It's not lyingIt's opening people's eyes to a wider problem. Sure, some people want to give a fiver to stop teh fluff dying, and good for them. It's their fiver. But for people like me, that fluff when I was 5 opened my eyes to a far wider issue, which I studied over the years and now understand a little better.
Pandas *do* need saving. Like I said before, the impact of them dying out isn't going to be huge - except in terms of attitudes. Thinking 'oh, it's just a panda' can very easily be extended to 'oh, it's just a type of fish' to 'oh, it's just an algal species...' - and humans don't have the right to do that, or the ability to get back from that kind of mistake.
Save the fluffy black and white cheerleader, save the world... kind of.
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Tue 4 Dec 2007, 22:02,
archived)
Pandas *do* need saving. Like I said before, the impact of them dying out isn't going to be huge - except in terms of attitudes. Thinking 'oh, it's just a panda' can very easily be extended to 'oh, it's just a type of fish' to 'oh, it's just an algal species...' - and humans don't have the right to do that, or the ability to get back from that kind of mistake.
Save the fluffy black and white cheerleader, save the world... kind of.
Oh, I see, it's the "humans don't have the right to meddle with nature" attitude.*sigh*
Well, we do. So there.
Either it's just a type of fish - which in some cases it is - or else it matters to us. We don't need a religion of preserving fauna on principle.
Incidentally I have a marine biologist friend who would agree with me, just in case you're about to pull rank.
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Tue 4 Dec 2007, 22:09,
archived)
Well, we do. So there.
Either it's just a type of fish - which in some cases it is - or else it matters to us. We don't need a religion of preserving fauna on principle.
Incidentally I have a marine biologist friend who would agree with me, just in case you're about to pull rank.
OK then.You pick out the important species and get back to us.
That's exactly the problem - modelling marine systems is nigh on impossible with any degree of accuracy, and those models usually just take into account one species of phytoplankton or copepod and ignore their predators. How does anyone know what species are important and which aren't?
It's not about a "religion of preserving fauna on principle". Yes, in natural systems, things die out. Yes, the world can get back to a stable system eventually, and no, in the long term it doesn't really matter one jot. But in the short to medium term it *does* matter to us, and it's about recognising that in many cases we just don't know how the extinction of a species will have an effect on the world, or when.
Besides, "having the power to" does not equate to "having the right to".
Anyway, I gave up all that biologising a long time ago. I'm going back to lurking.
<crafty edit>Not going to pull rank: I'm quite enjoying this little debate. I agree with some of what you're saying; there are some species out there which are "just species" and utterly unimportant. I suppose I'm of the "we have to try..." camp rather than the "we're doomed anyway so we may as well enjoy the cod". But I can see your point of view. There is a faction of the conservation camp which is coming at things from the wrong angle completely and I can see how it winds people up.</crafty edit>
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Tue 4 Dec 2007, 22:18,
archived)
That's exactly the problem - modelling marine systems is nigh on impossible with any degree of accuracy, and those models usually just take into account one species of phytoplankton or copepod and ignore their predators. How does anyone know what species are important and which aren't?
It's not about a "religion of preserving fauna on principle". Yes, in natural systems, things die out. Yes, the world can get back to a stable system eventually, and no, in the long term it doesn't really matter one jot. But in the short to medium term it *does* matter to us, and it's about recognising that in many cases we just don't know how the extinction of a species will have an effect on the world, or when.
Besides, "having the power to" does not equate to "having the right to".
Anyway, I gave up all that biologising a long time ago. I'm going back to lurking.
<crafty edit>Not going to pull rank: I'm quite enjoying this little debate. I agree with some of what you're saying; there are some species out there which are "just species" and utterly unimportant. I suppose I'm of the "we have to try..." camp rather than the "we're doomed anyway so we may as well enjoy the cod". But I can see your point of view. There is a faction of the conservation camp which is coming at things from the wrong angle completely and I can see how it winds people up.</crafty edit>
Do the damage first, use that as the means of working out what needs fixing, fix it afterwards.Otherwise you have got a principle of inaction, and that's what environmentalism is, the principle of never trying anything in case it goes wrong (which in practical reality causes people to do the things anyway, while environmentalists complain about it and try to bring in laws to punish people for it).
Edit: mmm, lovely cod. :) We should certainly try and preserve them somehow. Actually overfishing is fairly straightforward since it's not in the fishermen's interests to kill off a species of fish.
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Tue 4 Dec 2007, 22:25,
archived)
Edit: mmm, lovely cod. :) We should certainly try and preserve them somehow. Actually overfishing is fairly straightforward since it's not in the fishermen's interests to kill off a species of fish.
Arghh...You keep drawing me back in with interesting points to respond to. I really must stop and do some work.
Ok... it's a good idea. It really is, and I know how insincere anything you say on the internet can sound. But... the problem comes when we cause a problem we can't get back from. How do you fix the problem of wiping out an entire species, if we find that upsets the balance too much? That's why seed banks, zoos etc do have an important role to play.
I'd argue that environmentalism is exactly what you're saying - it's fixing the damage caused since the industrial revolution and (in some cases) caused *before* the industrial revolution. Yes, again, there are those environmentalists who just want to ban anyone from flying... but there are also activists who want us to adapt to change which now seems inevitable. While it's taking governments some time to catch up to these ideas, they finally are.
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Tue 4 Dec 2007, 22:34,
archived)
Ok... it's a good idea. It really is, and I know how insincere anything you say on the internet can sound. But... the problem comes when we cause a problem we can't get back from. How do you fix the problem of wiping out an entire species, if we find that upsets the balance too much? That's why seed banks, zoos etc do have an important role to play.
I'd argue that environmentalism is exactly what you're saying - it's fixing the damage caused since the industrial revolution and (in some cases) caused *before* the industrial revolution. Yes, again, there are those environmentalists who just want to ban anyone from flying... but there are also activists who want us to adapt to change which now seems inevitable. While it's taking governments some time to catch up to these ideas, they finally are.
Seed banks and zoos are excellent, yes.The solution to the event of ecosystems becoming crippled enough to cause problems to humans (problems of the material kind they actually care about) is ... well, when their ingenuity is spurred on by unproductive farming land or a perceptibly runaway greenhouse effect or whatever it is, some completely unexpected and fascinating solutions will become apparent. In the meantime, stop telling people to preserve things like tiger-filled jungles when nobody is concerned enough to want to pay for the jungle to be preserved. Somebody has to live near those tigers, without a good solid farm job to go to. This kind of regulation puts a brake (but only a brake) on environmental damage, and also puts a brake on creativity in general which would come in useful later in fixing the material damage, if any.
Anyway, yes, that was fun, thank you.
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Tue 4 Dec 2007, 23:09,
archived)
Anyway, yes, that was fun, thank you.