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Man: Working against nature
By Wan Lixin |
August 12, 2009, Wednesday
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IT is not easy to see an insect in a city.
But whenever my six-year-old son spots one, he would ask: Is it a good one?
He means whether the insect is "beneficial" or "destructive."
I always find it hard to come up with the standard answer, for I am tortured with self-doubt: "Beneficial" or "destructive" to whom?
One of the best known writers in the Tang Dynasty, Han Yu (768-824), argues that we consider it beneficial to kill some insects because they consume or destroy our goods. But do not human beings rival insects in destroying nature?
"In my opinion, whoever can cut the years of human beings is doing something salutary in mitigating the damage to nature, while those who feed and multiply humans are the enemy of the Heaven and Earth," Han says.
In Han's time there were no cars, no petrochemical factories, no coal mines, far fewer people than today, and the men of letters at that time had celebrated their affinity with nature by penning some of the best poems ever.
In Jonathan Swift's (1667-1745) "Gulliver's Travels," the King of Brobdingnag pronounces the bulk of Europeans to be "the most pernicious race of little odious vermin that nature ever suffered to crawl upon the surface of the Earth."
That was before the Industrial Revolution.
But against overwhelming evidence of environmental degradation, author Thomas Hager still manages to find good cause to congratulate ourselves - we can feed ourselves to obesity. He speaks as if things have never been better.
Hager fails to see that we are overfed because we can steal the food from our children and grandchildren.
In committing the theft we are annihilating with great gusto nearly all the other species.
Effort to conserve Europe's last ancient forest and home to lowland European bison is being resisted because conservation might slow local economic growth (August 8, Shanghai Daily).
Ironically the existence of human beings - the most numerous mammal on the planet - is threatened by global warming, pollution and a nuclear arsenal that can blow up the Earth many times over.
We must learn to live within constraints set by biology and the planet if we really intend to leave this planet to our children.
And in order for human beings to survive on this once beautiful Earth, we need to drastically set limits on the rate at which we consume natural resources.
Hager does not realize that the chemical fertilizer he trumps so much has long been proved to be a curse.
His "make bread out of air" metaphor sounds particularly misleading.
It fuels the illusion that we have the ability to make something from nothing, while in fact production of fertilizer costs energy and mineral resources, and application of it destroys the soil. Both production and application leads to serious pollution.
By industrializing agriculture, we have turned farming from something sustainable to "agriculture of consumption - an agriculture which consumes external inputs" (Anna Primavesi).
These external inputs ultimately come from crude oil and mineral resources, whose supply is not unlimited.
We are overfeeding ourselves and living longer because we're using up the resources due to our children. Obesity and longevity have been mistaken as signs of the good life.
Once chemically fertilized, the land grew addicted to it, craving more and more, with its original soil structure destroyed by, say, acidification. Gone is its innate fertility, or productivity.
I remember 30 years ago in rural north Jiangsu some big crabs that had grown up in the nearby rice paddies lost their way and turned up outside homes.
At that time I also joined one of my cousins in trapping eels lurking in rice fields.
These experiences sound legendary today.
In time nitrate-rich fertilizer (eulogized by Hager) finds its way to the groundwater, which then goes into lakes, rivers and oceans.
It leads to a process called eutrophication, in which excessive nutrients lead to overgrowth of algae, stifling fish and other living organisms.
Hager's complacence about growing human obesity proceeds from the assumption that driving a car to a gym 10 kilometers away to work on unwanted calories is more meaningful than peasants who have to work hard to avoid starvation.
It rests ultimately on the belief that happiness hinges on overconsumption, or the consumption of ever more "stuff."
It is wrong to think of ourselves as elevated above other creatures.
There are good reasons why we need to control our population.
An ecologist at Harvard believes the number of people the Earth can support is 200 million if you want to live like North Americans.
But whenever my six-year-old son spots one, he would ask: Is it a good one?
He means whether the insect is "beneficial" or "destructive."
I always find it hard to come up with the standard answer, for I am tortured with self-doubt: "Beneficial" or "destructive" to whom?
One of the best known writers in the Tang Dynasty, Han Yu (768-824), argues that we consider it beneficial to kill some insects because they consume or destroy our goods. But do not human beings rival insects in destroying nature?
"In my opinion, whoever can cut the years of human beings is doing something salutary in mitigating the damage to nature, while those who feed and multiply humans are the enemy of the Heaven and Earth," Han says.
In Han's time there were no cars, no petrochemical factories, no coal mines, far fewer people than today, and the men of letters at that time had celebrated their affinity with nature by penning some of the best poems ever.
In Jonathan Swift's (1667-1745) "Gulliver's Travels," the King of Brobdingnag pronounces the bulk of Europeans to be "the most pernicious race of little odious vermin that nature ever suffered to crawl upon the surface of the Earth."
That was before the Industrial Revolution.
But against overwhelming evidence of environmental degradation, author Thomas Hager still manages to find good cause to congratulate ourselves - we can feed ourselves to obesity. He speaks as if things have never been better.
Hager fails to see that we are overfed because we can steal the food from our children and grandchildren.
In committing the theft we are annihilating with great gusto nearly all the other species.
Effort to conserve Europe's last ancient forest and home to lowland European bison is being resisted because conservation might slow local economic growth (August 8, Shanghai Daily).
Ironically the existence of human beings - the most numerous mammal on the planet - is threatened by global warming, pollution and a nuclear arsenal that can blow up the Earth many times over.
We must learn to live within constraints set by biology and the planet if we really intend to leave this planet to our children.
And in order for human beings to survive on this once beautiful Earth, we need to drastically set limits on the rate at which we consume natural resources.
Hager does not realize that the chemical fertilizer he trumps so much has long been proved to be a curse.
His "make bread out of air" metaphor sounds particularly misleading.
It fuels the illusion that we have the ability to make something from nothing, while in fact production of fertilizer costs energy and mineral resources, and application of it destroys the soil. Both production and application leads to serious pollution.
By industrializing agriculture, we have turned farming from something sustainable to "agriculture of consumption - an agriculture which consumes external inputs" (Anna Primavesi).
These external inputs ultimately come from crude oil and mineral resources, whose supply is not unlimited.
We are overfeeding ourselves and living longer because we're using up the resources due to our children. Obesity and longevity have been mistaken as signs of the good life.
Once chemically fertilized, the land grew addicted to it, craving more and more, with its original soil structure destroyed by, say, acidification. Gone is its innate fertility, or productivity.
I remember 30 years ago in rural north Jiangsu some big crabs that had grown up in the nearby rice paddies lost their way and turned up outside homes.
At that time I also joined one of my cousins in trapping eels lurking in rice fields.
These experiences sound legendary today.
In time nitrate-rich fertilizer (eulogized by Hager) finds its way to the groundwater, which then goes into lakes, rivers and oceans.
It leads to a process called eutrophication, in which excessive nutrients lead to overgrowth of algae, stifling fish and other living organisms.
Hager's complacence about growing human obesity proceeds from the assumption that driving a car to a gym 10 kilometers away to work on unwanted calories is more meaningful than peasants who have to work hard to avoid starvation.
It rests ultimately on the belief that happiness hinges on overconsumption, or the consumption of ever more "stuff."
It is wrong to think of ourselves as elevated above other creatures.
There are good reasons why we need to control our population.
An ecologist at Harvard believes the number of people the Earth can support is 200 million if you want to live like North Americans.
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