I was at the back of a classroom yesterday, listening as the kids at the first meeting of a middle-school ecology class tried to define the characteristics of an ecosystem. One bright young man piped up and told the teacher that ecosystems in ocean trenches were especially interesting because they are unexplored, unlike all the terrestrial ecosystems around us "which we already know all about."
So I don't think we can fault E.O. Wilson for writing another book about the importance of biodiversity, and how we little we really know about life on this planet.
http://books.wwnorton.com/books/Half-Earth/
For a book in defense of an audacious agenda, a lot of Half-Earth makes familiar arguments: the urgent need to try to minimize the Sixth Extinction, the menace of invasive species, and the need for more resources for field biology, so that the planet's living things can be identified, described, and named while they're still with us. You've read this before (see the link below), although Wilson supplies some breathtaking new information to strengthen his arguments.
But maybe the most important part of this (rather uneven) book is how little ecologists actually know.
"Ecosystem studies remain an undeveloped science, with few answers to pass on that solve even the simplest problems of conservation.... Let us ask ecologists, over and over again, how can we understand the deep principles of sustainability of a forest or river is we still do not know even the identity of most of the insects, nematodes, and other small animals that run the finely tuned engines of the energy and materials cycles?... At least two-thirds of the species on Earth remain unknown and unnamed, and of the one-third known, fewer than one in a thousand have been subject to intensive biological research."
Wilson's argument, of course, is that the traditional conservation goals of saving wild places, in as wild a state as possible, is still valid and, indeed, crucial for saving the largest number of species.
With the authority that only a naturalist of his stature could muster, Wilson also offers up some nice zingers to roast the "new conservationists," who argue for a post-Nature paradigm in which enlightened humans use a hands-on approach to manage all of Spaceship Earth:
"Writers and spokespeople favoring Anthropocene philosophy ... seem innocent of the nature and meaning of biodiversity at the species level. Researchers in species-level biology are the equivalent of neurobiologists in their finely detailed study of the brain, while those Anthropocene enthusiasts who see species as interchangeable parts that fill up ecosystems are little more than nineteenth century phrenologists, who studied mind by the shape of the skull."
Which is to say, don't kill the patient, you quacks.
Maybe Wilson is pushing back hard because the amount of popular nonsense out there demands it, and I was happy to see it. (Yes, the hubris of Stewart Brand's "we are as Gods" comment is irritating, isn't it? Strangely, it makes me think of Winona Rider's dismissal of Christian Slater at the end of the movie "Heathers": "What I want is cool guys like you out of my life.")
But the book's conclusion, including the tantalizingly-entitled final chapter, "What Must Be Done," didn't satisfy. Yes, save as many species as possible, and keep as many ecosystems alive as possible. But even if we set aside half the planet as biological reserves, the impact of the people living on the other half is going to affect the whole planet, even if no human ever sets foot on the wild side again. How do we fix that? I guess that's just one more thing we know far too little about.
So I don't think we can fault E.O. Wilson for writing another book about the importance of biodiversity, and how we little we really know about life on this planet.
http://books.wwnorton.com/books/Half-Earth/
For a book in defense of an audacious agenda, a lot of Half-Earth makes familiar arguments: the urgent need to try to minimize the Sixth Extinction, the menace of invasive species, and the need for more resources for field biology, so that the planet's living things can be identified, described, and named while they're still with us. You've read this before (see the link below), although Wilson supplies some breathtaking new information to strengthen his arguments.
But maybe the most important part of this (rather uneven) book is how little ecologists actually know.
"Ecosystem studies remain an undeveloped science, with few answers to pass on that solve even the simplest problems of conservation.... Let us ask ecologists, over and over again, how can we understand the deep principles of sustainability of a forest or river is we still do not know even the identity of most of the insects, nematodes, and other small animals that run the finely tuned engines of the energy and materials cycles?... At least two-thirds of the species on Earth remain unknown and unnamed, and of the one-third known, fewer than one in a thousand have been subject to intensive biological research."
Wilson's argument, of course, is that the traditional conservation goals of saving wild places, in as wild a state as possible, is still valid and, indeed, crucial for saving the largest number of species.
With the authority that only a naturalist of his stature could muster, Wilson also offers up some nice zingers to roast the "new conservationists," who argue for a post-Nature paradigm in which enlightened humans use a hands-on approach to manage all of Spaceship Earth:
"Writers and spokespeople favoring Anthropocene philosophy ... seem innocent of the nature and meaning of biodiversity at the species level. Researchers in species-level biology are the equivalent of neurobiologists in their finely detailed study of the brain, while those Anthropocene enthusiasts who see species as interchangeable parts that fill up ecosystems are little more than nineteenth century phrenologists, who studied mind by the shape of the skull."
Which is to say, don't kill the patient, you quacks.
Maybe Wilson is pushing back hard because the amount of popular nonsense out there demands it, and I was happy to see it. (Yes, the hubris of Stewart Brand's "we are as Gods" comment is irritating, isn't it? Strangely, it makes me think of Winona Rider's dismissal of Christian Slater at the end of the movie "Heathers": "What I want is cool guys like you out of my life.")
But the book's conclusion, including the tantalizingly-entitled final chapter, "What Must Be Done," didn't satisfy. Yes, save as many species as possible, and keep as many ecosystems alive as possible. But even if we set aside half the planet as biological reserves, the impact of the people living on the other half is going to affect the whole planet, even if no human ever sets foot on the wild side again. How do we fix that? I guess that's just one more thing we know far too little about.
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