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?

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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.

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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."

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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.

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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.

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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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Aristotle shows up in Ecology 101

(The second in a series of exclusive interviews with the great philosopher)

Following up our first, history-making interview with Aristotle ("An Interview with Aristotle", http://environmentalvalues.blogspot.com/2007/08/interview-with-aristotle.html), we've brought The Man back to get his reactions to some startling and revelatory recent developments in practical reasoning. They are so fundamentally important and now so well understood and widely accepted by our best thinkers, that they are ensconced in the basic texts of our finest academies. We are talking about nothing less than bringing mathematical precision to practical reasoning — particularly when it comes to reasoning about our environment. Because now, we can put a precise value on places and decide which to keep and which to, well, trash.

H: Welcome back to helioskiagrablog, Aristotle.

A: Whoa, man, did I hear you right?

H: Well, yes. Take a look at this: Robert Constanza's study on "The value of the world's ecosystem services and natural capital" (http://www.uvm.edu/giee/publications/Nature_Paper.pdf) is the centerpiece of the first section ("What is Ecology?") of the first chapter ("Why and How to Study Ecology") of P. Stiling, "Ecology: Theory and Applications", 4th ed. — the text for Ecology 101 at Stanford University. This is nothing less than the list of what we should and should not value in the world's ecosystems -- and even more incredibly, exactly how much value we should place in pretty much every single hectare on the planet.

A: Let me take a look at that.

H: Sure, here's the scorecard: Swamps 19,580/Deserts 0.

A: Wow, swamps kick ass.

H: Yeah, who would have known?

A: Hey, the ones with crocs might even eat ass. Hah! Ok, Alexander the Great would have laughed at that. And that's 19,580 what?

H: That's $19,580/hectare/year.

A: In other words, more drachmas than I ever earned teaching at the Lyceum. You know that was pretty much the Stanford of my day?

H: Yeah, well, Stanford professors don't do much better. But those swamps might do even better on the scorecard if it weren't for all those bloody mosquitoes.

A: I would imagine so. Even so, they're doing way better than the deserts in the ecosystem value sweepstakes.

H: So what do you think, Aristotle?

A: Let me see if I get this straight. Swamps of just a few hectares are worth a whole lot more than any Stanford professor. So you might suppose that you should treat them (the swamps, I mean) with a lot of respect. On the other hand, deserts are places full of nasty flora (have you hugged your teddy bear cholla lately?), and even nastier animals that wouldn't hesitate to sink their fangs into your toes. Of course the snakes are the ones with fangs; a gila monster does just fine with its lower teeth. But in any case, a desert isn't worth even a buckaroo; zilch; nada; zero. So, you may think, there's just no need to consider these places when we decide what to do. We might as well pave it over (and I hear that greater Phoenix, AZ is doing a pretty good job of that), have fun plowing it up with our ATV's (and I hear that there are a lot of folks doing that in Arizona and Utah, for example), or for goodness sake, at least dump our radioactive and other toxic wastes there (how about Nevada?) It would be worth at least something, then. Right?

H: Mr. A, you sure catch on fast. Maybe we could get you a job at Stanford. It might pay better than the Lyceum.

A: But there's more, right? Remember that so far as I could tell, practical reasoning is fundamentally inexact compared to, say mathematical reckoning, so...

that the whole account of matters of conduct must be given in outline and not precisely, as we said at the very beginning that the accounts we demand must be in accordance with the subject-matter; matters concerned with conduct and questions of what is good for us have no fixity, any more than matters of health. The general account being of this nature, the account of particular cases is yet more lacking in exactness; for they do not fall under any art or precept but the agents themselves must in each case consider what is appropriate to the occasion, as happens also in the art of medicine or of navigation.

Aristotle, "Nichomachean Ethics", Bk. II.2, tr. W.D. Ross (http://www.ilt.columbia.edu/publications/Projects/digitexts/aristotle/nicomachean_ethics/book02.html)

That would mean that we moral agents would have to develop and use forms of practical reasoning that admit no formula to weigh the multiple and complexly interrelating and conflicting interests, duties, and implications for our own character. That's a pretty scary prospect for us moral agents to face. But Constanza and his buddies say, "not to worry" -- least of all when the environment's at stake. Deserts are worth exactly nothing. They're never "appropriate to the occasion" — any occasion, when considering how to act. And all other landscapes and seascapes demand a degree of consideration proportional to the value of the goods and services they provide. There's nothing more precise than that — a precise calculus for computing decisions of policy and individual action. Conflicts? None. Just add up the values and you have THE answer — a complete ordering of all the alternatives that you can imagine, with just one sitting at the top. Pretty satisfying, huh?

H: Really?

A: Sure, deserts ... and let's see, tundra, too. Constanza says tundra has zero value. Thumbs downville for the tundra, man. Might as well turn all that useless, treeless, mosquito-infested bog into oil fields. A few oil derricks would at least give some eye relief. And glaciers — zero goods; zero service value; so might as well chop them up into ice cubes and throw into the ocean to cool it down. Good fix for that pesky global warming, I would think. Think of the anxiety relief. No more worries about cooking the planet with fossil fuels. Now surely that's a good.

H: Are you sure?

A: Of course -- at least until someone commissions a brilliant Stanford ecologist to figure out how to do a study that convinces us that deserts and tundra and remote ice fields perform some other valuable services for us. Of course, those kinds of places would have a long way to go to beat out those nifty swamps. Those swamps are something else, aren't they? Let's see, according to Constanza, they regulate gases, disturbances, and water; they treat all the waste that our consumptive habits produce so, thank Zeus, we don't have to curtail our consumption; they are habitat refuges, albeit for some creatures of dubious reputation; and they produce food, are a source of raw materials, a fun place to spend a mosquito-filled day dodging alligators, and are part of our culture. Hmm, that last one is kind of interesting. Constanza says it comprises "aesthetic, artistic, educational, spiritual, and/or scientific values." Too bad neither deserts nor tundra nor ice fields have any of those values. Or maybe there aren't enough Stanford ecologists around to help us figure it out.

H: I don't know, Mr. A...

A: But even swamps ... think about it. $19,580/hectare/year. That's peanuts. Why, speaking of peanuts, RompInASwamp DevCo could fill it in with those packing peanuts — felicitously using some part of the enormous mountain of garbage that our consumptive habits create. They could easily fit at least 10 condos/hectare. With the nice landscaping for which it's famous, RompInASwamp would have folks lining up to pay $1,958/year in association dues in "Mangrove Manors" — completely covering the cost of the undeveloped swamp's goods and services. That irrefutably shows that the destruction of the swamp for Mangrove Manors is good. In fact, wouldn't that show that we're obligated to encourage it? Of course, part of the appeal would be RompInASwamp DevCo's environmental sensibility. That they would demonstrate by setting aside one plot for a community nature center complete with film footage and sound tracks of the birds for whom the swamp had been home or a stopover on a migratory journey. Air conditioned and mosquito-free (not to mention alligator-free), it would be far more appealing to just about everyone than the dismal swamp it was built on.

H: But Aristotle, we thought that you might have a different take on this.

A: Yes, well, back at the Lyceum, the reasoning that I've just sketched would have stood as an unassailable reductio ad absurdum — no further elaboration needed. But I see that times have changed. So I'll gladly stick around to explore what I would consider to be some critical questions: What kind of a person, what kind of people would destroy a natural place on the basis of this kind of reasoning? What kind of society would condone it? What kind of assumptions and accepted norms have we embedded in our social institutions that makes it "natural", even inevitable that people should appropriate swamps or any other remaining unclaimed place? Why is our society fundamentally stuck on the question of how we should use and manage the environment as a resource for any and all human preferences — rather than examining how we should manage our own behavior to best live our life and flourish as the sole ratiocinating species among 20-30 million others with whom we share our earth-home and its resources?

H: We'd greatly appreciate your helping us with that!

A: No prob. But first I think that I may need to quaff a pint at a local pub. O, "Immanual Kant was a real pissant..."

H: Ok, I think that Aristotle is off to bolster his spirits. But we promise he'll be back to tackle some of those tough questions. Hey, Mr. A, wait up...

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Helioskiagrablog is back...

... from...

• the land of amber liquid and dingos
• where ladies, gentlemen, boys, and girls smear vegemite on their bread — even when under no apparent duress
• where football (aka "footy") is played without an offsides rule by men in shorts and tanktops who brutalize anyone spotted carrying an oblate spheroid, and who are apparently distinguishable from rugby players by having necks, a predilection for oval fields, and for passing said oblate spheroid forward as well as backward — though rarely before being brutalized
• the only country aside from New Guinea with extant representatives of monotremes (the egg-laying, most ancient order of mammals), as well as marsupial and placental mammals, the latter absent any native primate and restricted to bats and rats
• the only continent in which the "foxes" fly (and are really mega-bats) and give a new meaning to "hanging out"
• the only continent where there are no native hoofed species or, for that matter, carnivores aside from mice and rats
• the only continent where half the mammals are marsupials — compared to North America's single species and South America's single family
• the only country where cedars (Toona) are not cedars, pines (Araucaria) are not pines, yellow robins are not robins, willy wagtails are not wagtails, choughs are not choughs, magpies are not magpies, shrike-thrushes are not thrushes, fairy- and scrub-wrens are not wrens, and where kingfishers don't fish
• a "megadiverse" country with 600,000 - 700,000 species
• a country that is a hotspot for endemism — where 82% of the mammals (including two of three extant monotremes and the vast majority of marsupials), 45% of the birds, 90% of the inshore, temperate-zone fish, and most frogs, reptiles, and flowering plants cannot be found anywhere else on the planet.

Of course, this could be none other than the land of Oz. Our visit — to south Queensland (in the east-central part of the country) — included temperate and subtropical rainforests in and around Lamington National Park and Fraser Island — a sand island off the Queensland coast where fresh water wells up and runs out to sea in extraordinarily clear, free-flowing creeks.

And how have Australians treated this wonderfully exotic (to a North American's eye, unique, and profigately diverse natural heritage? They have...

• cut down virtually all temperate woodlands and plowed under virtually all native grasslands
• eroded soil at rates often exceeding soil formation by 2 1/2 orders of magnitude
• salinized the soil with chemical fertilizers, over-irrigation (evaporating water leaves salt deposits), and (in seeming contradiction) by introducing crops that absorb less water than the displaced natives — producing a rising water tables that bring salt to the surface
• desertified the land on a widespread and accelerating basis — largely from gross overgrazing and subsequent erosion
• vastly overcommitted the use of water despite an epic, decades-long drought and explicit warnings in the IPCC Working Group II Report on "Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability" (http://www.ipcc.ch/) on the effects of climate change in Australia and New Zealand
• the fourth-highest per capita ecological footprint — of 6.4 hectare — about the size of 9 rugby league football fields (got that, mate?)
  

But perhaps the greatest tragedy is in the loss of plants and animals — or in the day's catch phrase, "biodiversity".

Contemplate once more all those wonderful creatures unique to Australia. According to Prof. David Linenmayer, of The Australian National University Centre for Resource and Environmental Studies (http://cres.anu.edu.au/people/userprofile.php?user=davidl), Australia has the highest per capita number of extinct and threatened species in the world. Most tragically, Australia leads the world in recent mammal extinctions. 27 mammal species that lived in continental Australia at the time of European settlement in 1788, now presumed extinct under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (EPBC) Act (http://www.environment.gov.au/epbc/). Ten of those species have been lost since 1900. Half of Australia's marsupials and 30 per cent of its native rodents have become extinct or had their distributions drastically reduced in the last 220 years. Some animals can be found in less than 1 per cent of the area they occupied just 220 years ago. The Australian State of the Environment (SOE) Report 1996 (http://www.soe.wa.gov.au/links.html) states that more than 100 mammal species (out of some 275 in all, including marine mammals) in Australia are endangered, vulnerable or potentially vulnerable. Other sources put the figures of mammals at risk at close to 55%.

Putting this in perspective, the notes for a Central Queensland University course in "Conservation in Australia" (http://humanities.cqu.edu.au/geography/GEOG11024/week_2.htm) state:

What are the primary causes of environmental problems in Australia? These are much the same as elsewhere in the developed countries: consumption overpopulation.

Add to this the massive land clearing that has occurred in the last 200 years, and the inherent vulnerability of the Australian environment and its native species to disturbance, and the result is one of the most appalling environmental records in the world today.

When you consider that scarcely 200 years ago the entirety of the Australian continent was in a virtually unblemished environmental condition, the magnitude of change since then probably has no parallel in Earth history.

Even the Americans took some 400 years to do the damage they have done, but arguably we 21 million Australians have done even more damage to Australia's natural environments in just 200 years than 300 million Americans have done in twice that period.

Of course, the Aussies beat the North Americans at their own game. They accelerated their plundering of the land by taking up the technologies, lifestyles, and economic institutions that the US had already developed and put to similar use. In today's world, China may need just 20 years to reap similar destruction.

How are Aussies reacting? They

• continue to have one of the highest land-clearing rates in the world
• continue to have profligate consumption patterns that result in one of the highest per-capita carbon and ecological footprints in the world
• continue to over-extract water from rivers, streams, and wetlands
• talk about "sustainable growth" and "sustainable consumption" and "sustainable management".

In short, Aussies continue to follow the North American model of regarding their natural endowment primarily or nearly exclusively as fuel for an economy that "must" continue to grow in order to produce more of what people want — or what the economic forces persuade them that they want. It seems that people are sometimes persuaded only long enough to feed the economic engine with their purchase. According to the Australia Institute report on "Wasteful Consumption in Australia" (www.tai.org.au/documents/dp_fulltext/DP77.pdf), Australians buy $10.5 billion worth of "stuff" that they don't use every year. As it happens, that's about the same amount that the 2007 Australian federal budget earmarks for environmental projects.

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"Domesticating Nature" — How vs. Why

In his comments on our "Domesticating Nature" post of August 17, 2007 (http://environmentalvalues.blogspot.com/2007/08/domesticating-nature-nyt-commentary.html)
Allen states that we have no choice but to be managers of everything. According to him, we should recognize this so that, at least, we don't manage "blindly". By that, I take Allen to mean "behaving with a blind eye to the consequences for the planet, for us, and perhaps even (thinking of Aristotle's comments on yesterday's post) how our activities reflect on our character and ability to live well". He justifies his suggestion for "conscious" management with a vision of the "inevitable".

Allen doesn't say what, exactly, is inevitable. Is he resigned to humans extending their direct influence to the remaining 17% of land (as of 1995)? Perhaps so. But it seem more likely that he is resigned to an irresistible and unstoppable human urge (as Kareiva, et. al. put it in their Science paper) to alter species and ecosystems to become "more useful" to us. A kind of unstoppable itch. That is what "domestication" is. Given that, Allen may be suggesting that, so long as we're in the business of domesticating the planet, we just need to make decisions that are better — more reasoned and more balanced — than the disastrous ones that we've made in the past.

But the problem is not that we've made horrible management decisions in the past and now we have to make better, more enlightened ones — perhaps ones engendered by better attitudes towards our environment. The problem is with the project of domestication itself. As Kareiva, et. al. suggest, the project is one in which we enumerate all the ecosystem services, then prioritize them or perhaps run a Benefit-Cost Analysis to select the ones that we really want to promote, them "impose" some management regime that selectively promotes these services.

To focus on the "management style" is to remove the focus from where it belongs — on the project itself.

For example, in the past, we didn't realize that our agricultural practices — which in the 35 years before 1998, increased N fertilization 7-fold, P fertilization 3.5-fold, a 1.7-fold increase in irrigated cropland — would lead to an enormous eutrophication of freshwater and marine ecosystems, which in turn led to the loss of native species, the invasion of alien species, simplifying shifts in food chains, and impairment of fisheries. And we didn't know that tropospheric redistribution of N and agricultural intensification would also eutrophy many terrestrial ecosystems, leading to the loss of N-efficient plants, the loss of critical soil nutrients such as Ca and K, and release greater amounts of N₂O — the most potent of the common greenhouse gases. (See, for example, Vitousek, P.M, Aber, J.D., Howarth, R.W., Likens, G.E., Matson, P.A., Schindler, D.W., Schlesinger, W.H., and Tilman , D.G., "Human Alteration of the Global Nitrogen Cycle: Sources and Consequences", Ecological Applications, 7:3 (1997), pp. 737-750, http://www.esajournals.org/perlserv/?request=get-abstract&issn=1051-0761&volume=007&issue=03&page=0737&ct=1. Also, Tilman, D., "Global environmental impacts of agricultural expansion: The need for sustainable and efficient practices", Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA, 96 (1999), pp. 5995-6000, http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/full/96/11/5995.)

Is the idea that, in the 21st century, we finally have come to know how to take all these factors into account? With modern ecology — as opposed to the flimsy and limited knowledge we had in the 1970's, 80's, and 90's — will we be able to select and promote just the right set of ecological characteristics that (this time) provide a comfortable, "humanized", and more comfortable home, literally custom made by us for us humans? Will we never again overlook some balance, some vulnerability, some interaction, some self-correcting feedback loop, some redundancy that's vital for an ecosystem's survival in infrequently encountered but inevitable times of stress? Will we never again have to read a paper by a group of world-renowned ecologists who have figured out, after the fact, why our management regime ended in disaster?

As in many matters, the key to a solution is asking the right question. We can ask with Kareiva, et. al., "How shall we manage our earth domestication project?" Admittedly, there may be better and worse ways to do this. As Allen suggests, perhaps a bit more humility would be better. But I take Klinkenborg's NYT commentary to suggest that, to focus on this question is to ignore the vital questions concerning our attitudes and behaviors towards our environment. Those questions don't ask how we should dominate our environment, but rather if we should. They don't ask us to consider whether we might live better by reigning in our intrusions and limiting our management as much as possible to the places that we have already seriously compromised. Perhaps, we would do even better to consider a retreat from our current, almost total domination.

After yesterday's interview, Aristotle said that he would like to ask, "Might we not flourish best by fundamentally caring for our home planet — not as the end result of a necessarily limited and self-serving project born from our limited imagination — but as the spectacularly, surprisingly, and dumbfoundingly complex place that, without any help from us, engendered and sustained our species — a species that now, with along with many others, make it home?"

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An Interview with Aristotle

(The first in a series)

Some of us are attracted to the idea of exploring how an ethics styled on Aristotle's theory of human virtue might help us understand the moral dimensions of our behavior as it relates to the broader, natural world that includes us. Aristotle's approach may circumvent some difficulties of other approaches; though it undoubtedly has difficulties of its own.

Helioskiagrablog wishes to make welcome those who are not hard-core philosophers and who may not have had the privilege of meeting at the Environmental Ethics Institute at the University of Montana. So we wish to devote this first in a series of posts on Aristotelian virtue ethics to a quick primer.

Portrait of Aristotle (Anonymous, Cathedral of Transfiguration, Moscow)

To this end, we have spared no effort. Helioskiagrablog is extraordinarily fortunate to have with us today the all-time greatest expert on virtue ethics — Mr. Aristotle himself. That enormously renowned philosopher, we believe, is making his first ever appearance on a blog -- or at least, on a blog devoted to matters environmental and ethical. As you likely know, Mr. Aristotle is famous for his theory of everything. Helioskiagrablog is eager to see how we might apply that theory, and particularly, the ethical part, to "matters environmental and ethical".

So that we all can understand Mr. Aristotle, we have obtained (through dubious channels) a babelfish translator. Although not originally designed for dead languages, we managed some simple modifications that now enable it to work for ancient Greek.

H: Good day, Mr. Aristotle. We are enormously honored to have you here on helioskiagrablog.

A: Oh, you can just call me "Aristotle" for short; most of my friends do. Even Plato -- though I suppose that if he had seen my critique of his Republic, he might have had a few other choice words for me — "the Form of Horses**t", or something.

H: Very well, we'll just call you "Aristotle". That will help cut down on the typing.

A: Yes, well, I had my students do the writing for me. It helped them develop their intellectual virtues — the ones that have to do with theoretical reasoning, which are very important for human flourishing. The intellect is not just about practical thinking, you know. By the way, your blog's name is pretty amusing. Socrates would have liked it; he was always one for juxtaposing opposites. Come to think of it, I guess I like to do that, too — you know, all that stuff about excess, deficiency, and the mean in between. (Does that rhyme in translation, too?) But that's all about virtues of character, and I guess that's what you really want to talk about, right?

H: Right! Helioskiagrablog is pleased that you like its name. We are trying to cast some light into the shadows, you know.

A: (laughs) Very good. I flourished doing that, too.

H: Yes, we know. Ok, for those in our audience not familiar with your work...

A: Not familiar with my work? Can't anyone read ancient Greek anymore?

H: No..., yes..., well, not many of us. But we do have good translations, and here's one — of your best work on ethics: http://www.ilt.columbia.edu/publications/artistotle.html. But let's help our audience with a Cliffs Notes version of your ethics...

A: Cliffs? Like the ones on three sides of the Acropolis?

H: Uh, well, no. What we meant was a kind of summary or synopsis that can guide your readers and ours.

A: Ok, that's pretty easy because my basic thinking on ethics is really quite simple. (If you want something hard, just pick up a copy of my "Metaphysics".) I hold that eudaimonia, or as you might say, "flourishing" or "living well" (thank you, babelfish) is the highest of human ends. We flourish by developing arête ("excellence" or "virtue") in our characteristic faculties, capacities, and functions. It's not that we attain a virtuous state and then we're done. Rather, it's a lifelong pursuit. To have a virtuous character is to continuously cultivate attitudes and habitual practices from which flow the excellence of our life's activities.

Humans have many capacities and functions in common with other creatures. But the ones that are uniquely human and most important for our flourishing are tied to our rationality. (Even Manny Kant, may he rest in peace, might agree with that.) So it is that we flourish most (achieve the highest good) when we use reason well to guide our activities in accordance with our continuously developing understanding of our unique capacities and what constitutes excellence in their actuation and exercise.

H: Perhaps an example would help?

A: Of course. I like to give the example of friendship, which is necessary for human flourishing. Here, we must distinguish friendships of virtue — "complete" friendships — from incomplete ones. To be an excellent friend, I must wish her well and do good for her; I must wish that my friend live and exist for her own sake, not mine; I must spend time with her; I must willingly and with unencumbered spirit make many of the same choices as her; I must share her distress as well as her joys. But if my friendship is based only on considerations of what I can get out of my friend and how much I must give for it; or merely on the pleasure of enjoying her wit or company — then it is contingent on feelings and circumstances that are changeable, not likely to endure, and so not complete. A friendship based only on utility and pleasure is not excellent; and I do not live as well if I "practice" my friendship in this way.

H: Gee, even I can understand that. So, can you just give us a hint about how your theory might apply to human behavior as it relates to the environment in which humans live?

A: Sure. It's easy to say in a general sort of way how my theory might apply. We need only look at the flourishing that might accrue to those who embody the virtue of caring for ecological communities. We are members of these natural communities in the sense that we are among their myriad and complexly interdependent parts. Perhaps this is much the same as our membership in human communities that are framed by interdependent social structures and institutions. Insofar as that is true, we flourish only if we are good ecological citizens. A bad citizen simply cannot flourish.

More than that, cultivating our characteristically human rational capacities to study, understand, and appreciate an ecological system as a complexly adaptive system whose flourishing is interdependent with ours, is to fulfill the highest of human functions. This would seem to have significant implications for choosing the attitudes and behaviors towards natural systems that we ought to cultivate. It might imply that we should develop our capacities for feeling, choosing, and acting well as individuals of a species on its one and only home planet. These attitudes and behaviors would be constitutive of an ecological excellence that stands alongside of the other excellences that I describe in my Nichomachean Ethics, such as caring for friends. In an important way, this is no different from cultivating eunoia, or "good will" by which one loves or likes another person for the sake of that other person — not as a source for self-advantage.

H: Wow; that's deep, dude. We hope that gives you some idea of how Aristotle, the man with the theory of everything, might approach environmental ethics.

A: Hey, before we break, what does it mean that "Aristotle was a bugger for the bottle"?

H: Where on earth did you hear that?

A: Hey, if it's about philosophy, I know about it. And a "Flying Circus"? Is that anything like a gryphon?

H: I think that we'll take those questions offline. We'll be back for more of Aristotle on helioskiagrablog shortly.

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A Benefit-Cost Analysis of the Bill of Rights ... and beyond

Let's do a benefit-cost analysis (BCA) of the Bill of Rights.

There's a cost to every clause that triggers our litigious proclivities. Courts are clogged. Courthouses are built. Judges are hired. Lawyers absorb fantastic legal fees that could otherwise be spent on the social good. Not to speak of the enormous usurpation of human time.

Maybe the cost of one or another, or even a whole bunch of those clauses cannot be justified by the benefit of the freedoms they protect. Maybe, when you look hard, there's a lot of confusion-generating redundancy that enables lawyers to spend even more precious time and money. Maybe the Due Process Clauses in the 14th and 5th Amendments overlap or are completely redundant. James Madison, though persuaded to draft the Bill, thought that the entire thing was unnecessary in a government of enumerated powers. With a strained national budget and the national debt increasing at a staggering pace, we need to ensure that we're doing this constitutional business right. That is, we need to do it efficiently.

There's no real obstacle. Contingent evaluation studies have shown us that a person's life is worth around $6 million — at least a rich person's life. It's admittedly a bit awkward that those studies determine a poor person's worth at a small fraction of a rich person's. By comparison, monetizing those Bill of Rights freedoms should be a trivial exercise and considerably less awkward.

Does this suggestion seem strange to you? Does it seem strange to consider trying to identify words and phrases and clauses to elide in a framework that has somehow managed to adapt and to sustain the social organization of a diverse country/system for over two hundred years? Is it, perhaps a bit risky to think that we could really understand what social reorganizations our prospective streamlining would bring? Might some of the changes be irreversible because the new social structure no longer permits restoration of the old constitution?

Ok, so perhaps a BCA of the Bill of Rights is not a good idea. Let's do something easier.

Let's just decide how to make the most efficient use of the biophysical underpinnings of life on the planet. When species seem redundant and some are not as useful as others or maybe serve no perceptible use, we should let the less useful ones go extinct. What possible loss could there be from this loss of genetic information? When a piece of land is not being used to its fullest productive capacity, and when there's still some measurably excess capacity to absorb insults (aka waste), let's insult it and increase our production. What reason do we have not to run the biophysical world at its productive maximum?

This is, after all, sound modern resource management. This is a good idea. Isn't it?

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The Precautionary Principle — Key to Sustainability?

Bryan Norton, a luminary thinker about environmental ethics in general and about sustainability in particular says with Anne Steinemann that, to avoid a vacuous notion of sustainability, we need:

a set of principles, derivable from a core idea of sustainability, but sufficiently specific to provide significant guidance in day to day decisions and in policy choices affecting the environment. (Norton, B.G, Steinemann, A.C. "Environmental Values and Adaptive Management", Environmental Values 10 (2001), pp. 473-506)

According to Norton and Steinemann, chief among the guiding principles for sustainability is the Precautionary Principle. This is not an isolated perception. For example, Australia's "National Strategy for Ecologically Sustainable Development" (1992) adopts the Precautionary Principle as a guiding principle.

Much needs to be said about what "sustainability" is. More needs to be said about whether or not "sustainable development" is an oxymoron. Those topics provide fertile material for future posts. This one restricts its attention to the Precautionary Principle.

What is it? According to Principle 15 of the Rio Declaration on Environment and Development (1992):

Where there are threats of serious or irreversible environmental damage, lack of full scientific certainty should not be used as a reason for postponing measures to prevent environmental degradation.

The Precautionary Principle puts a conservative stake in the ground: It says that the uncertainty of even our best (often scientific) understanding is not an acceptable reason to avoid acting on threats to ecological systems — and by extension, to human health and well-being. It challenges the primacy of growth-promoting economic reasoning whereby the earth's resources are strictly economic "inputs" or absorbers of economic "output" waste. The Precautionary Principle is a principle of damage prevention.

But it is also fundamentally something reactive — a hastily constructed prop to hold up a barrier for a last stand when a threat of ominous proportions is immanent. For example, the oft-touted Montreal Protocol for phasing out ozone-depleting substances was adopted before the ozone "hole" science was conclusive. It dictated that then-known ozone-depleting chemicals be phased out. Yet it had, and still has nothing to say about any new chemical that may deplete stratospheric ozone. It is left to the vigilant to demonstrate the potential for a new substance's harm. Only then will it be included in the banned list. Only when the damage is palpable, only when its possibility presses down on our collective conscience — only then do we invoke the Precautionary Principle.

Is this enough for sustainability? Is the Precautionary Principle even the most central principle involved? An answer to that question cannot ignore what the principle fails to do:

The Precautionary Principle fails to provide any guidance for human behavior that directly interacts with the enveloping environment — even when the environment is considered merely as a set of "resources" for development. It fails to provide any practical wisdom for metering and moderating our actions to ensure the flourishing of ecological systems — even considered solely as a requirement for human flourishing (in the broad, Aristotelian sense of eudaimonia). It fails to make plain a set of human values that take into account the nature of complex adaptive systems — the limited nature of their ability to absorb insulting perturbations without flipping into simpler, degraded systems.

Perhaps most importantly, the Precautionary Principle fails to take into account our relationships with our surroundings as an extraordinarily important context for living our lives. This very important notion is spelled out in greater detail in Chapter 11 of a new book on "Environmental Values" by John O'Neill, Alan Holland, and Andrew Light (London: Routledge, 2007):
http://www.routledge.com/shopping_cart/products/product_detail.asp?sku=&isbn=9780415145091&parent
id=&pc=/shopping_cart/products/product_detail.asp?sku%3D%26isbn%3D9780415145084%26pc%3D

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