Some responses, however tardy:

In Will Shetterly’s comment, I see the outlines of the Environmental Kuznets Curve, the idea that the way to dispose of pollution is to increase production so that we can “afford” a cleaner environment. The EKC, beloved of the infinite-planet school of economists, has been thoroughly discredited–by data, by research, by logic. The Encyclopedia of Earth has an article on the EKC that lays it out (I’m listed as a co-author, but I assure you–the level of technical detail there is beyond me; I opened the discussion and got out of the way).

Apropos of Heylucas’ post: humans have indeed often lived under environmental constraints. Many previous civilizations failed to adapt to them, with differing consequences; most disappeared. Edward Hyams has a very interesting chapter in Soil and Civilization about the degradation of Attic soils and the role it played in the birth of philosophy–and the role it played in Athens’ foreign policy, and its eventual decline. More contemporaneously, Jared Diamond tells cautionary tales about other civilizations that collapsed in his book Collapse. But what’s new in our era is our exploitation of past solar income in the form of fossil fuel, and our use of it to energetically appropriate niches and resources that were beyond the grasp of humans before the industrial revolution. We have been so successful at this that the expansionist phase we entered into (which is formally identical to the expansion that the population of any species goes into when it gains sudden access to a significant new source of food) has come to seem to many (ecologically and historically ignorant) people like the permanent condition of humanity. It isn’t. What should we seek to sustain? Well, I’d like to see humans living on the planet with a high, and ecologically sustainable, level of material well-being that is broadly shared. That would be unprecedented in planetary history.

I think I agree with Bruce Smith–we have some learning to do. Interesting use of the term “servo.” Ecologists have been talking about feedback loops for quite a while, and I think Bruce Smith is calling for us to develop “soft-wired” feedback loops to deal with the effects of our ideology. Interesting.

Thank you, Empedocles, for the Hume quotation and the thoughtful interpretation of it. Hume was a classic “garden planet” thinker, and the project of reviewing and reconstructing his work in light of the development of factory planet is a worthy one. There’s a Lockean undertone to these passages, and you might be interested in reading the piece I did on Lockean property rights (and the foundations of civil society). It’s titled “Fixing Locke: Civil Liberties for a Finite Planet,” and it was published in Peter Goggin, ed., Rhetorics, Literacies, and Narratives of Sustainability (Routledge, 2009).

Me, a myth maker? I think not. There is a name for the rhetorical charge of making a false charge of fallacy. To paraphrase Hume (who said–I quote inexactly, from memory–”When reason is against a man, a man will be against reason”): when the facts are against you, be against the facts. Infinite growth ideology is notoriously faith-, rather than fact, based; in a famous exchange, a Bush adminisration official actually admonished an interviewer for asking questions that were rooted an the old, “reality based” mindset. Can we agree that reality should be the phenomenal realm to which our discussion refers? Polar bear habitat is indeed disappearing, as is habitat for non-domesticated species worldwide. I am not making this up, and it is an astounding example of resistance to dealing with reality to refer to this as “myth-making” on my part. Citing the fact that you see more deer when you drive is problematic for several reasons. Anecdote is not evidence. And as Rob G. notes, the fact that species are being run out of their preferred habitat means you see more deer in unexpected places, so your anecdote supports the opposite case. “The evidence that polar bears are in decline is, to say the least, open to discussion,” meaning, evidently, that the evidence is not dispositive. (“Discuss” is a bit ambiguous.) The assertion that the evidence on this is ambiguous is factually in error.

Having said that, I do find much to agree with in this from the same writer: “To the extent that localists think the answer always is to take power away from the central power. trusting other locales to not pollute the river, kill the Buffalo, or arm themselves and subjugate their neighbors, they are being naieve.” Yes. I don’t want to see a global earth-and-economy system being administered by an international technocratic elite. Like Mill, I want some room for the spontaneous operation of nature, including human nature, which includes the love of freedom, discretionary choice, and the pursuit of one’s own lights. Let’s have a planet that’s not like a factory; let’s have a planet on which natural systems are resilient enough to absorb some human mistakes, which we will no doubt continue to make.

About poetry: hey, poetry’s great, and probably shouldn’t be parsed the same way arguments are. But, since some of it has been introduced, let’s talk about it. Oliver’s off base when she says

“Traveling at thirty thousand feet, we see
How much of earth still lies in wilderness.”

If she were actually in this discussion, I’d ask her for her operant definition of wilderness; it seems to be “places that are dark when I fly over them,” which would make any farmer’s field–heck, even my house–a wilderness at night. Huh. I have to say no: wilderness is a more like a place where there is a diversity of species in something like a dynamic equilibrium that is largely maintained by its own spontaneous operation. It doesn’t mean “places where I wouldn’t want to be stuck in a car at night without enough gas to get back to the lighted part of the world.” And who would confuse one for the other? Only an ecological illiterate.

Parsing the Hopkins, let’s look at this:

“And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs—
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

It’s a nice sentiment. I happen to think that indeed, nature will never be “spent” (taking this to mean, nature doesn’t die), and that the dearest freshness deep down in things (let’s say “ecosystems” instead of things; call me a pantheist, but I’m no animist) will continue even if humans succeed in making the planet inhospitable to any kind of materially advanced human civilization. I’m talking about saving civilization–a civilization that can support civil liberties–not saving the planet. The planet will get along without us (unless we turn it into desert, which, come to think of it, is indeed a possiblity.) But I don’t think Hopkins is working with this distinction, and so it’s probably unfair to interrogate his poem on this issue. It sure would be nice if we could trust to some spiritual power to spread its wings and save us from our short-sightedness. But here I offer a version of Pascal’s wager: what do we lose by supposing it won’t? Nothing. What do we lose if we think it will, and it doesn’t? Everything. The wager suggests we have work to do.

I like the sentiment expressed by Blue Moon Chimneys, but have to say: well, I for one care about polar bears. It’s a little chilling to hear them dismissed so readily. Call them “part of God’s creation,” or “a unique adaptation to an ecological niche that is stunningly sublime in its organization and function,” or call them anything you like, on any grounds that respects life we humans have no moral warrant to cause them to be extirpated from our experience just because we can’t control our use of oil (or, more broadly, our penchant for toys, wealth, and procreation.)

Me, a climate change alarmist? You betcha. Climate change is simple physics and simple chemistry: we put out x amount of these gases, and they have this kind of known effect, and everywhere we go and measure for effects, we see dramatic and sudden ecosystem change in response to overall global warming. After two decades of rigorous scientific debate, and less-than-rigorous public wrangling, the results are in. I think that anyone who continues to deny the reality of climate change is imbibing something stronger than Kool-Aid–a little Huxleyan SOMA, perhaps. But I am most emphatically NOT saying “we need…rationing of resources and a big heaping helping of government control in every aspect of our lives to fix it.” I am saying that if we don’t fix it (and all the other ecologically unsustainable aspects of our productive life), we are going to stumble toward some sort of technocratic state, or we’ll experience eco-collapse. Neither one allows room for civil society as we would like it (unless you’re a fan of anarchy, or totalitarianism.) Me, I’d rather have a world that has room for civil liberties.

If you want to avoid having “a big helping of government control in every aspect of our lives,” I recommend you work to help change the system, making it more sustainable. A sizable tax on carbon energy would be a great start. It could be revenue neutral (phase it in, and phase out the tax on income). It could be be designed to moderate any regressive effects, and the tax would ripple throughout the economy, raising prices on energy-intensive (and therefore unsustainable) products, processes, and choices. A carbon tax would go a long way toward encouraging sustainable choices through the gentle suasion of the market instead of the command-and-control system of government regulation.

Thanks for the discussion….

I am a little tired of the Polar Bear example, whether it is true or not, because it is made less useful by its nature as a cliché. And besides who really cares about polar bears? But what about feminized fish in the Hudson River, or what about the task of replacing around 80+ Billion barrels of oil annually when we discover only one barrel for every three (or is it every six?) we use. Well, anyway, in the comments here I find the lack of appreciation of the scale of the problem that is all to common in such discussions.

Philosopher King anyone?

But, he’s not alone. We are all busy at work mucking about in the nest, searching for the next Big Idea while resenting any notion that we might try to make more sense of the small ideas first….you know, so that we might become skilled at the Big Ones before proclaiming proficiency in them.

By all means though, let us have the Grand Show of Government Solutions because they shine in the gloaming like a Big Creole Marching Band , ripping an endless supply of ribald trombone flourishes.

The Free Market is one of the Band’s best Boogie Woogie shuffles. That we like to squawk about it leads me to believe that there really is a Unicorn. Its like when somebody asked Gandhi what he thought of Western Civilization and he replied “somebody should try it”.

There is little that can match Depravity for theatrical effect.

On another note, I do believe climate change to be a problem – and there MAY be some room for government intervention there. But this piece seems to take the stance of the global warming alarmist: “The sky is falling, and we need population control, rationing of resources and a big heaping helping of government control in every aspect of our lives to fix it!” I’m sorry but I just don’t buy that line. I don’t think I have yet imbibed quite enough of the kool-aid to go that far.

Brother Eliot:
“History is a pattern of timeless moments
the point of intersection of the timeless with time.”

Salvation is experienced not in the existential self, with its nagging self-doubt, but in the Logos, as it always has.

This couldn’t possibly be because we’re “developing” more and more of their habitat, could it? There may be well be just as many deer in certain places as there always were, perhaps even fewer — they simply have far less space. That’s almost certainly the case in the area where I live outside Pittsburgh.

I haven’t given up on the Porch. Generally folk here, like you, are nice to me. Well, mostly. I find stuff to think about, and some lovely writing that fills a need in my heart.
Thanks for the poetry. It is worth rereading and rethinking. It is good to have our arrogance smacked down.

hm

I do like your intractable spirit, but could I, though, convince you and myself and especially Mr. Zencey to pause…and read a couple of my favorite poems? They just might teach us more than Zencey’s oh-so-scientific theorists who never tire of saying what it is we all “must” do to avoid the Calamity. Here goes…

Mary Oliver

Night Flight*

Traveling at thirty thousand feet, we see
How much of earth still lies in wilderness,
Till terminals occur like miracles
To civilize the paralyzing dark.

Buckled for landing to a tilting chair,
I think: if miracle or accident
Should send us on across the upper air,
How many miles, or nights, or years to go
Before the mind, with its huge ego paling,
Before the heart, all expectation spent,
Should read the meaning of the scene below?

But now already the loved ones gather
Under the dome of welcome, as we glide
Over the final jutting mountainside,
Across the suburbs tangled in their lights,

And settled softly on the earth once more
Rise in the fierce assumption of our lives-
Discarding smoothly, as we disembark,
All thoughts that held us wiser for a moment
Up there alone, in the impartial dark.

*The River Styx, Ohio, and Other Poems (1972)

***********************************************

Gerard Manley Hopkins

God’s Grandeur

THE WORLD is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs—
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

There is, however, an underlying theme to several recent posts. I have no way of knowing whether it is part of a plan by the Porch-masters, or if it is a bit of serindipity.
Mark Mitchel asks in part, should we look to a strong centralized government to meet horrendous needs, like those in Haiti.
Imbedded in Patrick Deneen’s intriguing suggestion that maybe being #2, or 3, or 4 has advantages over being number one, is the implied question: “If we aren’t #1, who will be? And can we trust them to look out for we # less-than-ones?”
Then this post, which indicates that with our horrendous eco-destructive power there must be a power sufficient to keep us from doing so.

To the extent that localists think the answer always is to take power away from the central power. trusting other locales to not pollute the river, kill the Buffalo, or arm themselves and subjugate their neighbors, they are being naieve.
I don’t think it takes much persuasion here on the Porch, but likewise those who think that a Federal program is always the answer, are equally naieve in the opposite direction.

Both notions fail to adequately take into account a basic Theological reality. Perhaps in this world the most basic Spiritual reality: The Depravity of Man.

“Let us suppose, that nature has bestowed on the human race such profuse abundance of all external conveniencies, that, without any uncertainty in the event, without any care or industry on our part, every individual finds himself fully provided with whatever his most voracious appetites can want…

It seems evident, that, in such a happy state, every other social virtue would flourish, and receive tenfold encrease; but the cautious, jealous virtue of justice would never once have been dreamed of. For what purpose make a partition of goods, where everyone has already more than enough? Why give rise to property where there cannot possibly be any injury?
…
We see, even in the present necessitous condition of mankind, that, wherever any benefit is bestowed by nature in an unlimited abundance, we leave it always in common among the whole human race, and make no subdivisions of right and property. Water and air, though the most necessary of all objects, are not challenged as the property of individuals; nor can any man commit injustice by the most lavish use and enjoyment of these blessings.
…
Thus, the rules of equity or justice depend entirely on the particular state and condition, in which men are placed” (An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals.)

Of course the irony is that, impossible though it was for Hume to see, air and water now can be the subject of injustice and that we do now possess the capability to foul the air and water sufficiently that their use and misuse can be brought under the purview of justice. But in all cases environmental destruction is the enemy of liberty, not the restrictions that attempt to protect people’s rights as far as possible, and in all cases libertarians would best serve their desire for freedom by preventing the environmental conditions that require ever greater extension of the jealous virtue of justice.

There is a good bit of myth making in this piece. I don’t pretend to be bright enough to parse it all out but it just seems that there a lot of assumptions. For starters,
1)Humans\civilization being constrained ecologically is a new thing when its actually been around since the dawn of man
2)That there is such thing as sustainability and what is it that you are trying to sustain?