Paradise for Sale: A Parable of Nature

Dr. Carl N. McDaniel

Professor of Biology at RPI

This is the recap of a talk given at the Dec 14, 2003 CDHS monthly meeting.

Carl N. McDaniel, Professor of Biology at RPI, spoke at the December meeting on the delicate balance between ecology and economics. This topic is explored in his book: Paradise for Sale: A Parable of Nature, which he wrote with John M Gowdy.

McDaniel began his slide show with some beautiful images of nature as an example of what we lose by dismantling the fabric of life that enriches the soil and creates the air. The current economic system is a flawed and bankrupt one. While this environmental crisis is happening, our attention instead is drawn to other sensational events. At least the environmental crisis is on the back page of the newspaper, however, because it used to be nowhere at all. It deserves to be on the front page.

Biological impoverishment and collapse is the basic pattern wherever people have colonized. McDaniel used some island examples. Easter Island (Rapa Nui) had a very accomplished and technological early civilization. They were exceptional ocean travelers, carved 30-foot, 82-Ton statues; but still they caused biological impoverishment to the island. Their descendants lived in caves and grass huts and were afflicted with violence.

The islands of Henderson, Margareva, and Pitcairn had a flourishing trade network. McDaniel pointed out that raising the standard of living can ruin the environment. These things happen because:

1. Serious biodiversity impoverishment leads to civilization collapse.

2. Interdependencies escalate biodiversity impoverishment and make the whole more vulnerable to collapse.

Another example is Nauru, an island in Micronesia and the focus of Paradise for Sale. For 3,000 years the population was stable and in harmony with biodiversity. In 1906, mining of phosphate began. Now that almost all the phosphate is gone, it is a hollowed-out island with little remaining plant diversity. The inhabitants have suffered greatly by adopting a western market lifestyle. McDaniel points out it is a myth to think that life has improved since we abandoned the hunter-gatherer lifestyle. On Nauru, hunter-gatherers only had to work about three hours a day. Because of adopting our lifestyle, the people of Nauru suffer from diabetes, stress, heart disease, and shortened life expectancy (males 49, females 54) and alcoholism. Only one major paved road exists but has more drunk driving related accidents than anywhere else.

The same market logic is happening globally. We've got to get a grip on how important the environment is. The current pattern of human habitation is unsustainable. One of McDaniel's slides presented all of this in a very clear image: a drawing of the globe with the sun pouring energy into it and faucets on the sides through which the life sustenance is then drained out by humans. Some of the top faucets are depicted as dry because the resources are not being replenished fast enough to keep pace with our consumption. The level is shown as dangerously low. Although we can't know what the exact breaking point is, the current situation is grim:

1. Population growth. It took from the beginning of the species until about 1805 to produce a world population of 1 billion. We added 1 billion between 1976 and 1987, and another billion between 1987 and 1999. Now 6,000,000,000+ people inhabit earth with about 70,000,000 added each year.

2. Climate stability. Global climate change as the surface gets warmer.

3. Life support. We are in a 6th mass extinction and it will get worse. As McDaniel described it, we are eating into our natural capital and we don't know exactly how much we have left.

McDaniel pointed out that human nature will not change but human culture can. To illustrate the challenge it will be, he used the Catholic church to symbolize western economic culture and the extreme time lag between awareness of a situation and eventual acceptance:

1. 1633, Galileo under house arrest as punishment for his heliocentric view. 1992, Pope John Paul formally apologizes for this error.

2. 1880's, Scientific consensus supporting theory of evolution. 1997, Catholic church finally accepts theory of evolution.

Neoclassical economics can be viewed as our cultural religion and it is extremely flawed.

However, for encouragement to think change is possible, McDaniel says we can look to the island of Tikopia. This island was in bad shape with slash-and-burn agriculture and species extinction, but long ago the Polynesians were able to turn things around. They managed to change to an arbor culture which harmonized with the rainforest ecology and eliminated animal food sources which were a drain to the environment.

McDaniel left us with some additional thoughts:

Environmentalists must not be thought of as a "special interest group". The fragile environment sustains us all.

Windpower could kick the fossil fuel habit, which would be good, but it won't solve all our problems. The energy from wind could still end up being used to bulldoze the rainforest.

The speaker’s book is:

Paradise for Sale: A Parable of Nature

by Carl N McDaniel and John M Gowdy

University of California Press, 2000

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