I wanted all my post on one site some I'm moving this so it will show up on
facebook again
unfortunatelyNick
VolfFuture of Life Review
April 20, 2007
Dr. Hammer
The history, importance, and destruction of biodiversity are easily seen in The Future of Life by Edward O. Wilson. The book starts with a letter from the 1800’s talking about how long people have been using nature, using its resources, and changing the environment. The apparent clash of the environment and the economy is nothing new to people. Today though the problem is more apparent and solutions can start to be thought up. Wilson writes about the economy and the value of the environment throughout The Future of Life.
In the second chapter, “The Bottleneck”, he gives the typical view of the economist and the environmentalist. The economist view has to do with human prosperity, thinking that problems can be solved after we cause them or while we still do. But there is nothing to worry about because the global economic picture is favorable. The gross national products of industrialized countries are growing. For more than a half a century the per-
capita income of the world has gone up. Even though the population of the world is growing at a pace never before seen, we are keeping up with crop production. Forests are regenerating as fast as they are being cleared thanks to
agriforestry. The advancement of people may hurt the environment but technology is keeping up and keeping the environment safe for other animals.
The argument Wilson gives from the environmentalist points out the brittleness of the environment of the planet, and the gross national product is no way to measure the world’s economic future. They admit that the life for people has been steadily getting better, but they also realize that it cannot continue to grow, because eventually we will run out or resources. The technology to harvest resources will always be a step ahead of the technology needed to save it. We have already left to large of an ecological footprint for the world to be able to sustain, and it shows no sign of turning around. The only way to fix the planets is to reduce global consumption.
This argument really interested me throughout the book because my two majors are business and biology. I’
ve argued with myself several times about which point of view is the right view. Both the views given by Wilson are on the extreme side, and I agree that most people are somewhere in the middle of the two arguments. I think that the economy can still continue to grow without destroying the environment. With alternate energy sources, like wind water and solar power being used more we can eventually move away from oil and other fossil fuels. More than likely these will run out someday, but if other sources are perfected before then, the production of the world won’t drop much at all.
According to the article “Environmental, economic, and energetic costs and benefits of
biodiesel and ethanol
biofuels” ethanol yields 25 percent more energy than it takes to produce. It also releases 12 percent less green houses gases than gasoline.
Biodiesels would produce 41percent less. But even if all the corn in the country was turned into
biofuels, it would only be enough to fuel 12 percent of gasoline powered cars, or 6 percent of diesel automobiles. (2006 David) This not only fails to provide enough fuel, but if all the corn is in fuels, what will we eat, or what would livestock eat? Electric cars are really a better solution, but until electric cars either show more power, or we run out of gas, people won’t want them. The problem also would arise that if we stop with oil products, the economy would take a big hit, so convincing most people would be tough.
Being able to genetically engineer crops and livestock to be able to produce more in the same amount of land we already use. Of course they would have to be shown to be safe to eat, but with out it, the food shortage will continue to grow. Wilson mentions that at the rate China is growing, even though it is in the top five countries of producing grains, it won’t be able to even support itself. Being able to run your factory with cleaner cheaper energy, or being able to produce more food in the same amount of space is obviously good for the environment. It is also good for the bottom line on the income statement.
In Chapter 5 “How much is the Biosphere Worth?” Wilson explains the benefits of having a diverse biosphere. A team of economist and environmental scientists came up with an estimate of the services we get from nature. They estimated that the contribution is nearly 33 trillion dollars, which is almost double that of gross world product, $18 trillion.
There are instances where the GNP will decrease because of reduction of the environment. The limited biosphere has already shown it’s affect on the worldwide fishing industry. It is already leveled off and will not be able to grow any more, only decline. Another example is the forest watersheds in New York. They capture and purify water before it is returned to lakes, rivers, and the sea, again at no cost to us. As the population grew, the watersheds were replaced with farms and houses, but the water became polluted. I guess the question there is what was more needed, more homes and farms for people or clean water. Both of course have their advantages.
The aesthetics of nature is something else we get from the environment. I don’t think anyone would argue about the beauty of nature. Dads taking their sons to national parks to just to relax in a place that makes you feel like you
aren’t in the same world you are at home. Nature is used all the time to escape, even if it is just a vegetable or flower garden in the back yard. Though just because something may look pleasing to the eye may not seem like any help economically, tourism can be a major industry that would encourage the protection of environment. In many developing countries the profit margin from tourism is greater than the profit margin from logging or farming the land after it has been cleared. But stopping the production of new farms again leads to coming up with crops with a higher yield.
Maybe the most important thing that we can get from nature is the different medical advancements that we just haven’t discovered yet. If there is a plant or animal with the ability to help cure disease like cancer or HIV, and it goes extinct before we have a chance to really study it, we may lose the chance to ever coming up with the answer to those questions. According to an article from
Planta Medical the plant
Callaphllum lanigerum has a chemical called
calanolide A That prohibits the RT found in HIV. (1999,
Konig) According to Wilson though, at the time the book was written, 2001, no one could find the plant.
Even with all these examples, there is still a lot to think about the ethics and morals about clearing the environment for personal gain. It may seem to a lot of people that a farmer in the Amazon or other developing countries may seem selfish because of their actions, they don’t do it because they hate trees, they need the money from the farming, or lumber to feed themselves and their families. Not all countries can be as well off economically as the United Sates and other industrial countries. On being able to find another way to get work or earn money is much easier for us. The best way to help stop a lot of the clearing of the earth is to help develop the third world countries. Wilson gives many example of this in his solution to the problem. He shows that in many third world countries, conservation organizations are buying land around forests, and making money from the tourism. He suggests that this will be a good long term solution, but I’m not sure if tourism alone would be enough to keep the country’s economy good. If they still are not farming, they are importing most of their goods, nearly all of there goods as more of the country is owned by the conservation organizations. This will keep these countries’ gross national product from increasing, and they will be stuck where they already are economically. It is easier in a larger country like the United States and China, because there is so much land that
isn’t a biodiversity
hotspot.
König, G M;
Matthée, G; Wright, A D. 1999. HIV reverse
transcriptase inhibitors of natural origin.
Planta medica. 65(6):493-506
Tilman, David; Hill, Jason; Nelson, Erik;
Polasky, Stephen; Tiffany, Douglas. 2006. Environmental, economic, and energetic costs and benefits of
biodiesel and ethanol
biofuels. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Vol. 103, no. 30, pp. 11206-11210.
Posts
