[SustainableTompkins] The Great Work

[Katie Quinn-Jacobs]

Thought I would pass this on.  Greatly appreciated how McDaniel's makes 
the distinction between blind optimism and true hopefulness.  
Hopefulness only rings true if it's coupled with making an honest 
assessment of where things stand and taking on the task at hand in 
earnest. He too proposes "ecology-based local agricultures" as a 
requisite for survival.


-- Katie Q-J

/"We won't make it on this blind optimism. We need true hopefulness. 
True hopefulness in dire straits means first recognizing odds are 
heavily against us, believing those odds, and then doing everything 
possible to beat them."  -- Carl McDaniel/



/Published on Monday, November 20, 2006 by CommonDreams.org /
*Our Salvation: Abiding by Limits *
*by Carl N. McDaniel*
 

Every important environmental trend today is negative: growth of 
population and consumption, global warming, mounting pollution, loss of 
soil, declining biodiversity. Our modern world is headed toward the same 
place as old civilizations that overreached their ecological means: 
collapse -- only this time on an unprecedented scale.

Yet we press on. Why?

Evolution selects only for behaviors that are successful in the present. 
That includes our brain, which evolved to fit small hunter-gatherer 
societies. First in Africa and then as we migrated some 100,000 years 
ago into Earth's vast ecosystems, our species' behaviors evolved in 
response to apparently boundless frontiers.

Our senses permitted us to know vanishingly little of why the 
biological-physical world works as it does. Try yourself to explain, 
without scientific insight, how a plant's fundamental elements make 
stems, leaves and flowers. You can't. The microworld of cells, genes and 
chemical signaling is too removed from our direct experience.

Our ancestors adapted by filling this gaping knowledge void with 
stories, imagined explanations of the natural world. Believing strongly, 
even to death, became a dominant element of human nature.

Hunter-gatherer cultures gave rise to a handful of agricultural 
societies. Middle Eastern agriculture birthed European scientific and 
economic culture. In the past 200 years it became phenomenally 
successful and global.

The problem is that we don't accept limits. Rather, our in-the-present 
perspective and capacity to believe anything combine with technological 
competence and economic ingenuity to unintentionally foster global 
climate change, mass extinction of species and catastrophic life-support 
loss.

A Cathy cartoon says it all:

A few people gather around as one woman says, "I quit dieting and lost 
25 pounds!"

More women gather as another woman says, "I quit dieting and lost 35 
pounds!"

Then Cathy says, "I quit dieting, gained 15 pounds and went up three 
jean sizes."

Cathy stands alone and says, "Hope attracts a crowd. Truth makes it 
disappear."

Earth is replete with groups undone by hope for the essentially impossible.

We won't make it on this blind optimism. We need true hopefulness. True 
hopefulness in dire straits means first recognizing odds are heavily 
against us, believing those odds, and then doing everything possible to 
beat them.

What are we up against? Human population size and consumption today are 
beyond what Earth can durably support. Human industry is forcing global 
climate change. We are fouling our nest everywhere. And biodiversity 
loss is accelerating toward the level of past mass extinctions.

Trends are clear. Most ocean fisheries are fished out or in decline. 
Many fish in our rivers are too contaminated to eat. Iowa's topsoil is 
half gone in 150 years. Katrina-intensity storms are increasing. Species 
extinction rates are up at least a thousandfold.

To assess the meaning and then act on the distant consequences of these 
data is extremely hard for an animal that evolved to act in the present. 
And it will take monumental changes in belief. But it comes down to this 
question: Is it possible to create a worldwide culture adhering to the 
lessons of biology and ecology?

Contrary to the perception of boundlessness that drives economic growth, 
the human economy ultimately will be constrained by the ecosystems that 
support it. Earth was not made for us -- we evolved for it. We are but 
one species among millions. Natural principles need to guide our 
actions, since they supersede human conventions.

Our challenge, if we are to maintain a pleasant and livable world for 
our grandchildren, is to create patterns of living grounded in biology 
and abiding by limits. We must scale back our impact: Kick fossil fuel 
addiction, stabilize and then reduce human population and consumption, 
preserve and restore habitats, stop releasing toxins, and create 
ecology-based local agricultures. We know how to do these things. And 
they can be done, but we must act out of hopefulness that is realistic 
and true.

Making global culture consistent with what the natural sciences teach us 
just might enable global civilization to avoid collapse -- what the 
theologian Thomas Berry calls "The Great Work." It is time to roll up 
our sleeves and get on with it.

/Carl N. McDaniel is professor of biology at Rensselaer Polytechnic 
Institute in Troy, N.Y., and author of "Paradise for Sale," with 
economist John M. Gowdy, and "Wisdom for a Livable Planet." He wrote 
this comment for the Land Institute's Prairie Writers Circle 
<http://www.landinstitute.org/vnews/display.v/ART/2006/03/01/3d10ac4f88953>, 
Salina, Kan./

© 2006 TomPaine.com





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