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Protect the last of the wild
- peterlk 8y agoThis is a difficult issue. On the one hand, it is arrogant to sit in comfortable chairs imported to areas that live in excess and tell others to live with less so that we may appreciate their wilderness from afar; or ephemerally while we are on vacation. On the other hand, I am reminded of this letter/video which sums up an important ethos: https://vimeo.com/newmanfilm/wildernessletter https://vimeo.com/newmanfilm/wildernessletter. We should protect the wilderness because it inspires us to be better. Humanity doesn't need wilderness to survive and grow (we need food and water). But we do need it to remind ourselves where we came from and how complexity can be beautiful. So what do we do?
- jarmitage 8y ago> Humanity doesn't need wilderness to survive and grow Can you back this up? I agree with the comment by fractallyte that wilderness is a necessity for long-term survival of humans. Also guaranteeing food and water without wilderness has never been attempted before...
- grondilu 8y agoIt seems to me that the opposite assessment requires more justification. Ever since Neolithic, mankind has been domesticating most if not all species it consumed. And we've been deforesting like crazy. We're not hunter gatherers anymore, so our progress has consisted relying less and less on wilderness and more on controlled, artificial environments. I'm not saying that we don't need wilderness for deeper reasons (say psychological, or in terms on keeping biodiversity for future-proofing our biological pool of domesticated species...). But such hypothetical reliance on wilderness surely seems less obvious than our independence from it.
- mac01021 8y agoAbsolutely not definitive, but the biosphere 2 experiments provide a data point. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biosphere_2 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biosphere_2
- grondilu 8y agoWe were talking about wilderness. Biosphere 2 is about way more than that, as it was a completely sealed environment (it had to produce its own oxygen, for a start).
- stared 8y ago> Humanity doesn't need wilderness to survive and grow It is a very egoistic perspective (at the species level) that we can destroy species of plants and animals (and entire ecosystems) just because they don't serve us.
- stupidbird 8y ago...and it's a bit naive to overlook the fact that we've already done this. We've wiped hundreds of species off the face of the earth while coming to rely on other species that wouldn't exist without our intervention (e.g. livestock). Entire ecosystems have been destroyed simply because they don't serve us.
- fractallyte 8y agoI'd argue that humanity certainly requires huge tracts of wilderness for its long term survival. So far, we've successfully transformed diverse ecosystems into vast, but basic, mono-cultural 'deserts'. But - is it sustainable? In the century since the Haber process was introduced, the world has started to buckle at the seams from the results: huge population growth, with accompanying pollution (nitrates, pesticides, algal blooms, etc.) and degradation of biomes. What are the effects on our biochemistry? Plastic pollution is only now being noticed. Pthalates and numerous other estrogen mimickers are silently at work. Antibiotic resistance is increasing. I think it's too early to conclude that we can indeed survive this. The outlook for the rest of this century is not positive... A 'wilderness' is a vast library of alternative biotech. Until humanity understands the effects of its impact on Earth's ecosystems and itself, it would be wise to remember this.
- NeedMoreTea 8y agoQuite apart from your well made point, just about everyone that "makes it" wants a home in the country with some land, probably some old forest. It's the location for so many leisure activities and holidays. Few want to retire in a city. We conveniently don't notice the decline of soils, of insects or other species. The arrogance that we can just keep on until humanity is in battery hutches everywhere and everything else divided up between agriculture and industry astounds me. Who knows how many miracle drugs and biotech has been lost in those unknown bacteria and species. Even if it turns out to be a process that can continue our collective psyche will lose something it apparently desires or needs. So at what cost?
- lotsofpulp 8y agoEveryone wants the facilities resulting from economies of scales and efficiencies that cities provide, such as entertainment options, access to various labor and product markets, selections of schools, hospitals, doctors, lawyers, engineers, etc. At the same time, everyone wants to their own space to do their own thing and raise their family and a peaceful neighborhood where you don't have to worry about dealing with too many others, especially not too far below your socioeconomic class. This would seem to naturally result in the pattern of rich and poor suburbs clustered around cities with the constant struggle of individual housing vs shared housing, car vs public transport, public parks vs private yards, etc. Only recent factor I see changing is the delay in having children into the 30s means a lot of 20 somethings that aren't looking for suburbs, and if they don't ever have kids then maybe they never will want for suburbs.
- omosubi 8y agoI've been thinking about this quote a lot recently - "Canada, the most affluent of countries, operates on a depletion economy which leaves destruction in its wake. Your people are driven by a terrible sense of deficiency. When the last tree is cut, the last fish is caught, and the last river is polluted; when to breathe the air is sickening, you will realize, too late, that wealth is not in bank accounts and that you can’t eat money." It's attributed to a canadian Aboriginal but could apply to any industrialized or semi industrialized country. Hopefully we save ourselves before it's too late
- claydavisss 8y agoCanada has a terrible environmental record that completely undermines its progressive reputation. The tar sands project may be the single most egregious resources undertaking in history. But other so-called progressive industrialized nations aren't much better. Norway is also wealthy primarily due to the extraction of fossil fuels.
- myth_drannon 8y agoHopefully with the oil prices so low and keep getting lower, the tar sands is a dead project
- myth_drannon 8y ago260$ billion to clean up Alberta's oilpatch https://www.thestar.com/news/investigations/2018/11/01/what-would-it-cost-to-clean-up-albertas-oilpatch-260-billion-a-top-official-warns.html https://www.thestar.com/news/investigations/2018/11/01/what-...
- ivanhoe 8y agoProblem here is that developed world has destroyed it's wilderness long time ago, used that land to produce food and resources, but now we demand that others don't do the same. Why don't we instead create a wilderness by giving up on our local agriculture land? Nature takes back the land very quickly and if you limit hunting and repopulate the animals you'll quickly have a full-blown wilderness back. It doesn't have to be Amazon or some place in Africa, Europe once was covered in forests end-to-end too.
- ndnxhs 8y agoAn absolutely massive amount of land could be saved by not eating beef. I don't see that ever happening in America though. And even if the land was saved from cow farming it would just be used to create more urban sprawl.
- pofjer 8y agoThis is literally what developed countries have been doing, at least in the last 6-7 decades. And besides, Europe still is ‘covered by forests end-to-end’. So not sure what your rant is about… Just speculating, but maybe in your opinion the rates should be increased?
- gerbilly 8y ago> Problem here is that developed world has destroyed it's wilderness long time ago, used that land to produce food and resources, but now we demand that others don't do the same. So why not pay those countries to leave their wilderness wild? It would be like saying: "You know, we really screwed up, and you guys are the only ones who have some of this precious wilderness left. We'd like to pay you to preserve it."
- trax 8y agoGuys, quickly, the world's in danger. Don't reproduce, organize mass killings with 0 carbon footprint weapons and commit an eco friendly suicide. The planet will be better for it <3 -- The Ethical Vegan
- japhyr 8y agoI live in southeast Alaska, where we have a relatively healthy population of coastal brown bears. When we go into the woods, there is always a chance a bear could be nearby. Your first encounter with a brown bear in the wild can be unnerving. It's a really different feeling to see an animal that could easily kill you in the woods, without a wall or a fence between you and that animal. It's really humbling, and makes the woods feel entirely different than most other woods I've ever been in. It's not that hard to be safe. You make noise when you're in brushy areas, and you stay aware of your surroundings as long as you're in bear country. If you're camping, there are well-established routines that keep bears from messing with your camping area. You keep in mind where bears are in their annual cycles; are they relatively well-fed, or are they hungry and looking anywhere they can for food? I like the balance of doing technical work with the experience of walking in the woods with bears. The projects I work on are important, but they're not life-safety-critical. If one of my servers goes down, no one's going to die. Having interacted with brown bears at close range, a server going down is a relatively low-stress event. I wish there were more wild areas left. The woods in the lower 48 feel empty after living in forests that still have the top predators alive and healthy.
- oldstrangers 8y agoWas out in the wilderness on Vancouver Island, a place with the highest concentration of cougars in North America. You're right, it is a vastly different experience walking around an area like that knowing you're just a fragile voyeur in another animal's environment (especially something as silent and murderous as a big cat).
- lisper 8y agoI live on the San Francisco peninsula. A mountain lion killed a deer in our back yard once, and then the buzzards came and cleaned it up. Not that I wish to dispute the premise of the OP in the slightest, but you can still find wildness in some unexpected places.
- dmach 8y agoI think the ecological issues we're facing are more serious and underappreciated that the overall warming problem. They are linked but ultimately we can survive longer as it gets warmer, just more alone. If you do a search for ecological the result presumes you mean environmental a lot. Pollution, plastics and habitats need very urgent attention as well has CO2/Methane. It is also one of the big results people are freaking out about the changing climates but stay away from mentioning it much as many don't see it affecting us directly. Technology may drive us enough to replace the untouched wildness essential for nature. I've heard the only large area becoming wilder is Chernobyl and it's hard to think about what's next for Brazil and pretty much everywhere. We have to consider what's left to be land of the highest value and compensate people (less the 0.1%) who are affected by that decision. This may be of interest https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/sep/21/alaska-stand-for-salmon-habitat-campaign https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/sep/21/alaska... I hope the bears keep tourists away.
- myth_drannon 8y agoInteresting that the article comes a week after Brazilians elected an extreme right-wing president that promised to open up all the Amazon's nature reserves for mining and farming. I expect the next 4 years will be very sad for Amazon forests. At HN we are discussing roguelike game development while the world around us is systematically destroyed and what will be left is us experiencing nature through a Nethack game.
- arminiusreturns 8y agoHaving grown up with a national forest as my literal backyard, its amusing and sad to hear so much nonsense spewed in this thread. Yes, we need to protect the wild, and inculcate respect for it in those that live in and visit it. My issue is with the naivety of proposed "solutions". One of the best examples I can give, though I have many, is this: my grandfather was a logger and firefighter in this forest in the 70s. During my lifetime though, the PhD environmentalists came to dominate the forest service, and as logging waned they stopped listening to the old timers about how to take care of the forest. My grandfather would try to tell them they needed to let loggers thin the forest out, and to do more control burns and let them burn longer. As a kid I dismissed his ramblings, thinking; "they have PhDs! they know better than us!"... and then after I left home, after the pine beetle infestation, poof: two fires within a few years of each other that burned over 500,000 acres of that national forest I grew up in... and it is still recovering to this day, and doesnt look the same. Old trails I used to walk dont exist anymore. Mud slides from the fire have covered up old fishing spots. Etc. City slickers love to wax poetic about the forest, and then show up and destroy it, and want to send in their environmentalists to fix it their way, while those of us who live in those forests are greater stewards than they ever have been. Then after the forest service or BLM phds have fucked things up, they get sent off to some other poor areas forest, where they arent native and dont listen to the natives. Another example for this thread: many are claiming cattle ruin forest. on the contrary, cattle have become an important part of keeping the forest healthy, including ranchers taking care of forest land the forest service doesnt have the resources to fix... Just thought some people might want to hear a slightly different perspective on this issue. Now of course Im talking about smaller localized forests compared to the giant ecosystems the article covers, but I think those microcosms should serve as a warning for anyone wanting to tackle those larger ecosystems in a similar manner. Namely, listen to locals who know the forest better than you do.
- sparrc 8y agoCattle are good for forests? I'm sorry but you're going to have to backup that statement.
- arminiusreturns 8y ago
- briga 8y agoWhat these reports often seem to ignore is that there is still biodiversity within our cities--sometimes a lot of it. If the default assumption is "city bad, wilderness good", we're never going to make any progress, because short of an apocalyptic event cities are here to stay. What we should be focused on is making the cities we live in more sustainable and integrated with their ecosystems. Green roofs, urban parks, sustainable transportation networks, clean energy--there are plenty of avenues being explored today that are connecting our cities with nature. Cities should be a part of nature rather than apart from nature.
- ip26 8y agoThinking just of recognizable animals, typical cities have, what, rats, cats, starlings, house sparrows, rock doves, gulls, and not terribly much more. We can do better, but in general cities are not biodiversity hotspots.
- caprorso 8y agoSo how do you incentivize/coerce governments and companies to conserve natural resources, not dump toxins into the air, land and water, and generally limit the negative influences on our health and environment? "A world given over entirely to the engine of industry becomes a world no longer fit for creatures, human or otherwise; it becomes a world without hope." - Tim Winton
- zackmorris 8y agoIf you look on the map, there's a small patch of wilderness in the lower 48 (direct link): https://media.nature.com/w800/magazine-assets/d41586-018-07183-6/d41586-018-07183-6_16233416.jpg https://media.nature.com/w800/magazine-assets/d41586-018-071... That's most likely the Frank Church River of No Return Wilderness here in Idaho, as well as the various national forests surrounding it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Church–River_of_No_Return_Wilderness https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Church–River_of_No_Retur... There is almost no wilderness left, and what remains is only there because people spent lifetimes working to defend it. I highly encourage anyone who reads this to make a stand in your personal discussions to always choose protecting wild lands over financial gain. I see the recent attacks on things like the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase national monuments to be sabotage, undermining the decades-long efforts of conservationists: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/04/us/trump-bears-ears.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/04/us/trump-bears-ears.html As a native Idahoan I respect opposing arguments but recent trends have gone too far. I heard discussions while growing up that when the national debt reached a certain level, the US government would begin selling off its public lands. So look at who stands to benefit from that and other debts, and you'll see a giant circle of corruption. Meta-level critical thinking is needed now more than ever in these times.