🚀 go-pugleaf

/ hpindda:ca.environment / asylvain@felix.filenet.com (The Chipmunk) /  4:49 pm  Oct 12, 1992 /
Written in article <1332900110@igc.apc.org>
 by alanm@igc.apc.org (Alan McGowen):

>:>
>:> Are you really going to say that all human life should cease and return 
>:> "ownership" of the earth to the flora and fauna?
>:
>: No, only that "ownership" should be shared more equitably
>
>It is impossible on any equitable basis to determine which portions of 
>"nature" should be "shared" between mankind and "the earth."  Far better 
>for those who wish to preserve nature to simply own it.

Rubbish. 

1) Extinction rates are at geological highs comparable to or greater
than those of the mass extinction episodes such as the Cretaceous extinction.
This is a direct result of excessive human appropriation of habitat area and
other pressures placed by humans on ecosystems. These extinctions are degrading
the biosphere irreversibly on time scales meaningful to humanity, rendering
all future humanity ever more biotically impoverished with each passing year. 
By any "equitable basis" conceivable this is intolerable even when only human 
interests are considered. If other life has any moral value whatsoever it
is a tragedy unprecedented in the history of the planet: that in the very 
instant in which evolution arrives at "rational" self-awareness, that same
rationality should prove to be as destructive as a mindless asteroid. 

2) Biotic resources are *not* automatically protected by being privately held.
The resources which can be protected in this way are those which grow so
rapidly that a discounted sustained yield is worth more than total 
liquidation. Most biotic resources grow slowly (whales, redwood trees, 
climax ecosystems) and are worth more, under normal economic discounting, 
if liquidated and reinvested in higher-growth areas than if harvested 
sustainably: this is exactly why there is economic pressure to cut all
remaining Pacific Northwest old-growth. This point applies equally to 
privately held resources and to commons: in fact the privately-held 
timberlands of the logging companies have no remaining old-growth. It has
*not* been protected by being privately held, it has been eliminated. The 
ideological dogma that privatization is the solution to all resource degradation 
problems does not bear up under bioeconomic analysis. 

------------
Alan McGowen