Revised thoughts from Nature & Humans

In the light of the ever increasing entropy, pollution and extinction of the natural world that existed before homo sapiens evolved to be a dominating organism, I find that I must constantly revise my thinking about how I live within the Earth’s ecologic and evolutionary systems.

My first awareness of human alterations of these systems came when I saw the stump farms– cut over forest lands–that were numerous in areas close to my home in Portland, Oregon.

Later, while in grade school, I became aware of the giant forest fires of the Tillamook Burn whose flames colored the sky and its smoke could be seen miles away in Portland. Also I learned of the massive dust storms of the western Great Plains by reading Life Magazine. A family, which included a grade school classmate of mine, had moved from South Dakota to avoid further deterioration in their life as their farm blew away. I observed these events without having a larger context in which to place them. They were simply destructive occurrences within Nature but aggravated by human activity.

I was under the delusion that these problems could be overcome and remedied by humans. Forest would be restored by letting nature take its course or by keeping a few seed trees in cut over lands. (And as new forest practices were tried, by replanting young trees.) I was unthinkingly a part of a culture that viewed forests as a timber resource and not as an extraordinarily complex ecosystem. Only years later as I drove over passes in the Cascade mountains on my way back and forth from college did I become aware of the extent of the clear-cutting of vast tracts of timber. This awareness was extended as years went by and I saw the results of decades of cutting trees in the Oregon and California Coast Ranges. Indeed, the newer forest practices allowed for regrowth of trees–but not of forest ecosystems. As old growth trees became in short supply and only younger and smaller sized, second and third growth trees could be taken from the better old forest lands, did it become evident that even the newer forestry practices had not prevented resource shortages that devastated timber- dependent communities through the closing of lumber mills and the diversion of unprocessed logs to overseas destinations . Today, many people still consider the old forest lands almost exclusively as source of trees, i.e. a resource that should be seen primarily as a source of as much income as possible.

As to the solution of the problems created by the great dust storms of the 1930s, techniques to prevent continuing soil erosion were to be implemented. I became aware of these in 1951 through H. Hugh Bennett’s massive volume called “Soil Conservation.” These techniques had became widely available beginning in the 1930s through the development of the Soil Conservation Service, first directed by Bennett. Many of the most egregious farming methods were successfully addressed by use of contour plowing, cover crops on lands most susceptible to erosion, strip cropping, wind belt tree plantings, and by watershed management. But their

prevention of erosion and maintenance of healthful soil composition were also affected by

weather conditions , crop selection, and the economics of agriculture production and sales. Increasing dependence of irrigation raised many other questions of soil use. As in forestry, agriculture has seen that its view of soil as a resource from which maximum profits could be extracted has resulted in continued erosion and destruction of the natural processes of soil maintenance as is exemplified by such practices as sterilizing and then artificially fertilizing soils, using soil simply as a medium for plant growth, and of irrigating soils without adequate drainage, leaving them with unwanted salts. And in most parts of the country, the original, rich, organic top soils have been permanently lost to surface erosion. Once gone these soils can never be completely restored.

In both forestry and agriculture, the natural systems that sustain them have been so altered that there is little chance that their richness and diversity can be recovered within the lifetime of several human generations.

Being aware of the destructive uses of forests and soils in the United States just as I was becoming an adult prepared me for the formal education I was to receive when I became a student of geography at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1951. Two courses were particularly important: The Conservation of Natural Resources given by Carl Sauer, and The Geography of the United States, given by Erhard Rostlund. Professor Rostlund was important in that he suggested, during my first term at Cal, that I read Bennett’s Soil Conservation and Aldo Leopold’s Sand County Almanac. As I noted above, Soil Conservation gave me an academic perspective on my interests that started during the Great Depression. And The Sand County Almanac was the first widely read layman’s introduction into ecological concepts. It has subsequently become one of the most read books of the environmental movement. Both books later influenced me to take university courses in the origins and description of soils and in plant ecology.

More important probably to my absorbing mind was Carl Sauer’s class which started with a suggested reading list that included Aldous Huxley, Henry Adams, George Perkins Marsh, Lewis Mumford, Joseph Bury, Carl Becker , J.B.S, Haldane, George Orwell, F.H. Hayet, Julian Huxley, Alfred Toynbee, Franz Zeuner, Frank Dobie, Oswald Spengler, Samuel Butler, and Waldo Frank. These readings, only a few of which I had time to read then, indicated much of what was to follow in the lectures. His first lecture set the tone that changed the way I think. Unlike other “conservation” courses that dealt with setting aside land in parks or reserves or with techniques of limiting erosion , Sauer’s course started with the contextual statement that a resource is only meaningful as regards a group, time, and place. Resources are cultural concepts, which are not universal and are valid only for those who belong to similar cultures. Furthermore, resources are strongly tied to religious and cultural values. Sauer went on to question what he

saw as the values of mid-20th Century America, which stressed ideas of progress and development, in particular the then current ideas about “development of undeveloped areas.” He said that this new outlook was not colonialism (at that time being undone) but “might be just as world-shaking.” He then said that ‘true’ or evolutionary progress (unlike ‘development’) is based on variation and discussed the course of biological evolution as continually expanding and branching into richer forms. He ended his first two lectures with the idea that American optimism may be a diversion from more serious problems. (I think that today he would question attempts to impose American democracy and capitalism on other peoples.)

Sauer than went on to give an historical perspective of American ideas in relation to resource use. The question he posed and then discussed was “Can a progressive industrial system be a durable system for a richer life and world?” He spoke of individualism and specialization; learning vs. intelligence; standardization through communication (what we now refer to as public relations) and the acceleration of change as discussed by Siedenburg and the impossibility of continuous expansion in energy consumption as seen by Willard Gibbs. And he spoke of the idea of progress as being of recent origins and of its inability to maintain a stable society. He thought that the recent organization of Western life meant that many variant forms fall out.

Ecology became the next topic of discussion, noting that we live in an unparalleled time of unbalanced ecology due to the activities of man. He thought of ecology as involving the whole organic population of an area under scrutiny. He stated that we live “in a time when man has been making his living by maximizing ecological imbalance.” (Nevertheless, Sauer preferred the ways of natural history to those of succession ecology.)

The course then shifted to a discussion of geological erosion and of the origin of minerals that we consider resources. This was in the context of geologic periods from pre-Cambrian to the present, giving emphasis to Pleistocene sea level changes, glacial advance and retreat and the development of land that has come to be agricultural. And then he offered a short history of the technologies, such as fire, of early humankind and how they altered the natural ecology over the millennia before agriculture.

His approach to resource use followed his introductory thoughts: resources are cultural evaluations based in particular groups, particular times, and particular places–the approach of Natural History. His examples, expressed over several weeks, were largely drawn from the horticultural, agricultural, and grazing experiences of the peoples who emerged from the Near East and Central Asia into Europe and then North America concluding with the introduction of hybrid corn, the elimination of farm animals, the ever increasing use of fertilizers, and the expansion of irrigated farming. He devoted only a very few lectures to energy resources, their sources, consumption, and limits of availability. However, he did speak about the economic

limits of using more expensive oil and gas reserves and of the costs of using atomic, hydro, tidal, and solar energy. And In his concluding lecture he noted that we are largely dependent on organisms, past or present to supply us with energy. That means that we are dependent on our ecological situation and are “not freed from a position of being but one among many organisms, past and present. ”

Professor Sauer was also involved as a co-chairman with Lewis Mumford and Marston Bates in the organizing of a 1955 conference that drew scholars from many disciplines and parts of the world; the ideas and preliminary papers of this conference–Man’s Role in Changing the Face of the Earth–circulated among the graduate students and faculty of the Geography Department. Many o f the ideas were radical at the time in that they called attention to the changing impact that humans were having on the lands, waters, and air of the Earth. Not since George Perkins Marsh’s Man and Nature had this been a focus on worldwide disruptions in human caused negative disruption of the Earth’s natural landscapes.

Sauer’s ideas form the basic underpinnings of my views of modern society’s relationship to the natural world. And I might note, the 1950s were just the beginning of the truly extraordinary exponential growth of resource consumption and population. For example, world population in 1950 was a mere 2.55 billion; today it is almost 5 billion people greater. The charts below, taken from : http://www.democraticunderground.com/112797132 illustrate some of the dramatic changes that have occurred in modern times, especially since the 1950s.

As a young adult, I went into the US Army, returned to graduate school, went to Angola for my PhD field research, married, began a family, and started teaching . I was living the culture of the time, barely thinking about the ways of expressing the underlying thoughts I had absorbed

at Berkeley. Instead I taught courses in geomorphology, the geography of Africa, and introductory courses in physical and cultural geography with little thought of placing the course content within a much broader context. With six or more different courses each year, I simply tried to keep ahead of my class schedule. To gain more experience in both teaching and research I accepted a position at Ahmadu Bello University in Zaria, Nigeria. As with my experiences in Angola, I gained perspectives on cultural differences in understanding the world. In particular, I saw the world that Professor Sauer spoke of in his class on conservation, i.e. people view the world, not in universal terms but in terms of the particular time, place, and history of the groups to which they belong. Further, because in both Angola and Nigeria the Western concepts of development, economics, and politics were being tested as these countries became part of a post-colonial world, dominated by American and European ideas, I was dramatically aware of the blinders of my American cultural heritage. Both Nigeria and Angola are major suppliers of petroleum to the United States and when I lived in Africa, both countries were barely emerging from colonial economies.

But upon my return from Nigeria in 1969, I encountered an America that was nearly incomprehensibly different than the country I had left two years before. The impact of the military losses in the Viet Nam war, the assassinations of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King, and the increasing awareness of environmental issues had disrupted the relatively placid culture of the years following the Second World War and the Korean War. American culture, itself, was greatly shaken. I realized that I could no longer continue to teach my courses without changing them to reflect the important issues of the day. To do that, I had to think out my relationships to the world ecosystem in the broad scope that my graduate education had first directed me but which I had largely laid aside in my efforts to become a part of an existing academic culture. I had taught my classes, done some research, served on committees, and become part of the social community of a university. But that approach, I felt had to change radically. I was particularly struck by the publication in the early 1970s of Donna and Dennis Meadows, et al, in their book, The Limits of Growth, and by Howard and Elizabeth Odum’s Environment, Power, and Society. Their understanding of the multiple forces driving modern societies brought together many earlier thoughts about “peak oil”, and exponential growth of capitalism, energy consumption, and human population.

In the 1970s and ’80s I changed the content of my courses to reflect issues I thought to be more ‘relevant’ to college students. My major year-long course in cultural geography had three parts: the first concerned the alteration of landscapes in different times, places , and with different peoples; the second emphasized the ways in which natural ecosystems had been disrupted by humans; and the third dealt with the history of how Americans had viewed their interactions with the natural world, which they had transformed . My audience was largely limited to students majoring in geography . The numbers of books and articles on

“environmental” issues was small but growing. And by the time of the Carter Presidency, ‘environment’ and energy were recognized even by the White House. Broader student interest was apparent, even as the academic world remained largely closed to facing the issues of human/ecology interactions. Thus , as chairman of the Department of Geography, whose colleagues had long been teaching aspects of these interaction, I was able to encourage a modest academic niche for an “environmental studies center” and later for an interdisciplinary masters degree program in environmental studies.

Those were my institutional approaches to looking at the world of human/nature relations. However, as I looked at the ever mounting evidence of biological extinctions, pollution of air and water, and increasing dependence on new or more expensive organic and mineral resources, I realized that I had to come to terms with my own place in this cultural experience, in particular how I contributed to exponential growth of consumption at national, international, and particularly personal levels. Since the rejection of Jimmy Carter’s concerns about energy, environment, and conservation by all subsequent presidents and congresses, I have largely given up trying to affect the environmental and ecological changes that were out of control, instead looking inward to find ways to cope with inevitable and emerging cultural disruptions.

In a talk I gave at my retirement from the University of Oregon in 1994, I summarized many of the probable changes that I saw if contemporary cultural worldviews that emphasized economic and technological growth continued. In an 1991 presentation I had addressed some of my personal concerns through applying the 12 step approach of Alcoholics Anonymous, in which a sick person must recognize that he/she is part of a much wider context of a power— things and events over which he/she has no control. In my paper, which I called Environmentalists Anonymous, I considered the power to be a global ecology that had resulted from the processes of evolution; and the steps after recognition of this power were the ways in which one could recognize, acknowledge, and personally address his/her role in ecologic and evolutionary processes. (I later presented some of these ideas in a self-published book–Nature & Culture–A Personal Crisis.)

In my post-retirement years, I have continued to try to clarify my own connections with the natural world, in terms of world ecology and evolution. And the context of these most recent twenty-five years has been one recognizing an irresolvable conflict between 1.)economic growth and faith in ever expanding technologies of communication, medicine, building, warfare and digital recreation and 2.)the increasing awareness of environmental alteration, especially due to climate change. I stress that climate change is but one–the most publicized — of the extraordinary changes that are altering the earth’s ecology and evolutionary history.

Where do I fit into this context?

I grew up in the peak period of American economic prosperity and optimistic outlook. From childhood I have been influenced by the optimism of better access to diverse sources of food, means of transportation and communication, of better health through better medicine and public sanitation, of more leisure time because of energy slaves burned for me, of expectation of access to education and employment. In other words, to the American Good Life. And I have fully taken advantage of this way of life and the underlying views that accompany it. I continue to consume the world in ways I no longer begin to understand because the tentacles of assembling goods and services are so diverse and extensive. I travel with little real sense of my contributions to the exponential growth that concern me greatly in the abstract and which I talked about in my academic life. In my ninth decade still in good health and having received the rewards of having been able to play well the game of American culture, I have no personal concerns for my own future. It would be easy for me to simply live out this ‘good life’ and accept my good fortune.

But yet the questions remain: How do I think about what it is to be human and how might I act in a world which is being drastically altered by me and my fellow human beings; what thoughts and actions might I take that influence the future of others who surround or follow me . Basic to these understandings or thoughts are questions of the physical existence of life. I have come to believe, as Bodhi Paul Chefurka has very clearly explained, humans , like all organisms, are driven by the urge to grow and to reproduce. And humans have learned how to grow and reproduce through consuming the larger natural world around them better than have other organisms. To put it one step more abstractly, humans, as are all organisms, cyclones, economic and political systems, and all other systems that dissipate energy, are governed by the Second Law of Thermodynamics, the Maximum Power Principle, and the Maximum Entropy Production Principle. It underwrites the processes of natural selection.

Following these “laws and principles” all systems that dissipate energy seek more opportunities to dissipate energy (through storage or from other systems) than is strictly required at any particular moment. They do so to survive under moments of stress or energy shortage.

I first got hints of these thought when reading the ideas of Howard Odum some thirty years ago. More recently they were elaborated for me by Eric Schneider and Dorian Sagan; and then they were more simply stated–as noted above–by Bodhi Paul Chefurka. More importantly to my thinking, these laws and principles allow me to understand human actions in historic time, especially in modern and my own lifetime, as those of an extraordinarily successful organism that is simply carrying out energetic imperatives. This means that I can reframe my questions without the weight of trying to oppose the inevitable fate of humankind. (By inevitable I do not mean I come close to understanding the final destination of the human species, let alone the systems that are the Earth , the solar system, our galaxy or the universe.) The Laws of

Thermodynamics, of Natural Selection, and of ecology, however, are fundamental stories that I now tell myself in the context of the “environmental” crises of today.

I am thus not panicked by what I have come to think about the human role in changing global ecosystems. I am neither pessimistic nor optimistic about the results of the continuation of the radical changes that I now see going on around me. I think that I understand the principal basic facts about the general trends of the alterations of the natural world; I have a very general understanding of the major ecologic systems that are being altered or changing. I have a general understanding of the worldviews and culture that are affecting the changes. I am personally aware of many of the ways I fit into American culture and worldviews. And I attempt to be mindful of the ways in which I participate in both the cultural and natural world.

However the question of how I think that I should actively participate in the alterations of nature and in the changing nature of culture remain in flux. As an organism that has evolved from the very earliest forms of life on earth–life forms that have been exposed to both terrestrial and extraterrestrial forces–I am particularly concerned with the uniquely insistent human characteristic of being conscious. Because I am aware of what I believe is happening to the Earth and its inhabitants and is caused by human actions, I can attempt to suppress my thoughts by engaging in psychological repression of that awareness and by unthinking participation within the dominant thought and actions of the modern American culture to which I belong. Or I can be mindful of what I now know , or think I know, of this principal existential question of humankind’s place in the evolution of organic life. Thus for me I have placed my most important questions both in the realm of personal thought and behavior and in the realm of cultural participation. A paradox, which may cause cognitive dissonance, often arises between my personal and cultural realms of thought. [Of course, I must also continue to try to understand both the basic scientific facts and their place in a systematic context.]

Although I am fully aware that my cultural awareness through direct experience is very limited just as is my direct experience and knowledge of the natural world, it is by far easier for me to act within my cultural realm. Culture has been embedded since birth and has continued to shape me ever since. My thoughts may change but always in the context of my unthinking cultural background. I remain with the ingrained habits that have been built up over the years. Certainly I can shift my political views from Republican to Democrat, my eating habits from meat focused to vegetarian focus, my automobiles from gas-guzzlers to low mileage small cars, my clothing from short-lived styles to clothing that lasts for years. I can insulate my house and use solar panels; I can maintain healthy activity patterns and grow some of my own food. All of these actions are acceptable within my culture. But I still drive a car, travel long distances, consume goods that I do not need to survive or even live well. I use technological devices that

are new and useful for present day culture but were not necessary but a few years ago. In other words I am fully a part of modern American culture, however it might be described.

With this in mind, I realize that my choices have relatively little impact on the onward thrust of human destruction of the world’s ecosystems, even if they might reduce negative impacts on natural ecosystems. Certainly I can actively support attempts to preserve ‘natural’ areas, urge efforts to decrease the input of carbon dioxide and other disruptive gasses into the atmosphere, support increased use of organic foods, and on and on. Nevertheless, I believe that these personal choices will have little success in altering the course that the current world population will have on world natural systems. Culture, I believe, cannot will out no matter how technologically proficient humans become. The growth imperative of humans–as with that of all organisms-to maintain and reproduce themselves through thick and thin will continue until limits within the natural environment restrict expansion.

All major religions offer basic ideas that are incorporated in most cultural and personal worlds: do not kill, do not steal, do not speak in anger or derision, etcetera. Just as these prohibitive directives are part of many cultures, so also are the positive directives: do unto others as you would have them do unto you, be kind, considerate, loving, compassionate, and open to life, etcetera. One can try to live by these commands, but they offer little directives as to how individual humans can confront the dilemma of current and future of human disruptions of natural ecosystems. Because I am aware of the predicament of the increasing imbalance between the rapid and increasing rate human alterations and the processes of the Earth’s natural systems that have deep geologic and organic roots, I have tried to focus my conscious thoughts on finding peace of mind or equanimity while living with this fundamental fact of human existence.

I am bound to thoughts of ecology, sustainability, preservation, wilderness, diversity, stability, integrity, i.e. the principles of Aldo Leopold’s land ethic. I simply have to keep renewing the land ethic, extending it as I have become aware that it has not been applied to most of the world’s lands, air, and waters. I have tried to apply it to how I live–even in an urban area. In small ways one can conserve, preserve, encourage diversity and integrity of the spaces we occupy, use, or travel through. I have tried o apply his ideas as a person concerned with planning my workspace, my yard, my neighborhood, my city, and my state. And these are the issues I find most important in trying to influence my political leaders. Fortunately many organizations focus on aspects of what Leopold spoke about. And many of my contributions in time and money go to these organizations. My fundamental conscious thought is trying to raise awareness of human/nature interactions, which are as important as interaction between and among humans. And to understand the physical context of the land ethic it is necessary to

learn the basic facts of the natural environment within which humans live– evolution, ecology, and energy.

At the level of individual humans, I believe that the coming political, social and economic crises will also result in unprecedented psychological stress. New technologies or radical changes in worldview will at best slow or delay the processes that are leading to crises. As cultural changes occur, personal equanimity and stress will increase. To lessen the stresses of living in a society in which growth and “progress” are less possible, I believe that greater personal self- sufficiency must be learned. To that end, education, especially of young children, should shift emphasis from global technology and how to get a job in a capitalistic economy to concerns of how to live locally. In particular, education should emphasize participation in the care of the local environment and community and in teaching ways of living an enjoyable, non- consumptive lifestyle through personal skills such as conversation, music, dance, drama, art, physical training, and participatory sports. As well, meditation, in whatever form practiced, can help clear the mind, leading to greater personal peace and possibly to connections with the ‘power’ of existence.

Love, compassion, and kindness among people and with the earth in its evolutionary and ecological richness begin to answer my personal questions of how I can more humanely participate in the world. Above all, BE MINDFUL!