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…
First, let me say that I like you Willis and appreciate your posts. I am not so enamoured of “conservamentalism” as a word, however, although I share your concerns.
I prefer “scientific conservationism” or sometimes, “realistic stewardship of the environment”. Realism, especially science-based realism, is preferable to unscientific idealism.
When it comes to branding in the climate change debate, I prefer to be called a “climate realist”. I also prefer:
* Landscape, watershed, forest, and range conservation realism
* Wildlife conservation realism
* Agriculture and rural economic development realism
* Energy realism
* Water and air realism
* Wildfire realism
* Private property rights realism, etc.
all of which I put in the general category of “scientific conservationism”, (which is a mouthful but oh well).
The important point is all this is that these various manifestations of environmental realism are CONNECTED. It is not satisfactory to be a climate realist, a devotee of good climate science, and yet at the same time to be an irrational and unscientific proponent of mythologies in the other environmental sciences. As in basketball, a valuable teammate plays the game on both ends of the court. Science-based realism should be applied to all the various environmental science and management disciplines.
Which is what I think you meant, and if so I wholeheartedly agree with you.
For the record, if it matters, I have been a professional forester for 35 years and am currently the executive director of the Western Institute for Study of the Environment, a non-profit think tank and consortium of scientists, practitioners, and the interested public. I practice what I preach, or try to.
Al Gore’s Holy Hologram (12:43:28) :
When they wanted to control you in your community they called themselves communists.
When they wanted to control you in your society they called themselves socialists.
When they wanted to control you in your environment they called themselves environmentalists.
What comes next?
—-when they want to control all your money they call themselves capitalists—–
I support the concept Willis…. but conservamentalist? Not like I have a better word to offer, but I just don’t think that one is going to catch on.
“As the terms Environmentalist and Conservationist have been denatured by modern extremist practitioners, might I suggest one of the following:
Steward”
It was all the protesting and complaining about ‘steward’ship in the previous thread that got us here in the first place. 🙂
Benjamin (14:23:39) : …..sweet, realist, meet realist.
Honestly, Willis, I get too emotional when killing animals, but I’m not that hungry anymore, I’ll let the butcher bare the burden. Trees, grass and weeds, not so much.
I may have a different perspective. These things, be it flora or fauna(mineral too) are here for us(people). It could be for food, warmth, or aesthetic value, but they are here for us. Of course we should conserve, if we kill, cut, or use too much, it won’t be here for us anymore. Trees are not people too. Neither are bears, otters or mice. Nor ants, fleas, or ticks. We need to recognize the difference between rational and emotional thinking.
Then, there’s the survival of the fittest and natural selection thoughts. While there are statements of how the buffalo diminished, there isn’t a real reason why. (Yes, Sheridan understood how to defeat an enemy in a brutal but effective manner. That’s what good generals do.) But I live in Kansas. What would I do if buffalo roamed the open plains? Well, not much. We couldn’t really have roads and even if we did, seat belt or no, many of us would die. Heck, the deer are bad enough, I wish they’d open the season up to kill more. They are so thick here, they eat the farmers crops in herds, the truck I was driving still has a dent in it when a deer was agile enough to hit me with his hip instead of killing us both when I was driving to work. I don’t want, no, I can’t(nor can anyone else) live a normal productive life if the wildlife were to inhabit this part of the country as they did 150 years ago.
I guess what I’m trying to convey is that while I wax nostalgic of the way things were, it isn’t the way things ought to be, and can’t be. The resources of the earth are here for us, and we need to guard them because they are our resources, but not because we’ll have some sort of bad karma because we irked or killed some tree spirit or wolf soul. I know others here will vehemently disagree, but that’s the way I call it.
End of the IPCC: one mistake too many – April 7, 2010
http://www.businesstimes.com.sg/sub/views/story/0,4574,380103,00.html?
Opinion
Published April 7, 2010
End of the IPCC: one mistake too many
‘Climategate’ suggests a conspiracy to commit fraud by a small gang of influential UN panel scientists
By S FRED SINGER
THE United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has acknowledged they made a mistake in their projection of 2035 as the date when all the Himalayan glaciers would melt. But the Himalayan blunder is not a one-off mistake; it is only the latest of a long list of errors that have dogged the IPCC over the past 10 years. And by now, after the ‘Climategate’ flap of last November, ‘Glaciergate’ seems to have opened the floodgates with reports on ‘Amazongate’, ‘Natural-disaster-gate’, and many more. […]
[Reply: please post the link and just the opening paragraph(s), or key parts of long articles. ~dbs, mod]
xx (16:39:16),
What I want to know is who wears those white baby seal coats? Has anyone ever seen someone wearing a white baby seal coat?
Since I can’t get one, I’m saving up for a Polar bear rug. They’re eco-friendly, because they’re slaughtered by Eskimos, not by evil Canadian caucasians.
peterhodges (17:11:43) :
—-when they want to control all your money they call themselves capitalists—–
Wrong, a true capitalist knows that if he has all the money, then there is no more wealth to be generated. Basic economics.
The natives in North America always had a sustainable way of life and thanked every animal and the Earth for giving what they used or eat. They are the first Conservamentalists. Conservamentalism is not a religion but a way of life.
Is it necessary, really, to explain how and why this is a dangerous nonsense, full of contradictions and misrepresentations of facts? Isn’t it obvious?
We are being offered, as a “noble example,” a primitive, bigoted, and ruthless religion of savages who lived in constant fear, prejudice, disease, and misery, exhausting natural resources without having a clue about sustainable agriculture or hunting, robbing, raping, scalping, torturing, burning, and eating — yes, eating — each other. Their life was a never-ending disaster.
Before the coming of Europeans, North America was practically depopulated: not because the land couldn’t sustain a larger population, however primitive, but because American Indians were exterminating each other with a passionate fury of obsessed madmen; all their beliefs, rituals, and myths were focused on murdering and robbing their neighbors.
I thought the Noble Savage myth has been thoroughly discredited by science since the halcyon days of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Henry David Thoreau. It was a nice dream, perhaps, but no less a dream than a narcotic pipe fantasy of a hippie.
You dare say environmentalism is not a religion? Go for it, comrades. Mumble apologies to animals you eat, hug trees you fell, burn candles for men and women murdered and raped. It will make you feel better about yourselves, no doubt. But it won’t make a bit of a difference in the real world. Dissolve in your mystical self-admiration.
Other, hard-working and clearly thinking people would have to sigh and pick up their tools to make life livable. Again.
The word “individualist” is, I think, preferred if one feels the need to wear a label.
It is stupid that universities have courses in “ethics” that promote communalism of thought. They might as well have courses for newborn children named “How to suck at the teat” for all the use they are in supplanting what people know innately.
Generic terms lead to contradictions. For example, I was part of a small team with a big uranium mine that has substituted for fossil fuel and saved the emission of about a billion tones of CO2 into the air. Some would say “nuclear is evil, you are wicked” and others would say “Few people have done so much to reduce GHG and you are a hero”. Life is mundane and I take no notice of these attributions. Nor do I worry about the ethics of killing what I eat. Much of the living world depends on killing its food. I’m not about to switch to a daily jug of synthetic NPK fertilizer with added micronutrients along with my metamucil and largactyl.
Nature blessed us with a brain and it guides most of us along acceptable lines. It is noted that the worst behavior in history has been done by a tiny percentage of the population. I’m grateful that the MTBF of the human brain is so small.
peter hodges
—-when they want to control all your money they call themselves capitalists—–
>>
No, they call themselves communists. They call ME a capitalist and sometimes conflate me with a pig or dog at the same time. To which I must observe that the poorest amongst us capitalists suffer frequently from obesity, while the average North Korean gets along on a ration of 4 ounces of rice per day. But they are all equal and that’s what is important.
Willis – I think you are looking for a word the implies sustainable harvesting practices. Again, I have no word to offer, just conservamentalism doesn’t do it for me.
Smokey
Maybe someone already said. FYI. In Canada, it has been illegal to kill those small white ones for something like 15 years. Yet WWF et al still use them as their poster seals.
The Canadian Weather Chanel today had an item on how AGW was endangering seals. What a crock of crap. And of course they featured the cute white pups. Argghh!
Clive
u.k.(us) (17:04:40)
Well, I’m not in a war, so I’m unsure of your meaning. My point was that the death of a fish-eyed herring and the death of a bunny-eyed seal pup are equivalent, regardless of the bunny eyes. I was attempting to illustrate the illogical nature of protesting the death of a single seal pup, while ignoring the death of a million herring. That’s environmentalism gone way off the rails, in my book. Which is why I’m a conservamentalist.
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
davidmhoffer (17:14:20)
Yeah, I know, I was trying in part to lampoon the nature of our reactions to words … success is an elusive bird.
Alexander Feht (17:41:06) :
I was going to type something witty and sarcastic, but on second thought, I’d like to thank you for stating the obvious, yet unpopular point of view, apparently. I’d have thought that most had a more pragmatic view here. Willis is correct, in my view, a herring’s death is a much as a seal’s death. I just don’t view it as necessarily a sad or bad thing. Odd that it seems many here will deny the existence of a higher power and the eternal soul of man, yet, many here will speak to the “spirit” of an animal. Very odd.
Envirosensibalists!
peterhodges
i.e. tell John “Competition is a sin” Rockefeller or the folks who own the fed they are not true capitalists>>
Well Peter, no need to be vague. Step up and spell it out. Just what does this Rockefeller guy have a monopoly on and just who are these “folks” that you say “own” the fed? Could you be more specific?
Urederra (17:06:08) :
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?
Most plants won’t grow. The success of a plant to survive under CO2 concentration stress depends on a sole adaptation. If the plant has it, good! If the plant doesn’t have it, well… it will not grow more than other plants.
Some plants like Tobacco (Nicotiana tabacum L.) starts enhancing its growth under CO2 stress, but it declines its growth some weeks or months after the carbon dioxide in its environment was increased:
http://agron.scijournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/67/5/685
Talking to trees, thanking fish, I’m starting to get worried about you Willis!
But I like your story.
Of course 90% of the city people don’t understand a word you’re saying.
Last week I visited a school and in the entire class there was not a single kid who could explain where milk is coming from.
Our modern city life first made the masses a stranger to nature and today they are becoming a stranger to agriculture and farming as well.
Kids grow up in an urban jungle with shops and supermarkets.
Most of them have never visited a farm or a natural park.
Even holidays are now limited to full service family resorts.
It won’t take much time before we can tell people anything because they know nothing!
That’s why we are in a mess in the first place.
I say keep up the good work, we can’t do without it.
Just a few decades ago, vast herds of naugas roamed the plains and savannas of Sumatra and neighboring tropical countries. Today, you see only a few dozen. The rest were hunted for their hides. Immediate action is mandatory if this rare and beautiful…well, incredibly ugly, actually…creature is to be saved from extinction.
http://www.naugahyde.com/history.html
REPLY: There a song for that –
Rolling, rolling, rolling
Rolling, rolling, rolling
Rolling, rolling, rolling
Rolling, rolling, rolling
Naughide
Roiling, rolling, rolling
Though the streams are swollen
Keep them doggies rolling
Naughide
Rain and wind and weather
Hell bent for leather
Wishing my gal was by my side
All the things I’m missin’
Good vittels, lovin’, kissin’
Are waiting at the end of my ride
Move ’em on, head’ em up
Head ’em up, move’ em on
Move ’em on, head’ em up
Naughide
Cut ’em out, ride ’em in
Ride ’em in, cut ’em out
Call ’em out, ride ’em in
Naughide
Keep moving, moving, moving
Though they’re disapproving
Keep them doggies moving
Naughide
Don’t try to understand ’em
Just rope, throw and brand ’em
Soon we’ll be living high and wide
My heart calculatin’
My true love will be waitin’
Be waiting at the end of my ride
Move ’em on, head’ em up
Head ’em up, move’ em on
Move ’em on, head’ em up
Naughide
Cut ’em out, ride ’em in
Ride ’em in, cut ’em out
Call ’em out, ride ’em in
Naughide
Move ’em on, head’ em up
Head ’em up, move’ em on
Move ’em on, head’ em up
Naughide
Cut ’em out, ride ’em in
Ride ’em in, cut ’em out
Call ’em out, ride ’em in
Naughide
Rolling, rolling, rolling
Rolling, rolling, rolling
Rolling, rolling, rolling
Rolling, rolling, rolling
Naughide
Naughide
Willis, I may share some of your opinions, but, this sort of rhetoric is seen as weakness by AGW proponents. They view you as that much more of a traitor that you would share part of their world view and not the rest. You have betrayed the true religion with your non-belief that man and his industry are evil. You see what I mean?
PETA recently protested the throwing of fish at the Pike Place Fish Market because it was disrespectful to the dead fish. The only reason they did so was because a Veterinarian convention was in town and was getting a special show from the guys at the market.
In unrelated news, use of studded tires for the Cascade passes in Washington state has been extended again, due to the amount of snow and adverse wintry weather continuing to show its ugly head. So in spite of the “early spring”, winter rolls on.
Smokey (17:23:15)
That cracked me up, but surely you mean slaughtered by Northern Early Asian Immigrants?
Calling the locals “Indians” was OK by me, because it was the result of a typical bozo European mistake and kinda funny that way. But that’s just me, I can see how being mistaken for someone from another continent might rankle a man. Plus people always gotta ask “You mean Indian with a dot or Indian with a feather”, that could get old real fast.
But “Native Americans” simply isn’t true. They’re no more “native” to the Americas than are tilapia or pears. Interesting people, fascinating cultures, cheated and mistreated, defeated and discriminated against but still fighting, sure, but “Native”? No way.
Which is in part why your comment was so funny, the idea that it’s OK and perhaps even noble for early immigrants to kill polar bears, but not for later immigrants … what a crazy world. My theory is that you shouldn’t be able to shoot a polar bear until you’ve made your living in their world for a full year, worked through the dark winter, so it’s OK with me (within reason and with the usual caveats) for the Northern Early Asian Immigrants to shoot polar bears. But not trophy hunters from Texas or Arizona , that’s sick … however, what do I know, I was born yesterday.
I didn’t have the time to read all comments, so maybe what I am going to say has been said before. My apologies, if that’s the case. Anyway, here’s what I think:
The original sin committed by environmentalists and many others who bear warm feelings towards the environment is to impose human categories upon nature. Categories such as good, bad, deserving, “sustainable”, morals, worth, love… Animals don’t think in categories like that (to say nothing of plants). They don’t think at all. They don’t know the meaning of the word “category.” Or morals. They aren’t even indifferent to that kind of thing, because they don’t know what indifference is. They aren’t even aware of themselves.
The lion kills the gazelle, without giving a damn about the beauty of his prey.
The lion doesn’t know what beauty is. He, she or it kills to live, but feels no need for vindication. Because a lion doesn’t know what vindication is.
Nature has no morals. Morals exist for one reason, and one reason only: because we humans exist. Morals are human, totally seperated from nature. Like Hamlet says: “There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.” But thinking, my friend, is reserved to us. Call that human arrogance, I call it the truth. Try to “talk” to your cat – in a meaningful way. Try a conversation about morals with your dog. Ask your pet what it “thinks”. They won’t even know what you’re talking about. They don’t know what “talk” is.
In my opinion you don’t have to apologize to a tree you cut down. Or to a fish you killed. They wouldn’t understand you, even if they were still alive.
Where does all this lead to? For one thing, I don’t want to say we cannot enjoy nature – of course we can! I for my part will never forget the feelings I had when I looked down at the Grand Canyon – for hours! But those feelings were one sided; the Grand Canyon didn’t feel anything about me.
You still are totally free to think that it is necessary to protect the environment, or that it’s bad to beat a seal pup to death, but you have to be aware that these are human decisions. It is sensible to protect the house you live in, but it’s not a question of morals. (Only in the sense that you’re responsible for somebody living in that house, of course.) Nature doesn’t know what protection is. Just look at all the species (way over 90 percent!) that have become extinct before us humans invented the term “endangered species”. Nobody shed a tear for the dinosaurs, and if humans – millions of years later – wouldn’t have shown up, no living creature today would know that there ever was such a thing like a dinosaur.
So yes, I think that mankind is something very special. Not for religious reasons; like Laplace I don’t think religion is necessary. But we are the only living creature on Earth (maybe in the Universe) capable of inventing something like the term “endangered species”. And that is immense.
Does all that really make us the pride of creation? Let me put it this way: I prefer to live in a world where killing animals is accepted, and killing people is not. Which way it is depends on us; we are responsible for our decisions. After all, unlike a seal or a herring we know what responsibility means.