[Coral-List] Why we are failing to repair coral reefs
frahome at yahoo.com
frahome at yahoo.com
Thu Oct 23 17:21:23 EDT 2014
I agree that we interfered with the environment carrying capacity already quite sometime in the past though we only exceeded it locally due to our much more limited sphere of influence and numbers during those time (various examples provided by Jared Diamond in his book "Collapse"). But what happened on a local scale in the past is happening on a global scale now.
There are a few statements that I believe needs correction in Greg's post:
Greg states "the carrying capacity has still gone up due in part to many technological advances".
The advances in technology are not at all keeping up. We already surpassed the planet carrying capacity "big time" (over 4 planets worth of carrying capacity for the average American):http://www.footprintnetwork.org/en/index.php/GFN/page/world_footprint/
What better proof that technology will not save our current way of living? It has already failed.It allowed us in some cases to push the deadline a bit farther in time but at huge environmental expenses. It has been working on a debt/borrowing system (best example I can think of is the Green Revolution).And if it has failed while we were in the "golden age", how better can it do in a system in crisis, where energy is becoming much more expensive and natural and financial resources to sustain technological advances are depleted?Efficiency should grow exponentially as the demand for resources is, and I believe this is very difficult, if not impossible in most if not all cases, to achieve, plus efficiency can only grow until a certain point.
Let's not forget the Jevons Paradox neither so true in most cases:http://en..wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox
Greg states: "Advanced nations have higher carrying capacities than poorer nations."
Sorry, but it is exactly the opposite:http://www.footprintnetwork.org/en/index.php/GFN/page/ecological_debtors_and_creditors/
Advanced nation have run out of their carrying capacity even "bigger time", and now are trying to exploit the carrying capacity of the so called poor and developing countries. Technology couldn't do anything for those nation that run out of their biocapacity even if we are talking about the most advanced nations.
You mention "substitute resources", a point so dear to neoclassical economists. I suggest you to read the criticism made to the assumption that economy will always and infinitely provide substitutes for a resource we depend on once it is depleted. Here one of the many resources:http://richardheinberg.com/226-won%E2%80%99t-innovation-substitution-and-efficiency-keep-us-growing And what about "miraculous" technological advances that indeed allow us to exploit a substitute resource at higher environmental costs and lower efficiency like the technology that is allowing us to exploit the tar sands in Canada? That's the perfect way to increase our carrying capacity...
Some type of technology might come up handy in our move towards a sustainable way of life but only in a deeply revised framework and not without taking into deep and thoughtful consideration the environmental cost of technology development and maintenance too.
It's definitely not technology that keeps me somehow hopeful, quite the opposite, that is, knowing that the most effective solutions towards sustainability are relatively simple, low-tech and within everyone's reach.
Francesca
From: Greg Challenger <GChallenger at polarisappliedsciences.com>
To: David M. Lawrence <dave at fuzzo.com>; "coral-list at coral.aoml.noaa.gov" <coral-list at coral.aoml.noaa.gov>
Sent: Thursday, October 23, 2014 9:00 PM
Subject: Re: [Coral-List] Why we are failing to repair coral reefs
I would disagree that past events have not affected carrying capacity. We've been doing things that affect carrying capacity for quite some time. The one-time inheritance that helps create carrying capacity and includes things like topsoil and biodiversity that Erlich discusses in 1968 included buffalo, whales, prairie, wetlands and other things we have largely depleted long ago, did it not? There are too many more examples to list. Carrying capacity is largely influenced the availability of substitute resources and very much by the current technological regime to utilize those resources in more effective and sustainable ways. Despite losses of one time inheritances, the carrying capacity has still gone up due in part to many technological advances. Advanced nations have higher carrying capacities than poorer nations. I'm not selling technology as the panacea, but we are all "technologists".....are we admitting we can't solve the problem and we just have wait for h
alf of us to go away? I'm not there yet. I have been working on some great coral and large-scale wetland restoration projects. I have seen some locations with much promise and recovery despite declines elsewhere. I also lament losses, but there are apparently unavoidable losses on large scales regardless of humans as Gene points out. This is no reason of course to reverse our own damage to the best of our ability. I still think the glass is half full. The loss of half of the glass is bad, but I'm not down yet.
Greg Challenger
-----Original Message-----
From: coral-list-bounces at coral.aoml.noaa.gov [mailto:coral-list-bounces at coral.aoml.noaa.gov] On Behalf Of David M. Lawrence
Sent: Thursday, October 23, 2014 10:42 AM
To: coral-list at coral.aoml.noaa.gov
Subject: Re: [Coral-List] Why we are failing to repair coral reefs
Technology will never overcome the finite limits the biosphere can provide. As more and more of us swarm the planet, we'll keep "fishing down the food chain" until it gets very, very ugly.
All the past catastrophes Greg described did not threaten the carrying capacity of the planet.
Actually, some of what Paul Ehrlich predicted has come to pass. There were a number of social factors (such as the greater empowerment of
women) which, coupled with some technological factors (such as more widespread birth control), that have given us some breathing room as to when the more dire aspects of the future he envisioned will arrive.
That does not mean the more dire effects of the future he envisioned will not arrive. As I know from personal experience, when we say "It's not that bad," we are often omitting the final word, which is "yet."
I also know that the "yets" can and do arrive.
So maybe it's not that bad ... yet.
Ehrlich's "Population Bomb" works like most other warnings. If you see the railroad crossing signal and stop before the train arrives -- thus avoiding the collision -- it would be a mistake to conclude something was wrong with the warning itself.
Dave
On 10/22/2014 6:15 PM, Greg Challenger wrote:
> Energy units and land requirements to support an individual are dynamic and have changed a lot over time with advancements.....no? I know a well known ecologist who calculated the earth population explosion back in 68 as well. None of it has yet come to pass.....because advancements intervened. I hear what Francesca is saying....and I too am an optimist.
>
> Ps. When the world had 3,5 billion people it was the 60s I think. Id say we most certainly did have environmental catastrophes then. Go back even farther....Hanford.... Love canal, bikini atoll.....WWII. If you think the Iraq war or the BP spill were big, they don't hold a candle to WWII.
>
> Thanks for the provocative discussion
>
> Greg Challenger
>
>
> Sent from my iPhone
>
>> On Oct 21, 2014, at 10:50 PM, "Szmant, Alina" <szmanta at uncw.edu> wrote:
>>
>> The figure of how many humans (3 to 4 Billion) the Earth can support with a reasonable standard of living (at most 1/2 of the US standard), and still have some nature left around us, is not mine. It has been calculated by a number of well-known ecologists based on energy units, how much land it takes to support a person's needs (while still leaving land for wildlife), and other ways. Richard Leakey quoted that number to me a few years back when I asked him the question. I have seen it explained in a number of publications (check out that book I recommended awhile back "Life on the Brink"). Yes more people can live on Earth (and currently do) but at the expense of the environment (including climate change and coral reefs).
>>
>> http://www.worldpopulationbalance.org/3_times_sustainable
>>
>> You can make fun of it all you want but back when we only had 3.5 B people on Earth, there weren't the kinds of environmental disasters as we have now.
>>
>>
>>
>> "Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds
>> discuss people." Eleanor Roosevelt
>>
>> "The time is always right to do what is right" Martin Luther King
>>
>> *********************************************************************
>> ****
>> Dr. Alina M. Szmant
>> Professor of Marine Biology
>> AAUS Scientific Diving Lifetime Achievement Awardee Center for Marine
>> Science University of North Carolina Wilmington
>> 5600 Marvin Moss Ln
>> Wilmington NC 28409 USA
>> tel: 910-962-2362 fax: 910-962-2410 cell: 910-200-3913
>> http://people.uncw.edu/szmanta
>> *******************************************************
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Greg Challenger [mailto:GChallenger at polarisappliedsciences.com]
>> Sent: Tuesday, October 21, 2014 7:56 PM
>> To: Szmant, Alina; Peter Sale; coral-list at coral.aoml.noaa.gov
>> Subject: RE: [Coral-List] Why we are failing to repair coral reefs
>>
>> Did you just say we have to get rid of half the world's people? Which of the quotes in your email does that idea capture? Perhaps this one.....
>>
>> "The time is always right to do what is right" Martin Luther
>> King
>>
>> I know you weren't serious but it is one possible solution to making the environment more healthy, just not one in which at least half of us can agree.
>>
>> As the great ecologist George Carlin said......"Save the Earth? The Earth will be fine....we are screwed".
>>
>>
>> Greg Challenger
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: coral-list-bounces at coral.aoml.noaa.gov
>> [mailto:coral-list-bounces at coral.aoml.noaa.gov] On Behalf Of Szmant,
>> Alina
>> Sent: Monday, October 20, 2014 3:19 PM
>> To: Peter Sale; coral-list at coral.aoml.noaa.gov
>> Subject: Re: [Coral-List] Why we are failing to repair coral reefs
>>
>> Hello Peter:
>>
>> I read your essay in Reef Encounters. All I will add is that if all we (whoever we is) are focused on is saving coral reefs, we are doomed to failure.. Coral reefs are just one of many ecosystems on Planet Earth that are in distress and being wiped out systematically due to the human cancer: forests (rain and temperate, and all other kinds), wetlands, tundra, coastal plains, estuaries, and on and on. We can't hope to save one without saving them all, and to do that in the long term, we have to somehow reduce human numbers to half of those inhabiting Earth today. It may be too late already, but the longer we wait to even recognize the root of the problem and get moving to do something about it, the less likely that this will happen in time to save the organisms and ecosystems we know and value.
>>
>> Alina
>>
>>
>> "Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds
>> discuss people." Eleanor Roosevelt
>>
>> "The time is always right to do what is right" Martin Luther King
>>
>> *********************************************************************
>> ****
>> Dr. Alina M. Szmant
>> Professor of Marine Biology
>> AAUS Scientific Diving Lifetime Achievement Awardee Center for Marine
>> Science University of North Carolina Wilmington
>> 5600 Marvin Moss Ln
>> Wilmington NC 28409 USA
>> tel: 910-962-2362 fax: 910-962-2410 cell: 910-200-3913
>> http://people.uncw.edu/szmanta
>> *******************************************************
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: coral-list-bounces at coral.aoml.noaa.gov
>> [mailto:coral-list-bounces at coral.aoml.noaa.gov] On Behalf Of Peter
>> Sale
>> Sent: Monday, October 20, 2014 1:03 PM
>> To: coral-list at coral.aoml.noaa.gov
>> Subject: [Coral-List] Why we are failing to repair coral reefs
>>
>> Hi,
>> I recently penned a comment on why we are, for the most part, failing in our efforts to repair and sustain coral reefs, despite the efforts of many dedicated and hard-working people. It appeared in Reef Encounter, the on-line news journal of ISRS, and many readers of this list will have seen it already. Thinking it might be worth wider dissemination, I've now put it up on my blog, with some pretty pictures attached. You can access the blog at www.petersalebooks.com/?p=1708 and you can see the original in Reef Encounter which can be downloaded from the ISRS website at http://coralreefs..org/ Reef Encounter has lots of interesting content (perhaps even more interesting than my comment)!
>>
>> If you are a member of ISRS, you could also think of nominating someone to the ISRS Council, and if you are not a member, think about joining this international coral reef science community.
>>
>> Peter Sale
>>
>>
>> sale at uwindsor.ca @PeterSale3
>> www.uwindsor.ca/sale www.petersalebooks.com
>> _______________________________________________
>> Coral-List mailing list
>> Coral-List at coral.aoml.noaa.gov
>> http://coral.aoml.noaa.gov/mailman/listinfo/coral-list
>> _______________________________________________
>> Coral-List mailing list
>> Coral-List at coral.aoml.noaa.gov
>> http://coral.aoml.noaa.gov/mailman/listinfo/coral-list
> _______________________________________________
> Coral-List mailing list
> Coral-List at coral.aoml.noaa.gov
> http://coral.aoml.noaa.gov/mailman/listinfo/coral-list
--
------------------------------------------------------
David M. Lawrence | Home: (804) 559-9786
6467 Hanna Drive | Cell: (804) 305-5234
Mechanicsville, VA 23111 | Email: dave at fuzzo.com
USA | http: http://fuzzo.com
------------------------------------------------------
"All drains lead to the ocean." -- Gill, Finding Nemo
"We have met the enemy and he is us." -- Pogo
"No trespassing
4/17 of a haiku" -- Richard Brautigan
_______________________________________________
Coral-List mailing list
Coral-List at coral.aoml.noaa.gov
http://coral.aoml.noaa.gov/mailman/listinfo/coral-list
_______________________________________________
Coral-List mailing list
Coral-List at coral.aoml.noaa.gov
http://coral.aoml.noaa.gov/mailman/listinfo/coral-list
More information about the Coral-List
mailing list