kill for sport while a fox doesn’t? I don’t know, but it does, and that is abnormal behaviour and doesn’t fit with survival instinct. Not only does the weasel risk injury and expend energy, it eliminates what might have been a repeat food source. Nor do most animals kill others of their own kind. When a male lion usurps control of a pride, he drives off the previous male and then kills its cubs so that the females will be ready to breed sooner. But one pride doesn’t exterminate the one next door.
Read the history of Treblinka, Dachau, Auschwitz and Transnistria. Read the history of the Soviet starvation of the Ukraine. Read the history of Sarajevo which went from host of the Olympics to scene of mass murder in a few years. Read the history of Rwanda. Read the current headlines in Iran where the religion prohibits executing virgins, and so young women convicted of crimes like being unacompanied in the presence of a boy are first forced to marry a prison guard, raped, and then executed.
I don’t know precisely why animals don’t as a rule engage in genocide of their prey or of their own kind. The point is that they don’t. Regardless of motivation, their behaviour in general fits the definition. They take what they need for themselves from their environment, they defend themselves and their territory, and sometimes they over react when threatened, or, as in the exampe of the dog and the chicks, they do not understand the consequences of what to them was just play. Why someoene would shoot their dog rather than train it is frankly, beyond me.
Human beings have no such excuse, yet “civilization” frequently turns out to be a thin veneer that, once pierced, unleashes a lack of morality and a capacity for evil displayed by no other animal on this planet.
I am not elevating animals to the status of humans. I am pointing out that many of them have reasoning capabilities, senses of humour, sadness in the face of death (see magpie story above) and rarely take from their environment more than what their current need is. For all the sanctimonious preaching of human capacity for moral reasoning that separates us from the animals, may I point out that an outside oberver of our planet’s history over the last 100 years alone could well come to the conclusion, with considerable evidence to support the theory, that the ONLY species on the planet that shows via repeated behaviour that they LACK morality is homo sapiens.
Willis’ habit of apologizing to the animals that he harvests is one that I fully support and it should be taught to the city dwellers who never see a drop of blood shed, or a slaughtered animal in its death throes to provide the steak on their plate at some elegant restaurant. Doing so is not for the benefit of the animal slaughtered, or for some invisible Gaia spirit. It is to remind ourselves not of our humanity, but the opposite, that we are animals who take from our environment just like other animals and that we should do so with respect. When we lose this respect, when we convince ourselves that we alone have capacity for reason and morality that sets us apart and above the animals, then it is only one more small step to one group of humans deciding that their morality and their reason surpasses all others, and genocide soon follows.
When a dog plays with 50 chicks and kills them, it is not a sign of an animal killing for sport, but of one not understanding the consequences of what to it was just a game. The person who responded by putting a bullet in its head did not do so out of some higher moral authority or reasoned response, but out of revenge, yet another trait that sets us apart from animals. It is nothing to be proud of.
Can I just add a philosophical point regarding categories: the physical material stuff of the world is purely that, material stuff. A brick, for example, is just a brick. But meanwhile, people are conscious self-enquiring individuals who can consciously intend to have certain kinds of relationships. They can consciously choose their behaviour. I can for example, decide that I love a particular painting, and so I will spend money on it, put it in a special place in the home, and so on.
The painting is just a physical object, but as a person I have feelings and attitudes towards that inanimate object.
It is this aspect of personal feelings which we might wish to cultivate, that religion often preaches about. That’s why feeling kindness towards trees can have religious overtones. It is the same reason people who “love” their iPods can seem like an Apple “cult”.
Sure it is just a tree, and you are just a heap of atoms. When you love your partner, that’s just some chemicals in the brain. But your personal inner experience isn’t just chemicals. You don’t say, honey, I’m having a rush of serotonin. You say, honey, I love you.
So it sounds religious because it is the same sort of stuff that religion often talks about. I don’t think Wills truly believes the tree is inhabited by a conscious spirit. But the attitude of care, that’s real.
James Sexton (20:53:24) :
peterhodges (17:47:04) :
James Sexton (17:26:09) : Basic economics.
well, basic economic theory anyway. unfortunately, it seems actual economics works more like i described it. i.e. tell John “Competition is a sin” Rockefeller or the folks who own the fed they are not true capitalists.
while i agree with your sentiment, i guess i am saying that monopoly-capitalism as practiced today is incompatible with freedom>>
Agreed, sort of. The connotation you tried to convey is true, sort of.>>
Beware the connotation. I challenged peterhodges to provide specifics as to what monopoly he suggests Rockefeller has, and to spell out just who the “folks” are who “own” the fed. I support the logic of your well reasoned response, but I suspect that if perterhodges were to step up and answer me a different connotation might emerge. I hope that he both answers, and that I am wrong.
Experiments over few species?
CO2science compiles literally thousands of papers with thousands of experiments performed with many different species and in most of them plants increase their growth in CO2 enriched atmospheres. Both in C3 and in C4 plants.
http://www.co2science.org/data/plant_growth/dry/dry_subject.php This is the index or papers studying dry weight gain responses classified in alphabetical order.
http://www.co2science.org/data/plant_growth/dry/dry_subject.php And this is the classification of papers that study the photosynthetic response in alphabetical order.
Please don’t compare light and CO2, light is radiation, CO2 is a chemical. Apples and oranges have more things in common. Besides, that is what Michaelis Menten kinetics says. When you increase the concentration of a substrate (CO2 in this case) the enzyme that uses that substrate (rubisco in this case) works faster, up to a point, where the enzyme is saturated.
The point in this discussion is whether 400 ppm is the saturation point or the saturation point is higher. Both experiments and history indicates that the saturation point is way over 1000 ppm. You can find the experiments on co2science.org. For the history, just read about plant life during the carboniferous period (well over 1000 ppm of CO2). Way more prolific than nowadays.
I have checked the papers cited on CO2science and all varieties of the main agricultural plants grow faster in enriched CO2 environments. (The classification ranges from Acacia to Zea mays)
So, my initial point is: If most (or many, if you don’t like most) plants grow faster in enriched CO2 environments, then increasing CO2 levels is helping the environment. If you pump CO2 into the atmosphere, you are feeding plants, and therefore, you are being a TRUE environmentalist Even if the growth is only 21% as you say, and even if not all plants grow, you are helping the environment because less farm land will be needed to feed the human population, and more wild land can be left to nature.
James Sexton wrote:
“You can save your sympathy. Using your line of thinking, and the thoughts that seemed to be expressed, I’ve sympathy for your children and society in general if your teaching them that they’ve no more value than the neighbor’s mouser. If that’s the case, I truly wish you don’t reproduce. Small wonder young people grow up with such complex emotional issues and seem to have little regard for societal norms. If animals are people too, then people are of the same value as animals. Nice. No way that thinking can go wrong. Now where have I heard that expressed before? So, yes, OBSCENE, is the appropriate verbiage.”
Tell that to every practicing Buddhist and Bonpo, and most Hindus, on this planet.
Sorry I missed your awful joke about lead poisoning. What a great dad you had for putting the defenseless chicks in harms way, going to church (what else?), and then coming home and killing the loving, loyal family dog…for being a dog. And you think a human like this is superior to animal life-forms? Who are you more likely to meet in heaven? Him or the dog?
Kids raised by, and around, me learn to respect ALL life, not just themselves and those beings that look like them. The ability to empathize with different species is a plus, not a minus, and NOT thinking of oneself as more important than everything else in the Grand Scheme of Things does wonders for curbing megalomania.
Look up “obscene.” I think you’re aiming it in the wrong direction.
François GM (18:41:48) :
peterhodges (17:47:04) :
” i guess i am saying that monopoly-capitalism as practiced today is incompatible with freedom”
Peter,
Either you don’t know what capitalism is or what freedom is – or both.
?? with some patience i will avoid the ad hominem and re-emphasize the monopoly part.
however one defines “capitalism” it ought to be clear that a multi-polar system has more degrees of freedom than mono-polar one.
people sure love to hold onto their definitions and identities, which is maybe Willis’ point. i prefer to reject -ism, -ist, and -acry. these labels omit a variety of attitudes which one may choose hold, and by adopting such a label one tends to limit ones outlook and choices. and surely this is not freedom.
anyway my own opinion is that capital-ism would be rule by capital and i prefer not to be ruled, thank you.
Alexander Feht (Apr 7 14:42),
The last thing we need on this planet is more mysticism. Get over it.
huh. would not the practice of science be considered a mystical endeavor?
Willis, again not to negate your very good points but to toss more factual information into the discussion on pre-colonial native Americans, here’s a story on the South American natives, in climate context: Aztecs “sacrificing” 80,000 prisoners of war to rededicate a temple to the Sun god (in the hopes of gaining influence on the climate). I don’t argue that precolonials were despicable, unredeemable savages, only that neither were they idyllic innocents morally superior to the marauding white-eyes who invaded and slaughtered them mercilessly.
The truth lies between the caricatures we’re being fed.
anna v (07:47:11) : You are correct, however “too little, too late”, all efforts have been made to secularize us, beginning with the several political revolutions all over the world, to set us apart from traditional knowledge to even traditional measuring units once anthropomorphic now abstract, detached from natural laws: from the pitagorean perfect 3:2 fifth (0.666) to the concocted and imperfect Plank´s constant of 0.66252, and thus with everything. The on purpose desacralization of the world done through the so called “secret societies” (politicians´cradle) and now with the help of “holy and untouchable” NGOs to attain a supposed paradise on earth, from the jesuists´ “theory of liberation” to the global warmers´Gaia Cult of Saint Gore, or the liberals´ “social justice” kool-aided heaven.
Only a change of paradigms will make it, a change which would mean, as any other change, a parturition, and as a parturition, pain.
You conservamentalists are all the same, PETH is a front for Big Cod-Liver Oil.
Always enjoy reading your posts, Willis.
brc (15:29:31) :
…don’t forget the dear little Platypus, who is the only member of the genus Ornithorhynchus.”
I won’t 🙂 But those duckies must feel lonely too. 🙂
JimBrock (13:57:03) : “Reminds me of that great ballad from Paint Your Wagon. Clint Eastwood sang ( ?) ‘I talk to the trees, but they don’t listen to me.'”
I was reminded of that, too, only it was the Smothers Brothers version.
Excerpt: “Hello, Tree. How’s Mrs. Tree? How are all the little bushes?”
anna v (07:47:11) : “99% of people on this planet are not mystics…”
Possibly true, but only if we exclude religious believers (including Gaia worshippers, both explicit and de facto).
Thanks for another good post Willis, which has raised some thought provoking comments. For me people are the most important thing. However, we all need to have respect for the environment that supports us all by using it in a responsible way.
The planet can support many more people than we have today, providing we continue to innovate to find the energy necessary for growth.