Gaia and all that 1009

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I have been trying for the last few days to discover a coherent logic towards my feelings on man’s relationship with his environment.  This is proving not to be simple.

The process started when I heard on World Service radio a gentleman from the International Panel on Climate Change discussing their latest report.  As you know, I tend to accept the established opinion on climate change, and rather take the view that if all our industrial activity were not affecting the atmosphere, that would be strange.

But what struck me was that the gentleman said that a pause in warming for the last fifteen years was not significant, as fifteen years was a blip in processes that last over millennia.

Well, that would certainly be very true if you are considering natural climate change.  But we are not – we are considering man-made climate change.  In terms of the period in which the scale of man’s industrial activity has been having a significant impact on the environment, surely fifteen years is a pretty important percentage of that period?  Especially as you might naturally imagine the process to be cumulative – fifteen years at the start when nothing much happened would be more explicable.

Having tucked away that doubt, I started to try to think deeper.  Man is, of course, himself a part of nature.  Anything man does on this planet is natural to this planet.  I do not take the view man should not change his environment – otherwise I should not be sitting in a house.  The question is rather, are we inadvertently making changes to the environment to our own long term detriment?

That rejection of what you might call the Gaia principle – that the environmental status quo is an end in itself – has ramifications.  It is hard to conceptualise our relationship with gases or soil, but easier in terms of animals.  I am not a vegetarian – I am quite happy that we farm and eat cattle, for example – and you might argue that the cattle are pretty successful themselves, symbiotic survivors of a kind.  Do I think other species have a value in themselves?  Is there any harm in killing off a species of insect, other than the fact that biodiversity may be reduced in ways that remove potential future advantages to man, or there may be knock on consequences we know not of that damage man somehow?  I am not quite sure, but in general I seem in practice to take the view that exploitation of other species and substantial distortion of prior ecological balance to suit men’s needs is fine, so presumably the odd extinction is fine too, unless it damages man long term.

I strongly disapprove of hurting animals for sport, and want to see them have the best quality of life possible, preferably wild.  But I like to eat and wear them.  I am not quite sure why it is OK to wear animal skin on our feet or carry it as a bag, but not to wear “fur”.  What is the difference, other than that leather has had the hair systematically rubbed off as part of the process of making it?  A trivial issue, but one that obviously relates to the deeper questions.

Yes I draw a distinction between animals which are intelligent and those which are not.  I would not eat whale or dolphin.  But this does not seem entirely logical – animal intelligence and sensibility is evidently a continuum.  Many animals mourn, for example.  The BBC World Service radio (my main contact with the outside world at present – I have just today found my very, very weak internet connection just about works if I try it  at 5am) informed me a couple of days ago that orang-utans have the ability to think forward and tell others where they will be the next day.  Why cattle and fish are daft enough to eat is hard to justify.

I quite appreciate the disbenefits to man of radically changing his environment, even if it could be done without long term risk to his existence – the loss of beauty, of connection to seasons and forms of behaviour with which we evolved.  But I regard those as important only as losses to man, not because nature is important intrinsically.  In short, if I thought higher seas, no polar bears and no glaciers would not hurt man particularly, I don’t suppose I would have much to say against it.  I fear the potential repercussions are too dangerous to man.  At base, I don’t actually care about a polar bear.

 

 

 

 

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1,009 thoughts on “Gaia and all that”

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  • Passerby

    Someone said:

    Lost for words.

    The current push for “welfare reforms” sanctions/dispossession/unilateral annulment of contract/reneging on promises/irresponsibility galore, have extended to the personnel in the privatised Jobcenter Plus, and or processors in the DWP phone lines only to give their first name (no second name) and to trap the “clients” without any recourse to any escalation, and or redress.

    Only criminals and secret services operate on first name basis, however to produce the best rejection results, the front end processors are left in no doubt that they can get away with their criminal conduct with giving only their first name, as well as no providing any kind of reference number to the individual “clients”. This appalling abuse the human rights of the sick and the unemployed are then further celebrated as per your link. Disgusting cannot describe the revulsion and repugnance of the current treatment of the sick and the jobless.

  • John Goss

    Komodo, what you say is true. It has always been a policy of the right to ‘divide and rule’ against the trades’ union credo of ‘united we stand’. But tearing something down before it has been built is not the answer. That way it never gets built. I should like to hear your alternative action for the left.

  • Ben Franklin -Machine Gun Preacher (unleaded version)

    John/Komo;

    Unions in the US got off to a bad start primarily because the opposition was so brutal in their tactics.

    Hoffa and the Teamsters needed muscle to offset the thug and corrupt law enforcement beatings and deaths. Organized crime became an enforcer and bent the spine of the collective bargaining infancy.

  • Someone

    John Goss

    I saw this on another blog.

    “Sectarianism, has become the formula for defeat by division.”

  • Komodo

    I should like to hear your alternative action for the left.

    Better PR for a start. Why does the devil have all the loudest tunes? I was impressed by the PCS link above; it’s obvious (and has been for some time) that DSS staff are most unhappy about what they are required to do and the lack of discretion they are permitted to do it. This kind of thing needs to be on the front page of the Daily Mirror (and the Sun), not as a link in the dying pages of a blog entry on something else.

    No, I don’t know how.

  • A Node

    Passerby 2 Oct, 2013 – 2:56 pm

    “A Node, why did you feel the need to respond to your interrogation, about your comment? Don’t you think that by responding you are in fact perpetuating the cycle of “entitlement”?”

    ”

    I guess you’re referring to me answering Technicolour’s questions. He seemed to be mis-interpreting something Mark said to me. I explained the misunderstanding. I saw an opportunity to reduce dischord and I took it.
    Peace and love, brother.

  • Komodo

    Very true, Ben. Assisted by the ability of a US employer to move at will to a different state where labo(u)r expectations were lower and regulation was different. Now, of course, he moves his production to Thailand or India, like everyone else. We hear a lot about patriotism from these employers, don’t we?

  • Komodo

    Thanks, Someone. And you can see that this particular manager is incapable of thinking in anything but bollocks, as a bonus.

  • Passerby

    A Node said;

    I saw an opportunity to reduce dischord and I took it.
    Peace and love, brother.

    I respect your thoughts, and more so your humanity. Let us hope your kindness and humility is catching. 🙂

    ===

    Herman Wallace is not a political prisoner, and his human rights were not abused by being kept in solitary (he spent 23 hours out of 24 in his cell) for forty years. Further, his conviction getting overturned, is not indicative of a broken down justice system that is used to suppress, and proscribe any kind of “deviant” (ie self-awareness/thinking for oneself/preoccupation with justice for all) thought. Black Panther Herman Wallace freed after 40 years in solitary confinement

    He had been an active member of the Black Panther movement and had organised prison protests, demanding desegregation and better protection of inmates against abuses, before his murder conviction.

    At the time, the jail had no black guards and a reputation as one of the most violent in the US.

    Mr Wallace, now 71, spent four decades confined to a tiny cell for 23 hours a day.

  • John Goss

    I’ve been arguing at Left Unity meetings that united socialism can only work when we control the media. Everyone seems aware of this. The trouble is we don’t so in the meantime we have to keep raising awareness that what people see on the BBC, ITV, NBC and all Reuters-owned shit-shovers is not the truth. That needs a vehicle of some description but most people are content to sit and watch a nice soap, which is also part of the brainwashing. Unless some initiative is taken it will be the same old, same old . . .

  • Ben Franklin -Machine Gun Preacher (unleaded version)

    ” Unless some initiative is taken it will be the same old, same old . . .”

    If you’re talking about the general population, I’m afraid that’s not gonna happen. Average Joe/Jane find fear in the unknown, and the bare equilibrium they have is more comfortable, than a disruption which has some imagined inconvenience before it bears fruit they can appreciate.

    You’re right about the Media. They are culpable to an extent for not placing more emphasis on making knowledgeable viewers/readers, but the Public is responsible for their fundamental lack of curiosity.

  • Kempe

    “I’ve been arguing at Left Unity meetings that united socialism can only work when we control the media. ”

    and are then in a position to stifle all dissent.

    Thanks for that.

  • Ben Franklin -Machine Gun Preacher (unleaded version)

    The Telegraph blames the Left (?) and Obama for the shutdown.

    “The American Left’s hatred for all things conservative has been on full display in Washington in recent days, with the White House and its allies in Congress heaving with anger and indignation over mounting opposition to the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, and growing calls to defund it. President Obama has blamed Tea Party Republicans for what he calls a right-wing “ideological crusade” prompting the federal government shutdown.”

    http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/nilegardiner/100238487/us-government-shutdown-barack-obama-looks-like-a-bitter-petty-and-partisan-president/

  • AlcAnon

    http://edition.cnn.com/2013/10/02/politics/government-shutdown-intelligence/

    Government shutdown ‘extremely damaging’ to U.S. intelligence operations

    (CNN) — The government shutdown is “extremely damaging” to U.S. intelligence operations, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said Wednesday.

    Clapper noted that he has worked in the intelligence field for 50 years, and “never seen anything like this.”

    The shutdown “seriously damages our ability to protect the safety and security of this nation,” he told a Senate panel.

    The law allows intelligence agencies to hold on to the employees needed to protect against “imminent threat to life or property,” he noted. Following that guide, approximately 70% of employees were furloughed, he said.

    “We do not consider any of our employees ‘non-essential,'” and officials had to make “very painful choices” about who would be furloughed, he added.

  • Ben Franklin -Machine Gun Preacher (unleaded version)

    I think my 5:26 is a 10/1 shot, AA.

    I find it rather pathetic as well as suspicious.

  • Fred

    “I’ve been arguing at Left Unity meetings that united socialism can only work when we control the media. Everyone seems aware of this. The trouble is we don’t so in the meantime we have to keep raising awareness that what people see on the BBC, ITV, NBC and all Reuters-owned shit-shovers is not the truth. That needs a vehicle of some description but most people are content to sit and watch a nice soap, which is also part of the brainwashing. Unless some initiative is taken it will be the same old, same old . . .”

    The first time I read it I didn’t believe it, thought I must have miss interpreted it.

    I read it again and it still seems like you think you have the right to control everyone else. Nobody should control the media and the media should control nobody. Nobody has the right to force their beliefs and politics onto everyone else by controlling how they get their information.

    The road to Hell is paved with people who were so goddamned sure they were the only people in the world got it right they decided this gave them the right to force their beliefs onto everyone else.

  • John Goss

    People need to ignore troublemakers and known trolls like Kempe and read the alternative news. Yesterday I posted the link to the recall of the Nepalese ambassador, a female ambassador, like Craig Murray, who has had the guts to speak out about the ‘open jail’ called Qatar.

    http://new-power.org/2013/09/27/nepal-envoy-recalled-after-qatar-open-jail-remarks/

    Today Gilbert Mercier, editor-in-chief of News Junkie Post analyses conditions in the two most despicable sheikdoms, Qatar and Saudi Arabia. It is outlets like this, and Global Research, that need to be promoted against the Reuters conglomerate of sewage-spreaders.

    http://newsjunkiepost.com/2013/10/02/saudi-arabia-and-qatar-kingdoms-of-slave-labor-human-rights-abuses/

    Incidentally the High Court judge, Lord Justice Nicholas Phillips (Old Nick), who presided over the appeal of Julian Assange against extradition to Sweden, an appeal which was rejected, took up the key position as head of the judiciary in Qatar at an enormous salary. So fat chance of justice for the poor people there.

  • Ben Franklin -Machine Gun Preacher (unleaded version)

    AA; What is the ‘JET’ leading the comet, an aberration?

  • AlcAnon

    http://edition.cnn.com/2013/10/01/politics/venezuela-diplomats-expelled/index.html?hpt=hp_t3

    (CNN) — The United States is expelling three Venezuelan diplomats, including the South American country’s top envoy in Washington, the State Department said Tuesday night.

    Calixto Ortega, Venezuela’s charge d’affaires in Washington, and two other diplomats have been declared personae non gratae in response to Venezuela’s decision Monday to expel three U.S. diplomats, a State Department spokesperson said in a written statement provided to CNN.

    They have 48 hours to leave the United States.

    On Monday, Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro announced he was expelling three U.S. diplomats and accused them of conspiring to destabilize his government.

    The Venezuelan leader accused the group of diplomats of meeting with right-wing political opponents of his government, financing their activities and encouraging them to sabotage the country’s electrical system and its economy — accusations that the State Department has repeatedly denied.

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