barriomulas.com - My Environental Manifesto

The environment has an impressive ability to manage itself without the need of humans, government work crews, or intervention. The invisible hand of nature will carve the most efficient waterways, provide sufficient food for the its wild life, and maintain a balance that will last for eternity. Even our "improved vision of nature" as referred to by "The World Without Us" author Alan Weisman (p. 30), would quickly revert back to wild forest if it was not for de-weeders, sprinkler systems, mulch, and fertilizer. Man-made systems cannot compete with the efficiency of nature nor can our fertilizers and pesticides compete with nature's cycle of organic mass decay.

Weisman and Daniel Quinn have both noted how mankind was not much different from animals when we were hunter-gatherers (p. 84). But farming exhausted land and rivers, cement increased storm water, and the monolithic buildings of or metropolises blocked sun from evaporating water.

"In a rural landscape rushing to meet the dietary demands of a rapidly growing urban industrial society," notes Weisman, "farmers no longer had the luxury of raising enough dairy cows and pigs to produce the requisite tons of organic manure", thus historically obligating us to use oil-based fertilizers and pesticides such as DDT (p. 153). (Note that I have yet to make any claims that anti-environmentalists could refute. All of the above are accepted facts of life, acknowledged by thinkers from all across the board.)

Any student of biology (a conservative science, I must add) can quickly assure you of the delicacy of nature. Just like in culture and economics, the efficient cycle of ecology can be off set for the simplest of interventions. The eradication of one species, for example, can lead to the over-population of its prey and eradication of its predators. The stability of the plant life population itself depends on many of these animals. For example, an increase in the population of squirrels can lead to the death of a forest as acorns are swooped before sprouting. Pave a road through the center of a forest and the gene pool of the forest's inhabitants is cut in half, thus negatively effecting its population (pp. 13, 46, 47). "We don't actually have to shoot songbirds to remove them from the sky," states Weisman, "Take away enough of their home or sustenance, and they fall dead on their own" (p. 67). "The balance between ecology and society is exquisitely delicate," stated anthropologist Arthur Demarest (p. 229).

Taking into consideration nature's delicacy, one must also acknowledge the widespread effect that society has had on nature. "Typical human activity," notes Weisman's book, "is more devastating to biodiversity and abundance of local flora and fauna than the worst nuclear power plant disaster." (p. 217) Though 3% of the earth's surface is covered by cities, 12% of the land is cultivated. If one were to included grazing land, almost 1/3 of our land is used to feed us (p. 146). Some developers believe that there is enough land to spare - including one woman who I heard speak during a public hearing who stated that if all of Puerto Rico's landmass was to be divided among its populace that each family would have a few acres to a name. That 2/3 land, I stress, is what provides us with water, clean air, erosion control, and biodiversity. Water doesn't just flow from holes in the ground; they are nurtured by a large system of natural filters.

The earth's former equilibrium, notes Weisman, "depended on a sizable amount of carbon locked away beneath Earth's crust, most of which we've relocated into the atmosphere." (p. 19) Even if one believes that burnt fossil fuels have little or no effect on the atmosphere, one cannot deny that they did represent one of the phases of a lengthy natural earth cycle.

We have carried out plenty of activities without knowing their effects for possibly centuries. Plastics, for example, have not been around long enough for us to understand how they effect the environment (p. 116). Recall that until recently we were aware of the effects of cigarettes and DDT on human health. Mankind has only spent a minuscule fraction of his entire history acknowledging that the world is round. We still do not know all of the effects that a newly built road will have on its environment and its wildlife.

A fascinating aspect of nature is its ability to regenerate. I have seen neighbors and family members of my rural Puerto Rico town struggling for weeks to clear a field with a machete. A few weeks of idleness will return the land to its originally shabby state. "Within just two decades," notes Weisman, "farmland gives way to woodland" (p. 14). "During Nicaragua's Contra War... exhausted lobster beds and sands of Caribbean pine impressively rebounded. That took less than a decade." (p. 183) Sea turtle nesting has also been sighted in the areas of Cyprus abandoned during violent conflict a few decades ago. Weisman's book shows how after a few mere centuries there would be few areas that would still show mankind's mark on the planet.

Nature's efficiency is something than can be studied and mimicked in order to make our current systems as efficient as possible.

Wendell Berry states that "The things that are wrong with agriculture now all come from the human willingness to manipulate nature." A new vision is needed where "the farm will be an imitation of a prairie, not a factory." Early Maya "mimicked the rain forest... Rows of corn and beans would shelter a round cover of melons and squash; fruit trees, in turn, shielded them, and protective patches of the forest itself would be left among fields." (p. 227)

This regenerative capacity is quite impressive. The above examples were all unintentional; imagine the potentials if similar efforts were carried out today intentionally. I myself am not what one would consider a traditional environmentalists: I see no problem with us using up resources and cutting into the land only as long as its done at the same pace as nature's regeneration. If we are consuming more of a species or plant than nature can restock then we are consuming too much of it. The immediate pleasures of over-consumption to the point of exhaustion is not worth the deprivation of future generations to enjoy the same thing. I can see us reaping the benefits of nature in a much more abundance and efficient manner if we move with it instead of against it.