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…
There’s a difference in kind between eating a soy bean and eating a steer. The soy bean is not sentient. Where sentience of fellow travelers on the wheel of life should become a moral concern isn’t the easiest thing to demarcate but warm blooded is a good rule of thumb. The days when humans were obligatory omnivores is, for the vast majority of the 6 billion people on the planet, long past. Eating flesh is hedonistic these days rather than a matter of survival or even good health. I have no particular problem with hedonists but I do have a problem with being in denial about it. If the shoe fits, wear it.
Granted everything dies and we ourselves will eventually be eaten by something or even if we are cremated we return to the air and soil and nourish something in that manner. Again, there’s a difference in kind between being eaten young or eaten old. Ask yourself if you’d rather give up your life at age 20 or age 80. The way I figure it a cow should get the same opportunity to live a full life that you desire for yourself.
I’m not a particularly religious person but I figure there’s a better than fair chance that since I became self-aware once it’ll happen again but it’ll be a random lottery when it comes to what species I’ll be. So when an animal crosses my path if it’s hurt I help it, if it’s healthy I leave it be, and if it’s sufferering at the end of its days I bring its suffering to a swift end. If there’s any justice in the universe the next time I might open my eyes as one of the animals that have crossed my path. If that’s the case I should be in fine standing with lots of good karma. If I *were* particularly religious, especially a believer in the God of Abraham, I’d be very rightly concerned about whether I was living as God intended everything alive to live as outlined in Genesis, with no killing or death or destruction and being given seed bearing herbs as food, or whether I was wallowing in original sin by taking part in the death and destruction and flesh eating that followed the Fall.
Proceed at your own risk. My ass is covered for most eventualities.
I am with Layne Blanchard.
Environmentalists pretend and preen with their “deep ecology” but they are only willing to so deep and not deeper than that.
Why?
“Let us beware of saying that death is opposed to life. The living is merely a type of what is dead, and a very rare type”
-Nietzsche
Leif Svalgaard (14:45:56) :
“one day a bacterium will be eating me”
Haven’t they already?
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.” Laughed my *ss off.
The late, great Spike Milligan put it better with “I talk to the trees, thats why they put me away”
Quizchair
Very thoughtful post, Willis.
Mr Alexander Feht, above, doesn’t want more ‘mysticism’ around.
Denis Dutton’s ‘Art Instinct’ links the need for art back to our evolutionary roots. But what if we are also wired to need something larger than ourselves?
I’m coming around to that notion myself…and a simple respect for the great web of life is as good a place to start as any.
The vast majority of species in our biosphere are predators, prey or both. Why is that we humans are constantly criticized by the environmentalists and their loony cohorts for doing what is intrinsically part of our nature, preying upon lower life forms?
The problem with this viewpoint, of course, is that you end up consuming all the non-renewable resources in order to make “synthetic” boots and coats. It is completely unsustainable.
If you use leather (skin) and fur instead, you are surrounding yourself with the natural products of the ecosystem. Such products are completely renewable and ecologically sound. After all, the Native Americans used them exclusively.
A true environmentalist wears fur, not highly processed oil, and other chemicals that destroy the environment.
As I sit on my deck watching the birdfeeder and contemplating weather it is time to put out my hummingbird feeder I glance upward and notice Eschenbach’s hawk circling higher, ever higher, until it touches the clouds. Maybe it’s really an eagle.
Related…
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d24b56MmIts&hl=en_US&fs=1&rel=0]
Willis,
Really enjoyed your post. Very thoughtful and I agree with 99.9% of everything you said. I need to go back now and read up on your thermostat theory…very interesting…thanks!
Dear Willis,
I can completely agree with your reasoning. I am a biologist working (amongst others) with rats and mouses. I am doing reseach for cancer cures. I have killed at this moment about 2500 rats for my research. Does this make make a monster?
Without the type of research I am doing there would be not a single cure for cancer.
Sometimes I hope (in vain) that this message gets through into the nutcases that oppose this type of experimenting (before they are struck with cancer, that is).
Early conservamentalists, admiring Nature, yet making a buck, too:
http://www.vulgare.net/wp-content/uploads/wawona_drive_through_tree_yosemite_ca_002.jpg
http://www.redwoods.info/showrecord.asp?id=2464
Enjoy, before they fall over.
Baby seals are cuter than fish, but if it were spiders instead of seals or fish, no one would give a damn, nor would they care if only 10% of the carcass was used and the rest left to rot.
It’s all subjective
Ray (13:07:18)
I agree entirely. I have learned much from those who are usually called “Native Americans”, but who I refer to as “Early Asian Immigrants”.
I used to troll for salmon off the West Coast of the US. Many Early Asian Immigrant tribes depended heavily on the salmon, particularly the upstream tribes with no access to the ocean. For them, if the salmon didn’t come back in the fall, it meant hungry winters and early deaths for them. I and some of my fishermen/women friends used to follow their ancient practice with the first fish we caught every year.
What the villagers did was this. When they caught the first salmon of the year, they would put it on a broad wooden plank. They would carry in place of pride on their shoulders it into the village, singing and dancing along the way. Every one would come and cheer for the salmon. They would invite it to a great feast in its honor, and at the feast everyone would stand up and declaim the virtues of the Salmon Tribe, and of that individual fish.
Then, when the feast was over, they would re-assemble all the bones of the salmon in order on the wooden plank, and submerge it into the river it came from. As the current carried the fish downstream, they encouraged it to tell all of its friends about the great village upriver. They said it should tell its brothers and sisters what great parties the village threw, and of the the singing and the dances and the speeches. They wanted it to inform all the other salmon that they should not stop at the downriver villages, but to swim up to the wonderful village upriver where the people loved and respected the salmon.
So we did that too.
Now, did we think that the salmon bones physically reassembled themselves into their previous fleshy form and swam downstream to speak to the other salmon on their way upriver? No, of course not, no more than the villagers likely did. It was a way for us, as it was for them, to honor the fish we killed, to acknowledge that they died so that we would live.
Life eats life, we kill a wide variety of living creatures for a host of reasons. I have no problem with that. But that doesn’t mean we should do it lightly, or that we should treat them or their bodies with disrespect and contempt. They are giving up their lives for me. I refuse to pretend that they are not dying, I will not deny that I am the one personally killing them, and I won’t act like their death is meaningless.
Is this “soppy illogical thinking”? Not for me. For me it is the height of realism. It reminds me that I am not separate from the natural world, that I am another being who will die. John Donne famously said:
I agree completely, and I would expand that to say “any being’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in nature.” That doesn’t stop me from killing salmon and cutting down trees and eating meat and wearing leather. It just reminds me to do it with respect and honor and conscious forethought and due regard and responsibility for all of the consequences, intended and unintended.
I understand where Willis is coming from. As a farmer, you don’t take more than you need, and what you do take you are thankful to have. You think carefully about outcomes from actions before you proceed, and where possible you work to help….say for example, managing invasive weeds.
The reason most environmentalist/green organizations in my country gather little respect from people like me, is that they have strayed from that basic approach. Painting with a broad brush, they are either emotional about issues while having little or no practical understanding, or they are deliberately anti-human and work with hostile, closed minds. I know that there are some exceptions, but by and large those are the elements that steer the movement’s many varied groups.
They punch well above their weight, and gather more media and political attention than they deserve. Sadly, a lot of the time this leads to outcomes that do not help the environment, or even outcomes that affect the environment negatively. All too often, their yardstick is just to measure success by how much they exclude or hamper humans. Damned if I know how to change all that, but something clearly has to.
I really would describe you more as a conservalumberealist. I want to be a megaconservadraganaught, and I’m prepared to do whatever it takes to become that, whatever it is.
Thank you Willis.
(Not read all of the posts here.)
I love the term “realist” because it is all about the reality of life and death. It is also about perspective. Your comparison of herring and a few seals is timely.
I live in Alberta, home of the much-maligned tar sand (oils sands) where 1,500 ducks unfortunately died last year. The event was hit with a storm of protests and media coverage. As unfortunate as that event was, it was minor compared to the tens of thousands of bats and birds we kill in Alberta with our horrid wind farms.
And don’t even get me going on domestic cats that eat something like half a billion small birds in North America annually. ☺
“In Canada, 5 million pet cats kill about 140 million birds and
small animals each year. ”
http://www3.sympatico.ca/samgreen/webcats.html
That quote is probably not accurate, but that is not the point. The point is, we never hear about this stuff and yet “tar sands” bird deaths are plastered across the globe on YouTube and never put into perspective.
It is all about reality and perspective.
Clive
Hey!
No pictures of white baby seals.
Us Canadians don’t club that type any more! Not that there was anything wrong with it when we did…
So Willis, for accuracy’s sake, during the era of your story it was the white fluffy ones getting clubbed.
Now its big ugly worm infested brown and grey ones.
It is important to clarify this since so many livelihoods in poor and remote parts of Canada depend on this very politically incorrect and threatened hunt.
Right on, again, Willis. I’m part of the forest products industry and damn proud of it. BTW, the word “conservation” was coined by Teddy Roosevelt and Gifford Pinchot and it meant “wise use” to those guys. It did not mean “preservation,” like many today think.
Hey how come my comment is not getting through? It is harmless. 🙂
[Reply: it was in the spam filter. Rescued and posted. WordPress is often mysterious. ~dbs, mod.]
As the terms Environmentalist and Conservationist have been denatured by modern extremist practitioners, might I suggest one of the following:
Steward
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/steward
1. One who manages another’s property, finances, or other affairs.
2. One who is in charge of the household affairs of a large estate, club, hotel, or resort.
3. A ship’s officer who is in charge of provisions and dining arrangements.
4. An attendant on a ship or airplane.
5. An official who supervises or helps to manage an event.
6. A shop steward.
7. A wine steward.
intr. & tr.v. stew·ard·ed, stew·ard·ing, stew·ards
To serve as a steward or as the steward of.
husbandry
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/husbandry
1 archaic : the care of a household
2 : the control or judicious use of resources : conservation
3 a : the cultivation or production of plants or animals : agriculture b : the scientific control and management of a branch of farming
If these don’t strike a chord, please, find alternatives. There are a lot of us who don’t believe in waste and abuse of anything, but, can’t identify with the modern versions of that which we used to identify.
Willis, Jivaro men (head hunters from Ecuador and Peru) ask for fogiveness to the tree theyare about to fell when clearing a jungle patch for making their samll crop land. They eat meat from pecaris, boas, caimans, birds of all kind, but never eat venison becasue they believe they are their recently defunct relatives reincarntion. After reincarnating in venison, the soul of relatives reincarnate in butterflies and afterwards they go the pardise.
A weird costume is: they never drink water. Instead they drink ‘nijiamanche’, the beer (or ‘chicha’) they make from sweet manioc and fermented after their women have chewed the manioc pure and spit it in a huge bowl. They drink this low alcoholic beverage at about 10 liters a day. Because their carbohydrate intake is so high the purify their stomach by drinking when they wake up (at 3.00 am) an emetic infusion (guayusa) that makes them vomit everything they haven’t digested.
But they kill between 20 to 30 toucans for taking the colorful feathers in the base of the neck and in the belly for making their headresses called ‘tawaspa’, and another ornament called “atsukanka apujtai”: toucan feathers forming flowers tied to a long streak of human hair taken from a dead enemy. Only warriors can wear those.
Primitive people are nothing close to environmentalists. They damage their environment a lot. The only difference with us is they are much less and they are much less powerful. A sson as the evolve a little and can get ‘white men’ applinces, firearms, machinery, they don’t differentiate from the rest of ‘civilized’ people. There is not such a thing as a ‘noble savage’ as envisioned by Rousseau.
Lost in this discussion of conservation versus current environmentalism is who pays. Hunting and fishing licenses paid for vast tracts of land across the US and the salaries of of the wildlife biologists. There is also the 10% Wallup- Breaux tax that is added to the wholesale price of all hunting and fishing equipment in the US and returned to conservation type efforts. Sportsmen groups like Ducks Unlimited have purchased or leased significant amounts of wetlands. It was sportsmen who fought against the depletion of salmon stocks, striped bass and any number of game animals long before it became fashionable. It is sad that the sector that has paid its own way -that was at the front lines from the beginning are vilified by those that pay nothing. Environmentalism is too often “this is what I want and this what you will pay to give it to me” Users fees insure wildlife management will survive long after environmentalism is no longer fashionable.
Willis,
I agree with all you said, but showing the seal pup is not the way to win the war.
“Now, back to the climate…”
Please ?
Well, I know that the more CO2 is in the atmosphere, the more plants will grow. (Michaelis-Menten kinetics backed up with empirical data) So, driving a car makes me environmentalist or not?