eco-optimism

Lawrence lawrence at krubner.com
Wed Aug 8 01:03:12 PDT 2001



> Oh, goodie. Now we have some attainable environmental goals, thanks to
> Bjorn. After all, if the global environment isn't that bad, then why
> make it any better, when we can still make it a whole worse and get
> away with it?
> I am heading out to change my oil and pour it down the storm
> drain. Hell the Bay can take, Bjorn the chipper environmentalist says
> so.
> Chuck Grimes

The bay probably can't take it. Especially if everyone did it. I realize you're kidding but there is a point to be made here. Concentrated human activity runs the constant risk of destroying the environment. On some level, we all know this, and that is why most people, even conservatives, have some concerns about the environment. It's not that the environment is fragile, it's actually amazingly resilient, but we are all aware at this point that humans can have an effect on the earth and we need to control our behaviors so as to not destroy it entirely. Some would argue that this fact of life is not new. Some would, and have, argued that all human cultures, in all epochs, have had to live with some ongoing tension between human activity and its influence on the environment. Like any predator, early humans could overhunt a territory and then face starvation and death when they had nothing left to hunt. And that cycle of boom and bust represents, for humans, the earliest environmental crisis, a simpler version of our current one.

Still, there is much that is going to happen to this earth that we truly have no control over. A few months ago Scientific American, the magazine, had an article on the melting of Antartica. New research and satelite imaging of deep structures allowed some of the most accurate estimates yet of the shrinking. It is now clear that the melting began around 7,000 BC. This is significant because ice cores from other sources show beyond doubt that the Earth began to warm around 10,000BC. The 3,000 year lap between the heating and the melting is worrisome. It suggests that if all heating were to stop today, the melting of the glaciers might continue for another 3,000 years.

Maybe more to the point, the Earth was in an Ice Age 15,000 years ago. Now it's not, but it's still much colder than it's been for most of its history (there were no ice caps during the Mesozoic, when the dinosaurs lived). The fact that it is warming up might be entirely natural. Even if it is natural, it would be bad for humans, since most of our cities are close to the seas. But natural. And if it is natural, then what course is allowed for the true environmentalist? To argue for more warming?



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