Jay Hanson:
>Unfortunately, there are no other alternatives. Once we overshot carrying
>capacity we were left with only two choices:
>
>#1. Be managed like farm animals.
>
>#2. Dieoff like wild animals.
To illustrate the point, you then included a short passage on the crashing
of a caribou population on a remote island. That island was a very peculiar
ecosystem. On the Arctic Canadian mainland and on some of the larger Arctic
Islands, caribou populations do grow and crash. They have been doing so for
a very long time - thousands of years in the Arctic and perhaps hundreds of
thousands in more southerly areas when much of North America and Eurasia was
covered by ice. They crash, rebound, crash and rebound. So do other
species, such as lemmings and rabbits. In a static, limited ecosystem, such
as your island, it is probable that they would crash a couple of times and
then not be able to rebound. In a dynamic ecosystem, such as the Canadian
Arctic, the population oscillates over long periods of time, but on average,
remains relatively stable. Canada's caribou herds are managed, but not as
farm animals. Management is more a question of monitoring them and ensuring
that various human activities do not unduly harm them. To the very best of
my knowledge, none of the major herds are in danger of dieing off.
I do not disagree with a point that you consistently make - that a growing
human population which derives its energy from a non-renewable resource base
is ultimately unsustainable. In my opinion, we are already experiencing
some of the early forerunners of unsustainability, and will likely
experience unsustainability full blown before the end of the next century,
and probably earlier. Repeating silly mantras like Brundtland's
"sustainable development" will not help us.
But nor will treating ourselves as herd animals. If you consider human
adaptability throughout history, and if you look at the many ways in which
people adapt to different ecological circumstances even now, you have to
allow some faith that people will continue whatever the circumstances -
barring some cosmic catastrophe. It is possible that there will be fewer
people two hundred years from now than there are at present - perhaps far
fewer - but those who remain will have the same large brains that we do -
brains far larger and more complex than those of any herd animal. They will
apply the full gamut of human perception, emotion and intelligence to the
problems they have to solve, just as we do to our problems.
Ed Weick
