> As a rhetorical exercise, the announcement strikes me as
> xenophobic or isolationist or something of that sort.
> I'm no biologist,
Which is just the problem..
> so I don't know how accepted such terms as "alien marine
> species," "non-indigenous organisms," etc. are to
> scientists,
...but you don't have to be a biologist. These terms are pretty well known to millions of amature nature-lovers and environmentalists. There are lots of local chapters of groups devoted to native species, and they have NOTHING to do with racist politics.
It's a bit hard for some folks to comprehend, since, for example, here in California one of our most characrteristic trees is the euclyptus, first imported from Australia in the 1850s. Most Californians would think it utterly silly to try to get rid of Eucalyptus. But the underlying principle is still important, regardless of some exceptions we may be quite fond of. Under normal conditions it takes a long time for species to disperse. Humans move things around very rapidly. This can lead to disasterous results. Kudzu, anyone?
> although I know there are at least a couple of books focusing on
> the export of European species as a form of imperialism.
And that would make the IMPORT of potatoes, tomatoes & tobacco, etc. forms of anti-imperlism?
C'mon, GET REAL!
Of course imperialism involved changes in agriculture and the distribution of cultivation, processing, etc. Think of the Opium Wars, for gosh sakes!
But this kind of "logic", making formal equivalences between export of species and export of military/political/economic control or between nativist politics and native plant societies is just plain silly.
Of course you WILL find nativists who will try to make such connections, just as you found nativists trying to get the Sierra Club to become an anti-immigration organization. But do you really want to fight these people by AGREEING with the simple-minded equivalences they draw?
> Surely there has been so much transfer of flora, fauna and
> other forms of life around the globe in the last 500 years
> that terms such as "alien" or "native" would be hard to define?
500 years is less than an eyeblink in evolutionary time. This kind of statement is myopic in the extreme.
> And given the growing attention being given to genetic
> engineering, could a statement such as "Many ecologists
> believe the spread of exotic species constitutes one of
> the most serious, yet least appreciated, threats to
> biodiversity" just possibly be part of an effort to distract
> folks from the invasion of other continents by, say, Monsanto ?
A bit too much of the X-Files mentality here, I'm afraid.
It's just that no significant sector of capital is pro spread of new exotic species, so there's no organized opposition to this initiative.
The Clinton Administration likes cheap opportunities to grandstand, so it puffs its non-controversial initiatives.
You are right to point out the contradiction here, but putting a whole paranoid gloss on it simply distracts from a solid structural understanding of the forces at work.
The threat posed by Monsanto is actually potentially much WORSE than that of non-native species. Genetically modified organisms (GMOs) have the potential to spread genes in ways we can't yet begin to imagine. AIDS is a striking example of what happens when genetic material gets mixed in a very short time span.
I very seriously doubt that Monsanto will create something that destructive, but what they're involved in is much MORE like the processess that gave rise to AIDs out of several simian viruses than it is like the processes that gave California scores of species of Eucalyptus trees. Thus, the way that you're drawing contrasts is not only too paranoid, it inadvertantly tends to play DOWN the risks.
Basically, what I'm arguing here is that you've got to resist the tempation to jump on superficial similarities, and take the time to study the underlying processes.
I began by making the point that terms that appear similar (nativist language about people, ecologists language about ecosystems) may reflect entirely different practices. I end by making the point that a similarity of spacial invasiveness (between natural exotics and GMOs) may disguise radically different orders of environmental and human health threat.
This all serves to illustrate what I think is so misguided in a lot of PoMo language fixation -- it's a self-deluding trap that substitutes easy pot shots at the universal visible (linguistic expression) for hard work at illuminating the particular and the hidden.
-- Paul Rosenberg Reason and Democracy rad at gte.net
"Let's put the information BACK into the information age!"