Sunday, October 28, 2007

Intentional Climate Change Again, Again

From managing biota ("Managing Baseball... Managing Nature" — http://environmentalvalues.blogspot.com/2007/10/managing-baseball-managing-nature.html), we effortlessly leap to managing the climate. Actually, it's no leap at all. We bring to this climate management project the same "rationality" and the same "sensibility" as we bring to the biotic one. We are out to "improve" nature to satisfy human desires — at least short-term ones.

We are quite deliberately — at increasing rates — burning fossil fuels, practicing agriculture, and doing lots of other things that we fully know spew greenhouse gases into the troposphere. We know that we are on course to more than double pre-industrial levels of greenhouse gases. And we know that this is warming the planet — not a little, but a lot from the viewpoint of many biological, geochemical, and climate systems.

In other words, without a doubt, we are intentionally changing our climate.

In an October 24, 2007 New York Times editorial (http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/24/opinion/24caldiera.html?ref=opinion), Ken Caldeira, a scientist at the Carnegie Institution’s department of global ecology, recites without credit an August, 2006 proposal by nobel laureate Paul J. Crutzen (Crutzen, P.J., "Albedo Enhancement by Stratospheric Sulfur Injections: A Contribution to Resolve a Policy Dilemma?", Climatic Change, 77:3-4 (August 2006), pp. 211-220, http://www.springerlink.com/content/t1vn75m458373h63/?p=ac0f8d1a677948bfa4b589a55cfa1792&pi=3). The idea is to spray aerosols — particulates, or particulate-forming chemicals — into the stratosphere in order to increase that atmospheric layer's albedo (reflectance), thereby reducing the radiative energy reaching the earth's troposphere (lower atmosphere) and surface.

Aerosol painting.
Which color suites the stratosphere?

In other words, in order to fix the bad, warming effects of how we're currently intentionally changing the climate, it is proposed that we intentionally change the climate some more.

Caldeira closes by glibly posing the question:
Which is the more environmentally sensitive thing to do: let the Greenland ice sheet collapse and polar bears become extinct, or throw a little sulfate in the stratosphere?
What picture does "throwing a little sulfate in the stratosphere" conjure up? Is it, perhaps, a bit like throwing a little rice at a newly married couple? Crutzen helps us flesh out the picture. He estimates that the cost would be $25 billion to $50 billion per year, plus a half-million premature deaths from particulate pollution, unspecified damage — both biotic and abiotic — due to an increase in acid rain, plus a risk (among others) of depleting stratospheric ozone (again). He notes that the sky would whiten, but that we would be compensated by more colorful sunrises and sunsets — as happens now in areas of dense particulate pollution. He says that "the required annual S inputs are large" (p. 215), estimating the need for 5.3 Tg S to compensate for doubled greenhouse gas concentrations (p. 213). (A teragram is one million metric tonnes; a metric tonne is 1000 kg.) And he admits that spewing sulfates into the stratosphere would be "a messy operation" (p. 213). So we should consider doing it from a tropical island. It seems that doing this from the Carnegie Institute's back yard is contraindicated.

This, then, is what Caldeira means by "throwing a little sulfate in the stratosphere".

There are other possible effects. Among the ones we know enough to ask about are the effects of the concomitant warming of the lower stratosphere and tropopause (the troposphere/stratosphere interface), an increase in high cloud cover (due to a sulfate-induced increase in cloud longevity), and shifts in wind patterns that (among other effects) may warm Eurasian winters — as has been observed to accompany natural (volcanic) stratospheric sulfate "experiments". And then there are the effects that we don't even know enough to ask about — the indirect physical effects of changing the profile of solar and longwave radiation in the upper atmosphere on static and dynamic equilibria, the physico-chemical effects of increasing stratospheric heterogeneity, and (perhaps after a long causal chain that will never be uncovered until after the fact, if even then), the effects of all these things on living things on earth's surface.

No matter how much research we put into the new, cooling kind of ICC (Intentional Climate Change), there will be some effects, and not unlikely some big effects, that we will not be able to anticipate. And, while the direct effects of sulfates in the stratosphere — at least the know direct effects — are relatively short-lived (on the order of a few years), we cannot predict whether the indirect effects will be equally short-lived or whether they will be reversible.

What ought we to do?

The answer to this question is the answer to the question: "Is intentional climate change morally justified?"

We are not going to try to answer that question in this post. But it is not easy to see how the question, as it applies to engineered attempts to cool the climate, is different from the question as it applies to our current, deliberate warming behavior in any ethically relevant way. To say that climate warming is not the main point of the behavior that causes it is beside the point. We know very well what we're doing, we deliberately do it, and we deliberately continue doing it.

What are some of the morally relevant questions? Here are some:
  1. The choice to proceed with cooling ICC would likely be made by the same people who have decided to continue their warming ICC and who are reaping its short-term benefits. The climate of the poor and disenfranchised would be changed, too. They, too, will have to live with the results. And, if for no other reason than their relatively adaptive incapacity, they will tend to affected disproportionately. Is this right?
  2. The disenfranchised include future generations of people, as well as all the other creatures that share our planet; and these, too, are likely to be disproportionately affected. Is this right in view of the fact that we have another, far more conservative choice — the choice to discontinue our current ICC behavior?
  3. Looming behind the previous question is the specter of irreversibility. Of course we can stop bombarding the stratosphere with sulfates. And we have good evidence that the particulates will dissipate well within a decade. But in such a grand experiment on such a grandly complex system, we can never know whether some part of the atmospheric system, some static or dynamic equilibrium, will make a quantum and irreversible shift. Shifts of this kind of system could easily be "forever" — for time frames that apply to the human species — 200,000 years or so for Homo sapiens, 2.5 million years or so for the entire genus Homo. In the world of morals, irreversibility counts. That a homicide cannot in any meaningful way be undone or compensated, that there is no way to right that wrong, makes it all the more egregious.
  4. On the other hand, we can choose to change our own behavior and institutions that encourage undesirable behavior. This is undoubtedly difficult. But people are malleable. People can adopt different ways of living. They can change their institutions. It is possible to change; and this is undeniably a far more conservative choice. Is it right to choose the risk of catastrophic and irreversible damage in light of this alternative?
  5. We do not know in any detail what the consequences are of any ICC. We do know that our attempts to intervene in systems so overwhelmingly complex always have unexpected results. By definition, we will be completely unprepared to deal with them. We know that some of the unexpected results will be problematic. There is distinct chance that one or more may be catastrophic — perhaps even more catastrophic than the problem it was to address. With lives literally in the balance, can we justify this risk?
  6. Focusing on ICC for cooling will have the inevitable social and political effect of legitimizing our refusal to seriously consider changing our current warming ICC behavior. It will distract us from even considering such a change. Can this be justified?
  7. These are difficult questions by any measure. Yet there is no evidence of any inclination to embed their critical examination in the process of looking into cooling ICC. This is a very different kind of examination from scientific assessment of risks and probably effects. We have the disturbing specter of research into ICC and even its implementation outside any kind of well-thought-out ethical framework. At the very least, is it right to proceed without climate ethicists?
But what ought we to do if, as Caldeira and Crutzen both agonize, we deliberately choose to continue to warm the globe with our greenhouse gas emissions? The answer is that, if we believe that our current experiment in deliberately warming the planet is wrong, then conducting a geoengineered cooling experiment would be, too. If we choose to continue our ICC for warming, that fact should not change the ethical assessment of ICC for cooling.

But what happens if, as a result of our current, intentional climate-warming behavior, we face the sort of situation that Stephen Schneider (Schneider, S. H., "Geoengineering: Could-or-Should-we do it", Climatic Change, 33:3 (July 1996), pp. 291–302, http://www.springerlink.com/index/NVQ736V7JQ017V72.pdf) portrays:
Supposing, a currently envisioned low probability [in 1996; now much higher] but high consequence outcome really started to unfold in the decades ahead (for example, 5º C warming in this century) which would characterize as having potential catastrophic implications for ecosystems . . . Under such a scenario, we would simply have to practice geo-engineering...
Would we, as this argument claims, have to practice geo-engineering in such dire circumstances? We presume that part of the force of Schneider's "have to" is "ought to". He is saying that, if we were facing a catastrophe from climate warming, we ought to implement a geoengineered cooling experiment. But again, if experiments in changing the climate are morally unjustified and unjustifiable, why would our desperation in the face of catastrophe change this? Would it, for example, change the ethically relevant fact that we would be doing something whose real consequences may well result in greater catastrophe?

Read more...

Wednesday, October 24, 2007

Nuts to gray squirrels

In response to the October 9 post "One squirrel, two squirrel..." (http://environmentalvalues.blogspot.com/2007/10/one-squirrel-two-squirrel.html), we have this, submitted by a reader that identified herself only as the leader of the heretofore unknown organization Nuts for Nutkin:

If Sciuris vulgaris were lord,
Lots of nuts it could surely afford.
    And it could require,
    Under consequence dire,
That production of grays be offshored.

Read more...

Tuesday, October 23, 2007

Managing Baseball... Managing Nature

Or: A Tale of Three Species

Baseball

It's World Series time and I can't help but think about baseball. I grew up in a baseball-obsessed town with and even more baseball-obsessed father. Genotype + environment = phenotype. In other words, I grew up playing a ton of baseball. I don't know how our parents found the inner strength to let a bunch of six-year olds throw a hard ball at, around, and away from each other. But they did; and I'm forever grateful.

I bring up my baseball-playing early childhood because the salient feature of a story that I wish to relate about nature puts in mind a regular feature of our early games. With, say, "men" on first and second, the hitter would squib a ball on the ground to the second baseman. The field, more resembling a bombing range than a level playing field, would redirect the ball in interesting ways beyond the anticipatory acumen of the fielder. As the ball scooted away from him, the runner from second would round third and head for home. Gamely chasing the ball, picking it up, and eager to redeem his error, the second baseman would throw to the catcher to try to cut down that lead runner at home. The phrase "to the catcher" had to be inferred from the general direction in which the second baseman was looking — for the direction of the ball was quite different. One run. The third baseman and catcher would give chase to the errant ball. The catcher, arriving first, would pick it up, then throw to third to try to catch the runner who had started his journey from first. Unfortunately, the third baseman, who had joined the catcher in pursuit of the second baseman's errant throw, was not at third to catch the catcher's throw. Two runs. Out to the outfield went the ball — picked up there as the batsman, the last remaining base-runner, was rounding second and heading for third. It was about then that the parents of the fielding team would break into the memorable chant:

"HOLD THE BALL, HOLD THE BALL".

There was a wisdom to that urgently offered advise. Evidence was, with another throw from another frenetic fielder, another run would score, leaving the fielding team yet deeper in the hole.

From managing baseball we go to managing nature.

A short history of Opuntia spp. - H. sapiens interactions

Drooping tree pear (Opuntia vulgaris) was brought to New South Wales Australia in 1788 on the First Fleet to establish a cochineal dye industry there — a spirited bid to keep those British red coats red and keep the green in the Commonwealth.

No problem.

Sometime later, in the early 1800's) prickly pear cactus (O. stricta) was brought in — this time, for stock fodder. In drought-prone Australia, it seemed prudent to have a drought-resistant plant to feed stock.

Big problem. Very big.

By 1925, prickly pear was completely out of control. At that time, it infested some twenty-five million hectares in New South Wales and Queensland, and was spreading at the rate of half a million hectares per year. This was one of the most astounding biological success stories of all time — for the prickly pear. And one of the greatest agricultural disasters — for humans.

With the experiment in managing stock fodder not going according to plan, it was time for another management decision. Perhaps some chemical management? In Queensland alone, that state's Prickly Pear Land Commission reported that in just one year (1926), the amount of poison sold was enough to treat 9,450,000 tons of prickly pear. Chemicals included 31,100 (10 and 20 lb.) tins of arsenic pentoxide and 27,950 containers (ranging in size from 2 gal. earthenware jars to 100 lb. (5.5 gal.) steel drums) of Roberts Improved Pear Poison — a cocktail of 80% sulfuric acid and 20% arsenic. We are not aware of how many plants and animals — human and otherwise — were poisoned. But evidently, the prickly pear were not. They continued to proiferate. Another management decision had to be made.

Enter the cactus moth (Cactoblastis cactorum). Brought in from Argentina where it was observed to be a singularly well-evolved weapon of mass prickly pear destruction, it, or 2.25 million or so of its eggs, were released in 1926. Six years later, by 1932, the moth, or more precisely, its larvae, had eaten, indeed, gorged themselves to agricultural glory and immortal fame — virtually eliminating all major stands of O. stricta in Queensland and New South Wales. The spectacular biological triumph of O. stricta had been utterly and even more spectacularly reversed in one of the most astounding biological control success stories of all time.

C. Cactoblastus v. Opuntia — cactus moth larvae doing what sulfuric acid and arsenic cannot

An innocent and interested but unrepresented North American party — Leptonycteris curasoae

There's more to the Australian story (summarized at http://www.northwestweeds.nsw.gov.au/chronology_of_events.htm). But let's leave it to fast forward to the middle of the 20th century.

In the Caribbean, various Opuntia spp. are endemic (not invasive), but annoying — at least to H. sapiens. In the 1950's, the level of annoyance was high. With the spectacular success of C. cactorum in Australia, it was clearly time for the moth to be brought back for an encore performance. It did not disappoint. According to Habeck, D.H, and Bennett F.D. , "Cactoblastis cactorum Berg (Lepidoptera: Pyralidae), a Phycitine New to Florida", Entomology Circular No. 333, Florida Dept. Agric. & Consumer Serv. Division of Plant Industry, August 1990 (http://www.doacs.state.fl.us/pi/enpp/ento/entcirc/ent333.pdf):
In 1957 [C. cactorum] was introduced into the Caribbean, in Nevis, where the control of Opuntia curassavica and other Opuntia spp. was rapid and spectacular (Simmonds and Bennett 1966). Eggs and larvae, or infested cladodes, were sent from Nevis to Montserrat and Antigua in 1962 and to Grand Cayman in 1970 (Bennett et al. 1985). By 1963 it had naturally spread from the Lesser Antilles to Puerto Rico (Garcia-Tuduri et al. 1971) and is now present in Haiti, Dominican Republic, and the Bahamas (Starmer et al. 1987).
Unfortunately, this management decision failed to account for the proximity of these Caribbean islands to the mainland. And sure enough, C. cactorum rode winds or perhaps took a boat ride over to Florida. Six Opuntia spp. are endemic to Florida. Three of them, including O. spinosissima and O. tricantha, are rare and threatened. But they are just as tasty to the moth.

The moth did not sat tight. It has steadily, inexorably made its way up the east coast and, more alarmingly, around the Gulf coast towards the Southwest and Mexico. Since the year 2000, it has spread at the stunning rate of 130 km. (100 miles) per year — far faster than it did in Australia. Apparently, the moth is intent on eclipsing its earlier down-under performance, as spectacular as it was. Most recently (in the summer of 2006) and most ominously, it showed up at Isla Mujeres, just 8 km. (less than 6 miles) offshore from the Mexican mainland near Cancun.

Opuntia natural and cultural history

Opuntia spp. are environmental keystones in semi-arid and desert regions. They retain precious moisture in the soil, stabilize it, and prevent its erosion. Many semi-arid areas in Mexico would almost certainly become desert without Opuntia. Opuntia provides habitat (nest sites and protection from predators) for various birds, reptiles, and mammals — including bobwhite quail, cactus wren and curve-billed thrasher. Many herbivorous insects feed on the flowers, pads, or plant; and these, in turn are food for vertebrates. A number of birds, reptiles, and mammals also feed directly on the plant. The Texas tortoise (Gopherus berlandieri) , which is listed internationally as a CITES II (Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species Appendix II — http://www.cites.org/eng/app/index.shtml) species and federally under the US Endangered Species Act, feeds heavily on Opuntia flowers and fruit. The also-endangered lesser long-nosed bat (Leptonycteris curasoae) — listed in both the US and Mexico — feeds on its nectar and pollen while Opuntia flowers, and its fruit afterwards. Opuntia spp. comprise more than half of the winter diet of white tailed deer and peccaries in south Texas.
The coat of arms of Mexico —
a Mexican golden eagle
perched upon an Opuntia cactus and
devouring a snake

Among the mammals that sustain themselves from Opuntia is H. sapiens. Opuntia is a staple food for the Mexican rural poor.

Mexico is home for 76 Opuntia spp. 38 of them are not found anywhere else. According to Stiling, P., "Potential Non-target Effects of a Biological Control Agent, Prickly Pear Moth, Cactoblastis cactorum (Berg) (Lepidoptera: Pyralidae), in North America, and Possible Management Actions", Biological Invasions, 4:3 (2002), pp. 273-281(9), http://www.springerlink.com/content/lm432w8415149103/) Cactoblastis can be expected to attack at least 31 Opuntia spp. in the US and 56 species in Mexico.

Opuntia is also a Mexican cultural icon. The Mexican flag depicts an eagle perched on a prickly pear cactus. The Opuntia crop enables many subsistence farmers to stay on their land.

Opuntia economics

Economically, in the American southwest and in Mexico, Opuntia is a source of pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, fodder, cochineal dye (still!), hunting (for the peccaries and white-tailed deer that feed on it) and its lease revenue, and ornamental uses. The Mexican cactus industry is 2.5% of the value of its total agricultural production. (See the assessment in www.aphis.usda.gov/plant_health/plant_pest_info/cactoblastis/downloads/whitepaper.pdf.)

And now?

With the situation looking dire, we feel compelled to make another management decision. Ecologists are looking at importing the natural enemies of C. cactorum from its native home in Argentina. For example, Habeck and Bennett (cited above) recommend that:
Classical biological control should be considered. In its native habitat in South America several natural enemies are known including Apanteles alexanderi Brethes (Braconidae), Phyticiplex doddi (Cushman) and P. eremnus (Porter) (Ichneumonidae), Brachymeria cactoblastidis Blanchard (Chalcididae) [a chalcidid wasp], and Epicoronimyia mundelli (Blanchard) (Tachinidae) [all parasitoid wasps].
According to Peter Stiling, "Ecology, Theories and Applications", Prentice-Hall, 4th ed., p. 203,
Only about 16 percent of classical biological control introductions attempted so far qualify as economic successes (Hall, R.W., L.E. Ehler, and B. Bisabri-Ershadi, "Rates of success in classical biological control of arthopods", Bulletin of the Entomological Socoiety of America, 26: 114-14, 1980.) Usually, organisms are released in a hit-or-miss technique. Some authors believe that this approach makes the best economic sense, given the high cost of research into the biology of natural enemies (van Lenteren, J.C., "Evaluation of control capabilities of natural enemies. Does art have to become science?" Netherlands Journal of Zoology, 30: 369-81, 1980). Just release a bunch of parasitoids and predators, and hope that one of them does the job.
For the moment, put aside any moral or aesthetic responsibility we have to respect the natural complexity and richness of our world and to refrain from reducing it to a human-designed state of degraded simplicity. Forget for now whether we have a responsibility to live with, as well as from that richness. Just focus on our most narrowly defined, most mean-spiritedly selfish interests in wringing from the land living as much material wealth as possible as soon as possible.

Can anything be more clear? We have met the biological enemy, and it is us. We, the creature so highly endowed with a rational capacity, cannot bring ourselves to admit its limits. We cannot recognize our profound inability to understand natural systems well enough to avoid disaster in our nature-management experiments. Instead, we have an escalating spiral of management decisions — each successive one a "solution" to the mess left by the last, and almost always leading to a bigger mess. With Opuntia and the cactus moth, we have the biggest success... leading to the biggest failure.

Is this "merely" an dilemma that reflects the current state of our knowledge? Is our current helplessness in predicting the consequences of our natural management decisions a matter of the current, nascent state of the ecological science, which is clearly advancing as rapidly as some of the best scientific minds can make it go? Or is there some more fundamental barrier to this epistemological limitation? Is this distinction important?

As matters stand, with greater than 6 to 1 odds for failure and a significant chance for disaster for even "proven" management techniques, would a sober gambler place her chips on "going for it"? Do the odds in the nature casino, unlike those in Las Vegas, improve after an initial string of losses? With two runs across from two successive errors, and another threatening to score if the rubber-armed and frenzied outfielder throws away the ball again, I hear

"HOLD THE BALL. HOLD THE BALL."

Read more...

Paean to the study of ecology

And now for something completely different...

A brief paean to the joy of studying ecology and its Greek-inspired, Aristotle-approved vocabulary:

Bull's-horn acacia (Acacia collinsii)
loving its ants (Pseudomyrmex spinicola)
(Alex Wild, 2007)
http://www.myrmecos.net/
To live as a myrmecophile
For some would seem utterly vile.
    But were you a plant,
    Defended by ant –
Your love would show staggering guile.

or alternatively:

Engaging in myrmecophily
To some would seem perfectly silly.
    But defended plants know
    That ants help you grow:
Don't shun or get eaten alive-ily.

Read more...

Thursday, October 18, 2007

Manufactured Landscapes

Edward Burtynsky makes images of hidden landscapes. They are landscapes that are as divorced from our everyday experience as the remote wilderness areas that inhabit the framed confines of other landscape photographers. Some of them are as compellingly beautiful, even sublime, as the best of the wilderness genre.

The traditional wilderness landscape connects to our lives, if at all, as a testament to qualities in the natural world that astound us as utterly beyond and outside human creative imagination, let alone human capabilities. It is in that way that they enrich us and our imaginations. They are the work of forces and processes operating on a creative scale in space and time that transcends individual humans and even the human species. We recognize in them the antithesis of human artifice, which can and has often transformed this kind of landscape into something entirely different, and with stunning suddenness. In a fraction of the engendering time — something of enormous complexity and richness becomes far simpler, far less rich as it is reigned in by the limits of human imagination. We treasure the beauty of natural landscapes all the more because we are at least vaguely aware of their fragility — their susceptibility to being almost instantly and irreversibly transformed by even modest, well-intentioned human presence and "use".

Burtynsky's landscapes connect to our modern lives in some very different ways. They are, as he says, "manufactured landscapes". There's a pun in that phrase. His are the landscapes that we make in order to make things ... and eventually discard them. Like natural landscapes, they are created and shaped by forces and processes without teleological guidance. But with manufactured landscapes, the processes and forces at work are not entirely disinterested. They are ones that spring from the urge to satisfy specifically human material desires. Manufactured landscapes are literally sculpted by the economic engines that bring the objects of our desires into our life. While wilderness vanish, manufactured landscapes expand and increase in number — as human desires and the number of desiring humans increase.

Wilderness landscapes are the result of terribly enormous and complex forces -- shifting tectonic plates, vulcanism, visits by comets, meteorites and interstellar dust, huge shifts in tropospheric and oceanic patterns, and the interaction of all of these with the 100's of millions of different organisms that have inhabited earth since the first billion of its 4.5 billion year history. The forces of the economy, though a human invention and institution, are no less terrible — perhaps even more so. They are global in spatial scale. The time scale on which they act and perform transformations can be virtually instantaneous — literally, before anyone can understand what the changes mean. And the changes cannot be undone.

In front of Burtynksy's lens, manufactured landscapes have a beauty that haunts. Wilderness images haunt us at least partly by confronting us with what billions of years of creative energy have wrought without any human guidance. We feel awe, perhaps more so with the realization of the stunningly rapid disappearance and painful rarity of the subject. With manufactured landscapes, we are haunted by the prospect of their rapid incursion into our life and the realization that in the seemingly mundane details of how we live our daily life, we are the driving force behind this advance. Soon, inevitably, these manufactured landscapes won't be hidden. The formal beauty that Burtynsky achieves does, as it should, strike terror into us. The seductiveness of the images is metaphorically laden with the seductiveness of the things that are the objects of human desire — the things whose making and discarding unleash the seemingly inexorable economic forces that mold his landscapes.

Modest reflection on what's just outside the frame of Burtynsky's images deepens the feeling of looming specters. While many of us fuel the economic sculptor of manufactured landscapes by "expressing" our consumptive preferences, granite quarry workers breath granite dust and quartz; eWaste sorters wade unprotected through piles of electronic components and other electronic components laden with cadmium lead, mercury, and PCB's; shipbreakers in 40º C heat, wade in neck-deep crude oil, tear apart ship parts laced with asbestos, PCB's, lead, mercury, organic solvent, and crawl unprotected and armed with crude blow-torches, grinders, and cutting tools up, over, and around rust-weakened hulks. These people, we may surmise, are part of the landscape because it makes "economic sense".

Wilderness landscapes disappear; manufactured landscapes emerge and expand. Photographic inspection and reflection follows, leaving us with these stunning juxtapositions of images of Ansel Adams / Burtynsky:


Bridalveil Fall / Oxford Tire Pile


Frozen Lake and Cliffs / Rock of Ages #4


Monolith / Rock of Ages #15


Canyon de Chelly / Shipbreaking No. 9a


Aspens / Uranium Tailings No. 12


Snake River / Nickel Tailings No. 34

For some time still, the richest among us will be able to escape from the sight of Burtynsky's hidden, albeit increasingly exposed and apparent, manufactured landscapes. But even now, not even the richest can escape their collusion and implicit responsibility in creating these landscapes, or in making them increasingly dominant on the planet.

Burtynsky's books include his "Manufactured Landscapes" (http://yalepress.yale.edu/yupbooks/book.asp?isbn=9780300099430), "Quarries" (http://www.steidlville.com/books/555-Quarries.html), and "China" (http://www.steidlville.com/books/134-China.html). Helioskiagrablog urgently recommends the 2006 documentary film, "Manufactured Landscapes" (http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/manufactured_landscapes/). Despite its limitations, the film begins to suggest a central point of this post: Byrtynsky's images are not so much about isolated places, as much as they are about the power of the human institutions that create and connect them.

Read more...

Tuesday, October 9, 2007

One squirrel, two squirrel...

... red squirrel, gray squirrel...

... with apologies to Dr. Seuss, whose wonderful tale's logic may exceed the logic that has been applied to the matter of Britain's squirrel populations.

As we understand them, these are the facts of the matter:

The native squirrel of Britain is the red, Sciurus vulgaris or, in a country where lords have status, the "common squirrel". For their personal amusement in the early 19th century (and I should clarify that, so far as we know, this amusement involved nothing more perverse than the hunt), Britons imported the Yankee gray squirrel, S. carolinensis. Of course, the grays escaped and started amusing themselves — recreationally and procreationally. Which, for a squirrel, is pretty much the same thing. Ever since, they have thoroughly enjoyed themselves out-competing the reds. The scorecard stands at grays: 2,000,000 versus reds: 160,000. It looks grim for the home team. There is a high probability that the reds may vanish from Britain within a decade. But despite the decline of the British population and their immanent departure from that island, reds may still outnumber reds worldwide.

In the early 20th century, Britons hunted the still more numerous reds with abandon. That was an economic good -- simultaneously providing sporting pleasure and bolstering timber "goods" by reducing the number of bark-stripping rodents. In the 1930's, alarmed by the displacement of the home team, the government established a gray squirrel bounty. But that move failed to level the squirrel playing field. Now, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs sponsors such efforts as S.O.S. (Save Our Squirrels), which administers red squirrel preserves; and the Red Squirrel Protection Partnership. The latter organization doesn't exactly protect red squirrels -- at least not directly. Rather, "It shoots, or traps and then smashes on the head, every gray it can find" (http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/07/magazine/07squirrels-t.html?pagewanted=all).

The current arguments for saving the reds seem to be heavily invested in Beatrix Potter. From the above-mentioned source, here is an account of the March, 2006 debate in the august House of Lords (no commons amongst the grays there):

Earl Peel rose to call attention to the decline in numbers of the reds and its significance. “To many,” he said, “the red squirrel represents an integral part of our woodland landscape — an iconic creature, immortalized by Beatrix Potter, through the charismatic character of Squirrel Nutkin.” But before turning his attention to Squirrel Nutkin, Earl Peel proposed conducting “a brief health check” of various other Beatrix Potter characters. “Starting with Tabitha Twitchit and Tom Kitten” — both cats — “they are truly on top of their game. . . . Let us now consider the status of Mr. Tod, the fox. On second thoughts, given that he has taken up 700 hours of parliamentary time, it would be somewhat hypocritical of me to prolong the debate.” He went on: “That brings me on seamlessly to the other really controversial character that graced the class of 1912 — and that of course is Tommy Brock,” Potter’s badger. “Hasn’t he done well?”

Peel continued: “Despite suffering from and carrying tuberculosis, he has successfully managed to establish himself in the hearts and minds of the nation as being more important than dairy cows or, indeed, farmers’ livelihoods, and like Mr. Tod, has managed to secure his very own legislation.”

Peel concluded his health check: “Squirrel Nutkin must look back on his alma mater and think to himself, ‘How could it have all gone so wretchedly wrong for me?’ ”

[Lord Rupert] Redesdale rose to congratulate Peel. [Lord Redesdale is the founder and leader of the concussing Red Squirrel Protection Partnership.] “My Lords,” he said, “I thank the noble earl, Lord Peel, for initiating the debate and commend him for his bravery. It takes a brave man to initiate a debate that had Radio 4 saying this morning that he would be calling for an immediate cull of gray squirrels. I hate to say that his postbag will immediately be filled with letters from irate people who love gray squirrels.”

He continued: “One of the problems in the public perception is that gray squirrels are the only squirrels they see. They see them in parks and gardens, and they are sociable and friendly animals. Yesterday, I walked through St. James’s Park and watched tourists feeding gray squirrels crisps by hand. In Regent’s Park, a gray squirrel came up to my son and me and actually climbed up my leg to look in my pocket.”

Lord Hoyle soon cut off Redesdale: “My Lords, perhaps they are friendlier in Regent’s Park than they are in St. James’s Park. One that ran up my leg bit me.”

Redesdale resumed: “Efforts involving buffer zones have been undertaken to halt the advance of the gray squirrel. It is unfortunate that in Northumberland, when there was talk of a cull of gray squirrels, there was such public outcry that much of that work had to be deferred.”

Lady Saltoun of Abernethy, the 21st to hold that title in Scotland, then spoke to point out the inherent superiority of the red over the gray squirrel: “Red squirrels,” she said, “are rather like quiet, well-behaved people who do not make a nuisance or an exhibition of themselves or commit crimes and so do not get themselves into the papers in the vulgar way gray squirrels do.” She continued: “Red squirrels do not strip bark from trees; damage arable crops, market gardens and garden plants; dig up bulb and corms from recently sown seed; eat birds’ eggs; or eat telephone wires and electricity cables, as gray squirrels do.” Lady Saltoun suggested some research be done on whether gray squirrels tasted good. She foresaw a fight at the dinner table: “I have a nasty feeling that . . . children in particular would say, ‘Oh, no, I couldn’t possibly eat that,’ just as they say they cannot eat dear little bunny rabbits. But this is worth having a look at.”

Lord Inglewood concluded with a call to action. “We have been far too intellectual about this and tried to be far too clever,” he said. The matter was simple: “There has to be at least some killing of gray squirrels.” To Inglewood’s mind, British governments over the years, regardless of political persuasion, were guilty of “squeamishness.” And “as far as the red squirrel is concerned,” he went on, “squeamishness spells nemesis for this lovely and iconic creature. Those involved with trying to preserve the red squirrel in this country have adopted a policy of appeasement towards the grays. The red squirrels have had Chamberlains and not Churchills, but it is Churchills that they need.” Inglewood finished with a dark prediction: “Unless something radical and imaginative is done . . . Squirrel Nutkin and his friends and relations are going to be toast.
In its way, this is an examplar of how humans manage and justify their management of other species. The elements are familiar from many similar stories. Included are a familiar economic justification for (initially) casually decimating the natives, the intentional import of an alien, the alien's subsequent rise to ascendancy, and now the sentimental justification for trying to decimate the aliens on the grounds that they are inexorably displacing the natives -- not worldwide, but in one geographical and cultural zone. In this case at least, there is no issue of alien individuals suffering as the result their natural fecundity. Nor is there any question of extinction. The gray is simply Sciurus non grata in the sceptred isle.

Ethical considerations are conspicuously absent -- unless morals are defined by economics and shifting sentiments. With what confidence can we say that Britons were at one time morally justified in culling red squirrels for economic benefit? And now that the reds are the sentimental favorite amongst Britons, with what confidence can we say that they are morally justified in culling their competition? Could they have been justified in the first instance, but not the second? Or is, perhaps, the reverse true? What is, after all, the moral weight of these kinds of economic and sentimental and cultural reasons?

Should this give us pause in viewing ourselves as the rightful or even wrongful but competent manager of other species?

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