A comment to a recent entry on this blog suggested that the single-most important environmental issue of our time was overpopulation. I’d like to take issue with that view here, which has been part of the mainstream of North American (or at least U.S.) conservation dogma for a few decades, though some of the old stalwarts are dying off. Paul Ehrlich put forward the argument most forcefully in books like The Population Bomb (1970): too many people were on the planet, populations were continuing to explode at ever-greater rates, and resources would soon be depleted. As humans reached some K carrying capacity (which we were just a few days or weeks away from), economic and population collapses would follow, mass starvation, warfare, and bad television would ensue. The last part came true, but somehow we’ve continued to struggle past the first two. This little idea is ethnocentric, simplistic, dangerous, and will result in policies that delay constructive action generally and foster North-South and East-West conflict in particular. Overpopulation as a global threat shows (at best) a lack of imagination and general knowledge. At worst, it is racist and forcefully ignores the real issues at stake in our time. There are more nuanced approaches (such as Jared Diamond’s Collapse). But they’re the exception, not the rule.
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Tags: conservation, policy, philosophy

One of my key hunches is that climate change alters the framework of economic development and conservation. My proprietary and parochial interest is in freshwater ecosystems, but the insight (if insight it be) extends more broadly. Here, I propose a list of some of the climate-related elements I think we should be debating in regard to freshwater management. It is not complete, but these cover many of the big points we should probably be resolving now and over the next few years. Read More...

Tags: policy, conservation, water management, climate adaptation, philosophy

E. O. Wilson is arguably the most famous living ecologist and conservation biologist of our time. He’s notable for many reasons, but here I am concerned about his recent move into discussing the approach we should take for climate adaptation work. I fear Wilson has just done a lot of damage to conservation policy. Read More...

Tags: climate adaptation, philosophy, policy, climate mitigation

Although I am an agnostic in fine standing today, I am certainly betraying my childhood as a Protestant and a man bound to the U.S. South when I use the word redemption — one of the signal ideas in the European Protestant tradition. This is the prodigal son, the slaver who was once lost but has now been found, the sheep who has returned to the flock and her relieved shepherd. It’s the second chance, with hope rekindled and fanned into open flame. The language of redemption drives many of us in conservation. Most of us seem daily aware that this point in history is special, pregnant with special losses and opportunities. Some of us in more extreme forms see the outlines of Armageddon and apocalpyse — an end of what we have known and the press of imminent and ultimate battle — but that’s not my personal sense of time. I am more keen to see struggle, even if manichean in form. That struggle has largely seen defeats for “our” side. But the victories are notable too. Read More...

Tags: philosophy, policy, species

I am nearing the end of about 10 months of climate adaptation work. In terms of travel, that amounts to the equivalent of flying roughly five or six times around the equator over that period. And during that time I have developed a reasonable sense of what my job involves, met most of the people I will work closely with, and begun to develop some of the basic skills I need to shift from being an academic and government scientist to being a conservation biologist with a non-profit organization (also known as an NGO or, in many countries, a civil-society organization). Most of my intiial goals have been effectively met, and now I am starting to think about what tasks lay head now. In the words of Churchhill, I am at the end of the beginning. The hinge must needs turn. But where and how? How to begin the middle? Read More...

Tags: philosophy

I wrote this piece as a letter to some unknown journal almost a year ago after reading Susan Nieman's great book of ethical philosophy on the nature of evil and its influence on modern consciousness. I haven't decided if I'll send it into a journal yet -- with additional revisions, as I think it's a bit pompous at the moment -- but I offer it here for what it's worth. Read More...

Tags: philosophy, portugal, ethics, cultural impacts

I leave for the UK and India a week from today, flying about two-thirds of the distance around the planet to work on two rivers: the Thames in Britain and Ganga (the Ganges in most of the rest of the world) on the Indian subcontinent. Much of what I’ll be doing in both places is just listening – hearing what experts in each of these basins are afraid of, what they hope for, what seems likely to happen, what is happening. Listening is good work, and comforting too. And it is very good to know and see people who really “know” things. Read More...

Tags: philosophy, travel, india, united kingdom