Date: Tue, 24 Feb 98 2:42:49 EST From: boddhisatva <kbevans-AT-panix.com> Subject: Re: M-TH: Ecology and "value free" Marxism To whom..., Comrade Proyect firmly places himself in the PETA camp with this missive. The shamans have told him to protect the environment, but he seems only to have heard the message as it pertains to the big, majestic creatures. Of course this is because his views are not based on science. Science tells us that the wee beasties are the ones to worry about. Louis cries about dead bald eagles while a hundred species of nematodes go unmourned. Of course it's ridiculous to say that pollution simply "changes' the environment. Pollution stresses the environment and it kills environments. The problem is to rationally assay what nutrient cycles are threatened, how many species are threatened, how unique and interconnected these species are, and whether these species can be preserved even if displaced. Then you minimize the damage, maximize the benefit and avoid *permanent* damage at all costs. That is real environmentalism. Lou's environmentalism makes arguments about fishing swordfish into extinction by fishing out the population of large adults (you can't) in order to preach a radical anti-meat Marxism. It's stupid. Let the fishermen fish and go broke, I say. Let their rigs rust out and fall to the bottom of the ocean and let their children go hungry. Scientific American published an excellent article for environmentalists to take note of (I can't find the cite..., rats). It was a study by a forest ecologist who espoused, strangely enough, allowing people to cut down all the mature mahogany tress they want, rather than trying to set up large reserves against logging. The SCIENTIST realized that you can't kill the species by cutting down the old-growth individuals, and that if you try and stop local peasants from supplementing their income with mahogany, they resort to clear-cutting and burn agriculture. Of course it is disturbing to people to see all those huge mahogany trees go, but not if they remember that there are ten times the number of small ones that no one is interested in cutting down. They won't be suitable for the sawmill for a hundred years. Of course idealistic green reformists object to all logging and can't be nudged from their naive stances. Real ecologists are opposed to clear-cutting and do what's necessary to stop that scourge - even if old-growth trees have to be sacrificed. The problem is that people are not value-neutral enough. They get excited about huge trees and big animals, but forget that little plants and bugs are the bulk of the eco-system. peace --- from list marxism-thaxis-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
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