tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6727975.post2176065238942849100..comments2024-03-25T16:30:58.213+13:00Comments on GREENIE WATCH: JRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00829082699850674281noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6727975.post-83548136720243727312008-05-04T18:44:00.000+12:002008-05-04T18:44:00.000+12:00> trillions of animals in the ocean die as the us...> <I> trillions of animals in the ocean die as the usual patterns of ocean temperature are disrupted. When Mother Nature does something like this it is considered natural. Yet, if humans were to do such a thing, it would be considered an environmental catastrophe. Does anyone else see something wrong with this picture?</I><BR/><BR/>Actually, Robert Heinlein commented, in "Time Enough For Love", through his character 'Lazarus Long', on this attitude <I>decades ago</I>:<BR/><BR/><I>. There are hidden contradictions in the minds of people who 'love Nature' while deploring the 'artificialities' with which 'Man has despoiled Nature'. The obvious contradiction lies in their choice of words, which imply that Man and his artifacts are NOT part of 'Nature' -- but beavers and their dams ARE. But the contradictions go deeper than this prima-facie absurdity. In declaring his love for a beaver dam (erected by beavers for beavers' purposes) and his hatred for dams erected by men (for the purposes of men) the 'Naturist' reveals his hatred for his own race -- i.e., his own self-hatred.<BR/>. In the case of 'Naturists' such self-hatred is understandable; they are such a sorry lot. But hatred is too strong an emotion to feel toward them; pity and contempt are the most they rate.<BR/>. As for me, willy-nilly I am a man, not a beaver, and H. sapiens is the only race I have or can have.<BR/>. Fortunately for me, I LIKE being part of a race made up of men and women -- it strikes me as a fine arrangement and perfectly 'natural'.</I><BR/><BR/><BR/>The underlying question itself was addressed, quite cogently and eloquently, by J. Petr Vajk, in "Doomsday Has Been Cancelled" in the late 70s (<B>emphasis</B> mine):<BR/><BR/><I>. Yosemite Valley in the Sierra Nevada Mountains of California is one of my favorite places on Earth. When the glaciers, which formed its sheer vertical walls, receded some ten thousand years ago, they left a large lake in the upper half of the valley, dammed up behind the detritus of gravel and boulders deposited by the melting ice at the lower margin of the active glacier. Over a few thousand years, the lake silted up, creating the flat floor of the valley. When tourists first started visiting the valley in large numbers, less than a century ago, the valley floor was a mix of forest and meadow, with a large, clear lake at the upper end of the valley, reflecting the spectacular, granite faces which surround it- - Cloud's Rest, Half Dome, North Dome, and Washington Column. Today the forests have taken over more of the valley floor, and the siltation of Mirror Lake continues, so that even in years of normal precipitation the lake is reduced to an expanse of mud with a small stream meandering through one side during half the summer and fall.<BR/>. A conservation ethic, dedicated to the preservation of the biosphere in its status quo, would be just as lethal- - both to ourselves and to the rest of the system- - as it would be to pave the entire planet with concrete and asphalt. If we were to attempt to preserve Yosemite Valley, unchanged forever, which Yosemite should be preserved: the Glacial Lake, the silted marshland of a few thousand years ago, the Yosemite our grandparents knew, or the Yosemite to come, with very little meadow space and no Mirror Lake?<BR/>. <B>How shall we use and shape the planet?</B></I>OBloodyHellhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09992539380115488567noreply@blogger.com