Man and Nature

I am uncomfortable with what I see as the "man vs nature" approach of many in the environmental movement. In my imagination I see an environmental extremist saying "If we could only get rid of man, the earth would be OK." This might be an extreme version of the Gaia Hypothesis. And, in its extreme version, it strikes me as being very anti-Darwinian. Almost a religious creationist view of the world.

Now comes Boston Globe Staff Writer Drake Bennett with an article on paleontologist Peter Ward and his darker view of nature. Titled "Dark Green," the article talks about Mr Ward's view that nature is not always working toward preservation of life, the view most of us carry around with us. I commend the article to you.

As stated by writer Mr Bennett, the common view is that

...the workings of the natural world, honed over billions of years of evolution, have reached a dynamic equilibrium far more elegant - and ultimately durable - than the clumsy attempts humankind makes to alter or improve them.

In contrast to this positive view of the earth and life on it, the view of Mr Peter Ward is one that Charles Addams, on his worst day, might visualize:

In his view, the earth's history makes clear that, left to run its course, life isn't naturally nourishing - it's poisonous. Rather than a supple system of checks and balances, he argues, the natural world is a doomsday device careening from one cataclysm to another. Long before humans came onto the scene, primitive life forms were busily trashing the planet, and on multiple occasions, Ward argues, they came close to rendering it lifeless. Around 3.7 billion years ago, they created a planet-girdling methane smog that threatened to extinguish every living thing; a little over a billion years later they pumped the atmosphere full of poison gas. (That gas, ironically, was oxygen, which later life forms adapted to use as fuel.)

So what is the real story?

As usual in these sorts of things, probably somewhere in the middle. The key evidence for that is that, based on Mr Ward's studies we came close to ending life, but life seems to have bounced back, one way or another.

Mr Ward believes that man may have to become a more active part of the process in keeping the planet in some sort of equilibrium in order to sustain life. But, as the same time, Mr James Lovelock, the British scientist who proposed the Gaia Hypothesis, is suggesting that we might at some point have to sink large pipes into the oceans to cause churning of material on the bottom toward the top, to keep the oceans alive.

In fact, the last 12 column inches of the report are about the fact that the extreme views are probably going to meet in the middle.

That said, this article provides us a chance to think again about climate change and what it means and how we as humans play in it. It should also be, but was missed by the author, Mr Bennett, a chance to talk about unintended consequences and how each new solution contains the seeds of a new problem, which must then be solved, thus creating a new problem and so on. There is probably some named law out there to describe this, but I don't know what it is.

And, the most important question--how does one pronounce Gaia? There will be a (to be named) prize for the person who (1) provides a good pronunciation and (2) identifies himself or herself in some way that I can recognize.

Regards -- Cliff