Thursday, December 01, 2005
Transforming the Environment
Normally I would save these comments for the regular Monday "Pollution" post, but it was my pleasure to spend Thanksgiving with the Counsul General for South Africa in Southern California and we discussed this story, so I thought it deserved a special post all its own.
There is a huge debate in South Africa over whether to cull the the elephant herd in Kruger National Park, or not. The debate is the now a common spectacle of competing environmental "goods." "Environmental thought," if indeed such a thing can be said to exist, tends to run along the lines that anything man does is "not natural" and is therefore not good, but in this age of competeing environmental "goods" we find the discussion is not about avoiding human intereaction, but about deciding what human or groups of human get to decide what to do. In other words its about power, that's all, raw naked power. And that may be the thing that I hate most of all about the environmental movement, it's a standard old political power play in an arena where traditonally political power did not extend or was extremely limited, dressed up as apple pie. And so many people are dumb enough to buy this load of...stuff. People are taking our political power, and we are letting them, because they have fooled us into thinking the issue is far deeper and more important than it really is.
Are you familiar with the question of Schroedinger's Cat? It's a quantum mechanics thing, but to make it simple it shows that whether a cat is dead or alive is a function of the observer and not the cat itself. Thus the observer can never really be completely disconnected from that which he observes -- the mere act of observation has an effect on outcome. People that try to separate human action as if it is "not natural" don't understand this principle. While it's true we are more prone to adapting the environment to ourselves than ourselves to the environment, that does not make our actions separate from the system.
Which brings me back to the elephants. Here's the money quote from the story
It is time to ratchet down the rhetoric when it comes to environmental matters. It's not a moral matter, there is no good and bad. It's a matter of management.
There is a huge debate in South Africa over whether to cull the the elephant herd in Kruger National Park, or not. The debate is the now a common spectacle of competing environmental "goods." "Environmental thought," if indeed such a thing can be said to exist, tends to run along the lines that anything man does is "not natural" and is therefore not good, but in this age of competeing environmental "goods" we find the discussion is not about avoiding human intereaction, but about deciding what human or groups of human get to decide what to do. In other words its about power, that's all, raw naked power. And that may be the thing that I hate most of all about the environmental movement, it's a standard old political power play in an arena where traditonally political power did not extend or was extremely limited, dressed up as apple pie. And so many people are dumb enough to buy this load of...stuff. People are taking our political power, and we are letting them, because they have fooled us into thinking the issue is far deeper and more important than it really is.
Are you familiar with the question of Schroedinger's Cat? It's a quantum mechanics thing, but to make it simple it shows that whether a cat is dead or alive is a function of the observer and not the cat itself. Thus the observer can never really be completely disconnected from that which he observes -- the mere act of observation has an effect on outcome. People that try to separate human action as if it is "not natural" don't understand this principle. While it's true we are more prone to adapting the environment to ourselves than ourselves to the environment, that does not make our actions separate from the system.
Which brings me back to the elephants. Here's the money quote from the story
"Given elephants' ability to transform an entire landscape, action is needed, or the result will be the mass starvation of elephants and other species,'' Rob Little, conservation director for WWF South Africa, said in a statement Monday.[emphais added]Look at that! The WWF no less, admitting that man is not even the only animal capable of changing the environment. Now what are environmentalists going to do? How will they decide what's "good" and what's "bad.?"
It is time to ratchet down the rhetoric when it comes to environmental matters. It's not a moral matter, there is no good and bad. It's a matter of management.
