Guest post by Dr. Tim Ball – a response to this WUWT post on Allan Savory
Dr Allan Savory proposes stopping desertification and controlling climate change. His focus is a large natural vegetation area called grasslands. His idea of raising cattle to maintain grasslands is founded on the grazing and fertilizing cycle provided by herbivores. Bermuda Grass is an example of a grassland plant species that thrives on being constantly cropped. It grows thick and dense the more it is cut, making it ideal for golf greens. Savory’s ideas all sound attractive and ‘green’ and not without some merit, but are riddled with problems. It is not clear, indeed unlikely, that his proposals would measurably alter natural climate change.
Watching his presentation I imagined all the ‘environmentalists’ recoiling at his suggestions. It is not long since radical environmentalists like Jeremy Rifkin were blaming cattle for most of the evils of western society in his 1992 book, Beyond Beef: The Rise and Fall of the Cattle Culture. True, Savory showed sheep, but he should also have introduced the idea of restocking some areas with natural herds, such as bison in North America. These areas would become world funded preservation areas of natural species as George Perkins Marsh proposed in his 1864 book Man and Nature. Marsh was also among the first in modern times to idenitfy the relationship between removal of vegetation and desertification.
The major conflict is between domesticated and wild herbivores and the production of foodstuffs. This included growing grains to feed the cattle or overgrazing. Presumably, Savory is suggesting domesticated animals to also expand the food supply. The problem is expansion of the food supply usually creates an increase in the human population, which Savory says is at the heart of the world’s problems.
Savory’s Assumptions
He makes three major assumptions, all arguable. First is the claim the world is overpopulated. It is not! People, apparently including Savory, believe it is because of the neo-Malthusian claim underlying the alarmism of the Club of Rome in the 1970s. Claims of overpopulation primarily came from Paul Ehrlich’s work, but his predictions were so inaccurate it’s a wonder he retains any credibility. The reason the ideas remain is probably because supporters of his ideas are in positions of power today. For example, Ehrlich’s co-author of a truly frightening book Ecoscience: Population, Resources, Environment is President Obama’s Science Tsar, John Holdren. In addition, graduates of 1979s and 1980s environmental studies programs are now running the bureaucracies using those ideas.
The second error is his identification of land ‘suffering’ from desertification. Savory identifies five regions on a world map (Figure 1). He is using the term desertification as it evolved back in the 1970s, that is as an environmental problem caused by humans. The problem is almost all the regions he identifies are natural climatic regions of desert and grasslands. He says there is “no other cause” than humans for desertification, which is only true because of his definition. In a 2005 work, “The causes and progression of desertification,” Geist identified more than 100 definitions. Any region that loses vegetation becomes a desert, which happens all the time as climate changes. If you don’t know how much change is due to natural causes you can’t determine the human portion. It is the same as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) examining only human causes of climate change without knowing how much it changes naturally.
The third error he makes, is to assume climate change is new and caused by humans. It isn’t. The amount of change is well within natural variability, but the IPCC and its proponents persistently work to prove it is outside and therfore unnatural. Savory is apparently vulnerable to the “human cause” claim because he blames humans for desertification.
Basic Arid Zone Pattern
The trouble is it appears Savory lacks some basic understandings including;
• how deserts are formed and change with climate change,
• how or why the major hot deserts are generally located within 15 to 35° of latitude each side of the Equator and,
• how grasslands are a transitional area of slightly higher precipitation that surround the deserts and lie between the deserts and the forests. Grassland names differ from Steppe in Russia; Great Plains in the US and their northern extension the Prairies in Canada; Llanos in northern South America; Pampas in southern South America; to Savanna and Veldt in Africa.
Figure 1: Areas of desertificcation identified by Allan Savory
Source: Screen Capture from his presentation
The Sahel is just such a transitional region between the rainforest on the coast of west Africa and the true desert of the Sahara. Alarmist stories appeared about the expanding Sahara desert associated with the cyclical Sahelian drought that visited the region between 1968 and 1974. Famine accompanied the drought and overgrazing was blamed. It, and another drought in 1984-85, launched the environmental career of Bob Geldof.
A similar desertification situation was identified in the Thar desert on the Indian-Pakistan border in the 1970s, with claims the area wasn’t totally ‘natural’ but created by overgrazing, especially by the ubiquitous goat. University of Wisconsin climatologist Reid Bryson theorized that removal of vegetation cover increased surface temperatures, which caused increase convection and advection (wind). Resulting soil erosion and winds carried dust to altitude. Here it absorbed sunlight directly, raising upper air temperatures while reducing surface heating. Warm air over cold is an inversion, a very stable situation that prevents cloud formation, thus perpetuating the aridity. As I recall, much money was spent on bringing water into the region to plant grasses and stabilize the surface to break the cycle. The grass promoted was Marram, a well known sand dune stabilizer.
World Hot Deserts and Grasslands
It is impossible to get even crude estimates of the percentage of land surface that is grassland or desert. Land is 149 million km2 of the Earth’s total surface and hot deserts make-up an estimated 15 to 30 percent (Figure 2). The Sahara provides a scale because it is 9.1 million km2, almost identical to the land area of the US. The hot deserts of the world in order (millions of km2) are;
Sahara – 9.1
Central Asia – 4.5
Australian – 3.4
North American – 1.3
Patagonian – 0.7
Indian – 0.6
Kalahari – Namib 0.57
Atacama – 0.36
The word ‘hot’ is in bold because, as Koppen (Figures 4 and 5) recognized in his climate classification system, there are vast cold deserts. The North and South poles are among the driest places on Earth.
Figure 2. Major hot deserts generally straddling the Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn.
In his system, Koppen identified “B” climates primarily as those with insufficient ‘effective’ precipitation to support trees (BS for Steppe climate) then grass (BW desert climate). He further divided BW climates into BWh (coldest month average above 0°C) and BWk (at least one month average below 0°C). When doing a Koppen classification you begin by eliminating the B climates. Savory lumps them together as shown in Figure 1.
Estimates for grassland are more variable than for deserts varying from 15 to 40 percent of the land surface, excluding Antarctica and Greenland. Savory showed, unknowingly, why defining grasslands is so difficult. He showed clumps of grass with bare ground in between, implying they were examples of desertification. The problem is such conditions are natural and exist over very large areas with grasses known as tussock.
The sun is directly overhead the equator twice a year and is never more than approximately 23.5° from the vertical. This results in maximum heat energy and therefore high year round temperatures. It creates what was known as the “heat equator”, which, because of land water differences is not coincident with the actual Equator. Belem on the Amazon in the interior of Brazil has a range of 1.6°C from the warmest to the coolest month.
High temperatures result in high evaporation and rising warm air. The vertical air currents mean very little horizontal surface wind, a problem in sailing days. English sailing ships recorded the conditions and from their records George Hadley, in 1753, figured out his circulation cell (Figure 3). Clouds develop daily and result in heavy rainfall almost daily. Duitenzorg, Java, averages 322 days a year with thunderstorms.
The warm air rises to the tropopause where it is now cold, dense and dry. Deflected away from the Equator it descends. As it descends increasing pressure creates adiabatic warming. By the time it reaches the surface it is hot and dry. The amount of moisture is the same but chances of condensation and cloud formation is virtually zero. Average relative humidity for the Sahara is approximately 19%. Water vapour is the most important greenhouse gas and low levels in desert region mean the ground and air heat and cool very rapidly. Cloud cover in the Sahara varies from about 10% in winter to 4% in summer.
The highest shade temperatures in the world occur such as 58°C in Libya and 56.7°C in Death Valley, California. At In-Salah, Algeria, the temperature dropped from an afternoon high of 52.2°C to an overnight low of –3.3°C, a range of 55.5°C in about 12 hours. These conditions mean the air holds less water vapour, but the air temperature drops well below the dew point temeprature thus creating condensation.
Figure 3. Hadley Cell circulation has air rising at the equator and descending between 15 and 30° latitude. A similar cell exists for the Southern Hemisphere.
Heated air at the equator creates low pressure, the Equatorial Low, while descending air creates high pressure in the subtropics, the Subtropical Highs.
The pattern of high rainfall at the Equator and deserts in the Low Latitudes is disturbed by the land/water distribution and influence of ocean currents. The greatest disturbance occurs in eastern Africa and Asia so the desert zone extends through Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, Pakistan and western China. Low latitude landmass in the southern hemisphere is restricted but includes southern Africa, Australia and South America. In South America the Andes Mountains block the extension of the deserts across the entire continent. However, where they exist on the coast they are among the driest on earth.
Savory refers to the rock paintings of herd animals in the central Sahara. They occur there because of climate change when increased rainfall supported grasslands. During the last Ice Age the Polar climate zones expanded pushing the mid latitude temperate climates toward the Equator. Traditional climate referred to the wetter periods in the desert zones that were coincident with Glacials as Pluvials. When the Earth warmed to Interglacials, as now, the desert regions experience Interpluvials.
Swings between Pluvial and Interpluvial are macro climate changes, however smaller changes are occurring all the time. As a result, the pattern of climates shown in Figures 4 and 5 are averages and constantly changing.
Figure 4: Koppen classification The Americas.
Figure 5: Koppen classification Africa, Eurasia and Australia
The Sahel is shown as BSh or hot grassland right across Africa on the south side of the Sahara (BWh). In addition to the longer term climate changes, cyclical changes in precipitation cause drought cycles such as the one from 1968 to 1974. Australia is another large classic region of desert (BWh) surrounded by semi-arid grassland (BSh).
Importance of Condensation
Savory draws attention to the potential of condensation moisture in the semi arid areas. This is not new, as people for centuries have gathered condensation moisture. I grew up near the dry chalk lanscape of Salisbury Plain and learned early about “dew ponds”. Gilbert White, a renowned 18th century English naturalist, described the ecology around Selbourne. He described a dew pond near the village as “…only 3 feet deep and 30 feet in diameter, that contained some 15,000 gallons of water which supplied 300 sheep and cattle every day without fail.”
In many dry regions people put xerophytic plants close to large rocks, which provide sufficient overnight condensation to maintain the plant. On a larger scale, ancient Greeks built large pyramids of rock from which condensation trickled down to a network of clay collection pipes. Called air wells, they are a well known technique. There were 13 such pyramids up to 12 meters high near the ancient Greek city of Theodosia on the Black Sea.
Savory is correct, condensation is the forgotten moisture, as I described a few years ago and more recently repeated here. The issue was the difference between official predictions of poor yields and the actual average or better yields on the Canadian Prairies. “In the late summer of that 1980s year, daytime temperatures were high, generally 27-28°C, which meant it could hold lots of moisture. At night, temperatures dropped to record lows around 3-5°C and moisture deposition was heavy. In a three-week period this yields upward of 50 mm of precipitation equivalent. Farmers know that amount of moisture can be critical to “fill out” a crop. It has several advantages over normal precipitation. It occurs at night when heat stress on the plant is reduced. Evaporation is reduced. Distribution is more even and widely distributed than rainfall. Unfortunately, it is not moisture counted in the weather statistics used by all the experts. Ironically, it’s moisture farmers know about because, until it evaporates, it can delay harvesting.”
Savory’s method can take advantage of the moisture, but it will only produce grasses in the natural grassland regions he defines. To change true desert (BWh) to grassland requires much larger volumes of water than condensation provides.
It is not clear how his proposal will stop climate change. Presumably, he assumes changing the surface will change the albedo, which will change the energy balance. The problem is there is not much difference in albedo between desert, which ranges from 15 to 45, and grassy fields with ranges10 to 30. The desert range is wide because deserts are only partially sand dunes. The dune areas known as Erg are higher albedo, but are a small percentage of a desert. The much larger, lower albedo, area is the hamada or rock strewn areas that are 70 percent of the Sahara.
Savory’s comment about the importance of microclimates is more critical than he realizes. Most vegetation, and certainly the grasses, grow in the 1.25 m below the Stevenson Screen, the official weather station. The climate below that level is markedly different, as Geiger identified in his marvelous 1950 book, The Climate Near the Ground. Any attempt at planning or changing conditions in this portion of the Biosphere requires far more information than is currently available.
Change is the norm. Climate change is normal and current changes are well within natural variability. Allan Savory’s proposal to stabilize grassland areas has some merit, but requires much more understanding and context, especially about climate patterns and climate change mechanisms. Of course, as the world cools in the next few decades the colder climate zone will expand and the desert zone will shrink naturally. The grasslands will benefit from cooler wetter conditions as the natural cycles continue.
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Anssi V. says:
March 28, 2013 at 2:44 pm
Yeah, but permaculture actually means something. “Holistic context”, on the other hand, is just a feel-good word. You say:
WHAT original meaning is there to dilute? That’s my question. What is a “holistic context” when it’s at home? What are the borders of a holistic context, what defines when it becomes non-holistic?
As far as I’m concerned, “holistic context” is just politically-correct new age bafflegab, although I’m happy to be convinced otherwise.
w.
Re: Willis Eschenbach on March 28, 2013 at 3:03 pm
“WHAT original meaning is there to dilute? That’s my question. What is a “holistic context” when it’s at home? What are the borders of a holistic context, what defines when it becomes non-holistic?”
—
I can try to answer this, but please note that I absolutely suck at writing elevator speeches, so I’m not even trying that. First I’ll list some basic premises (that I think are behind the idea of holistic context), then discuss the context structure, and finally try to answer your questions (if they did not get answered already). Please also note that this is my interpretation, so any errors, misunderstandings and other stupidities are most likely my own making.
The first basic premise behind holistic context (and holistic management in general) is that we are, on average, notoriously bad at handling complexity. Perhaps the worst thing about it is, that we tend to to think we’re good at it – just as many of us tend to think we’re good and critical thinkers, though observations – both more formal and day-to-day casual (like observing the prevalence of argumentation and logical errors in newspapers and blogs) – tell a different story.
The holistic context is trying to address the “complexity problem” – that is its purpose.
(I must make a small digression, and note that it is not really trying to address the “thinking problem” mentioned above, that is outside its scope, except for the high emphasis places on the monitoring of decisions, which I do ot cover. Thinking is just assumed to be “good enough”, which may in practice turn out to be a very problematic assumption, IMHO.)
I interpret the “holistic” in Savory’s texts, and especially with “holistic context”, to mean “trying to take into account the complexity of the world”, so “holistic context” could be replaced with “context that is trying to take into account the complexity of the world”.
“Holistic context” = “context that is trying to take into account the complexity of the world”
The second basic premise is that every decision and every objective always (with minor exceptions that I discuss below) does have some context, whether or not it is said aloud, and even whether or not the participants are consciously aware of it.
For example, if I say to you, “I’m going to light a fire, is that OK?” I have stated my objective, but you need some context to make sense of it. This is often immediate and automatic – happens below conscious thought. If I’m your friend, and we have just arrived inside a chilly log cabin with a fireplace in it, that’s probably enough for you to deduce the context without consciously thinking about it. If you also happened to know that I was a convicted arsonist, you might want to do some further inquiry about the context – either ask me directly about it, or just say “yeah, great” but keep an eye on my actions.
We tend to look down upon young childen with amusement and/or irritation (depending on whether or not one is in the receiving end of child’s endless requests and whining), because they are remarkably context-free creatures: They see something, decide to like or dislike it, if they like it, they WANT it, very intensively (and often very loudly). Slowly, slowly, the child learns to include some context in her decisions and goal-setting; for example
– taking into account environmental concerns (do not leave wet muddy outdoor clothes on the carpet in the middle of the room)
– taking into account social concerns (wait for your turn, do not take a toy from another child when he is using it)
– taking into account economical/social/environmental concerns (realize that you might not actually need that annoying $123 bright pink plastic toy you grabbed from the supermarket lowest shelf, that does nothing except take space and make various annoying noises if any living poor creature gets within two feet radius)
We like to think, that as adults we are so much better than young children in taking into account the complexity of the world, because our decision-making and goal-setting context is so much more advanced – but is it actually? If we look more closely on various decisions, actions, and strategies, we can see that our context[s] still seems to be remarkably primitive. Just as one simple example, has a climate scientist (half?-)knowingly publishing bad research really considered the long term implications to climate science, or has she just considered the short term implications to her career? Because if she has considered them, then she has consciously decided to ignore them, which amounts to fraud or malfeasance. I could easily list hundreds – no, thousands of examples, in fact anyone could write several book volumes just listing examples of the primitiveness of our context (from individual up to any organizational level).
If objectives and goals have too simple/narrow contexts, we might win a battle (satisfy our immediate desire, or solve our immediate problem), but in the end, lose the war (not achieve what we really, actually want).
The third basic premise is: We can actually create, and make use of, more advanced contexts. This is what company “missions” and “visions” and “values” are perhaps trying to achieve, but they are usually done in a pretentious and half-arsed way, so in practice they may be useless for anything except boosting the company imago, if even that.
Holistic context is intended to be the “axiomatic” top-level context. It is positioned above any strategic plans, visions, or whatever the managed whole in question whole may use . It describes
– what the whole is about
– what is the purpose of the whole (if applicable, for example organizations and agencies usually have a stated purpose)
– what does the whole want to be
– what does it ultimately want to accomplish (what kind of life does one want to live, in what kind of world).
(the exact structure of the holistic context is discussed below)
When strategies and high level objectives are created or updated, they are done to be in line with this holistic context. When any significant day-to-day decisions are made, they are also checked against the holistic context (using well defined testing guidelines).
We can create better contexts to make better decisions, and to create less short-sighted objectives. This will likely lead to less problems down the road.
The fourth premise is that it is good to have peoples’ contexts somehow “synchronized” – to be as much in line with each other as possible. This creates commitment, makes people “pull the rope in the same direction”, avoids unnecessary conflicts and misunderstandings.
This is also what the “missions” and “visions” and “values” are (apparently) trying to accomplish.
We are used to make (often subconscious) assumptions about each others’ contexts. Moreover, there may also be very different contexts involved in a situation, but these may still lead actions in the same direction – up to a point: Often different contexts lead into problems at some point down the line – due to incorrect assumptions and/or contexts conflicting too much with each other.
As a simple example, suppose a boy and girl have been on a date. The boy escorts the girl home, at the front door the girl asks “Would you like a cup of tea?”. The girl’s context in this case is that she would like to show the boy her home, and to still have a nice little chat with the boy, whom she has started to like. The boy, who has mostly been thinking about sex during the entire date, now makes an assumption about her context: “Gee! she asked me for a ‘cup of tea’ – she wants sex too!”. The boy happily agrees, the girl makes her own (likely naive) assumption about the context of boy’s agreement, they go in and likely will have a major clash at some point. So even in simple cases involving no more than two people, let alone more complex organizations, differing contexts can and will cause problems at some point down the line.
To ensure that actual contexts (“actual contexts” = contexts which are actually and really used in real life decisions) are in line with each other among participants of the managed whole, it is important to involve all decision makers of the whole, when creating the holistic context. A “decision maker” is anyone involved in day-to-day decisions of the whole, or one who has veto power over them. So for example, in the case of a civil service agency, it will include all the agency employees, and will likely include also certain people outside the agency payroll, who have veto power over some decision. In the case of a family farm, the decision makers will include all family members having any say to day-to-day decisions (infants still might not count despite their indirect large influence), everyone being employed in the farm, and everyone living in the premises.
When there are many actors involved, it is always good to synchronize the decision making / planning contexts, as much as possible.
So let me sum up the four premises, before going on:
1. “Holistic context” = “context that is trying to take into account the complexity of the world”
2. If objectives and goals have too simple/narrow contexts, we might win a battle (satisfy our immediate desire, or solve our immediate problem), but in the end, lose the war (not achieve what we really, actually want).
3. We can create better contexts to make better decisions, and to create less short-sighted objectives. This will likely lead to less problems down the road.
4. When there are many actors involved, it is always good to synchronize the decision making / planning contexts, as much as possible.
Structure of the holistic context:
Before actually defining the holistic context itself, it is important to define what we are actually managing – what is the “managed whole” in question. This definition usually includes the following things:
– High level description of what the managed whole is – e.g. Agency X, Department Y of Agency X, a family farm, a ranch, a married couple, a nation state of A”
– Statement of purpose if applicable – e.g. civil service agencies typically have a purpose stated in law (sometimes this is also included in the holistic context itself)
– Who are the decision makers (ones having a say in day-to-day decisions, or who have veto power over such decisions)
– The resource base – usually includes at least:
– major physical resources from which one will generate revenue
– list of people who are not decision makers but will be influenced by the decisions
– Money – sources of money available
The actual holistic context always contains three parts, which build on one another:
1. Quality of Life
2. Forms of Production
3. Future Resource Base
I’ll very briefly discuss each of these in turn. It’s important to keep in mind that all parts are written to include expressions of the desires and aspirations of all the decision makers.
1. Quality of Life: This in this part one one tries to express how one wants life to be, based on what values most. Examples might be: economic well-being and stability, abundant energy, good relationships, enough leisure time, time for learning, opportunities for challenge and growth, work that is meaningful, physical health and longevity, emotional and physical safety, freedom from bigotry, equal opportunities, quality education — whatever is applicable for the whole and valued most by the decision makers.
It might be good to comment on an obvious objection; that most of these things seem “self-evident” and therefore not worth listing – that everyone “knows” these anyway and will take these into account when making decisions.
Firstly, this objection assumes that we all value the same things, which we don’t, not even “deep down”. And these are anyway needed in later stages (2 and 3) so they must be written down.
Secondly the claim “all these self-evident things will be taken into account anyway” simply is not true; we humans are hardwired to filter out any information that is “irrelevant” to the task at hand – even when it isn’t. So we must have some means to keep the all important things aboard when making decisions. The holistic context can be used as a tool to achieve this. It’s not the only tool for it but it’s a good tool.
2. Forms of Production: This part describes what one needs to produce in order to meet the quality of life needs (defined in the first part) and what one needs to produce to meet the stated purpose (if applicable). For example, “physical health” would require (at a minimum) good nutritious food, clean and abundant water, clean air, so these would somehow need to be listed in here as “products”.
The important thing is to focus on what needs to be produced, not how it is going to be produced, and to not allow any prejudices about future tools and actions creep in (these are things that should be tested).
3. Future Resource Base: This is a long term vision about the Resource base (initially described when defining the managed whole) – how it should be many years (say, 50, 100, 500, 1000 years, depending on the whole) from now, to sustain what one has to produce to create the quality of life one wants. It always covers the people and the land (if managing land), sometimes it also descibes the community (where the business/organization is located in) and services available in that community. The description of land always includes a sufficiently detailed description of how the fundamental ecosystem processes (water and mineral cycles, energy flow and community dynamics) should function (for example, some coarse descriptions might be clean rivers, little or no droughts, abundant wildlife, soil fully covered — in the case of farms the descriptions might be more detailed).
It is, of course, impossible to provide a detailed and accurate description far into the future. The holistic context is intended to be a living document that is evolved, refined and developed over time, reflecting the best understanding and values of the decision makers.
One example of a well formed holistic context is on the last page of this article (it still uses the old term “holistic goal”), and has actually been used in training agency officials. Unfortunately I did not find good linkable examples (could type some by hand but I doubt it’s worth the effort).
About testing decisions and objectives
The holistic context gets into real use when the decisions or objectives are tested. The details are out of scope of this post but I’ll list the guidelines briefly:
1. Cause and Effect (does the proposed action address the root cause of the issue?)
2. Weak Link social/biological/financial (does it create/weaken/strengthen/address the weak link(s)?)
3. Marginal Reaction (which action provides the greatest return for time and money spent)
4. Gross Profit Analysis (which enterprises contribute the most to covering the overheads of the business)
5. Energy/Money, source and use (is the energy/money sourced appropriately and used in ways in line with the holistic context)
6. Sustainability (will this lead toward or away from the future resource base described in the holistic context)
7. Society and Culture (how do we feel about it now – will it lead to the quality of life described in the holistic context – will it adversely affect the lives of others). (also know as the “gut feeling” test)
—
I hope I have described at least superficially what a “holistic context” is when it’s at home, and why to use it – at least my understanding of it.
You still had the question
Willis wrote:
“What are the borders of a holistic context, what defines when it becomes non-holistic?”
My personal take is that a holistic context becomes “non-holistic” when it is no longer helpful in addressing the complexity of the world, in managing of the whole that the particular context is written for.
For example, let’s consider the US Environmental Protection Agency. Could anything even remotely resembling a holistic context be written for EPA as it is now? After reading its mission, bugdet plan, and strategic plan it becomes apparent that EPA only has
– a stated purpose (protect human health and the environment, and make USA a global leader in it)
and
– various forms of production (develop and enforce environmental policies and regulations, give grants, sponsor partnerships, create information, assess quality of information, disseminate information)
and
– well, that’s it. The rest of it is just vague corporate evasive language (some cleverly phrased, but still).
I’d say that the absence of anything remotely mentioning “quality of life” (maybe EPA thinks quality of life is irrelevant, or too “airy-fairy”, or perhaps the officials have enough stuff in their hands managing real serious threats like that evil CO2…), and the absence of any kind of future resource base, would certainly make this kind of context “non-holistic” – at least, with a context like that you can not test your decisions using the testing guidelines.
Perhaps one could still try to use the questions, to “evaluate” their decisions, like the “CO2 as pollution” decision. Let’s try…if we ignore for a while that EPA’s own mission talks about ensuring that “national efforts to reduce environmental risk are based on the best available scientific information”, then perhaps it would pass the Root Cause question. It would not pass the Weak Link question under the “Taking Action on Climate Change” strategic goal – but the Weak Link test might pass under “Sponsoring partnerships” – especially if the partners happen to be severely cash-strapped. Actually it’s kind of nice to have such a context, it’s very — flexible.. (ok I’m clearly having too much fun in here so I’ll stop..)
Anyway I hope my long explanation made it at least more clear and not less..
Anssi
Just for the record:
the russian word is степь (step). The word Steppe is German – derived from the russian, of course.
There is merit in the light grazing hypotheses. There are plants which only survive where grazing animals spread the seeds while rarely over-trampling… or humans now perform the same functions. (I’m thinking of a certain somewhat rare variety of white clover which used to be spread by bison.)
People — even people who detest Malthus’s and Ehrlich’s and the Club of Rome’s erroneous predictions of doom — believe the world is over-populated and over-crowded for a number of reasons.
Diseases which used to die out between population centers now spread rapidly if not stopped by quarantine/isolation treatment.
Similarly, diseases carried by water used to die between the point where they soaked into the ground and where they sprung up naturally or were extracted via wells, but with the increased densities the parasites and bacteria carry from population point to point.
When you want to go anywhere, people are in your way, and when you want to get away from other people’s smells, sounds, sight… and have some privacy, it is now impossible.
Governments demanding “intelligent transportation”, i.e. privacy in travel elimination schemes, on the rationalization that if they take control away from individual drivers, alleging their computer-controlled systems can “safely” cram more vehicles in the same number of square miles of highway and considering that adequate rationalization; and they’re trying to herd people into communitarian “mass transit” to also reduce individual control, and increase density of bodies.