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Politics : The Environmentalist Thread -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: average joe who wrote (24780)	6/2/2009 10:46:40 AM
From: Wharf Rat	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 36917

It's just you. Scientist Blasts Thinking Of Nature As 'Externality' A popular TV scientist blasted an economic system in which nature is dismissed as a mere "externality" Monday during an appearance at the Greening the Heartland conference in Detroit. He received a standing ovation at the end of his remarks. David Suzuki, host of Canadian TV's "The Nature of Things," said he had an epiphany of just how fatally flawed our current economic system is in a confrontation at a British Columbia forest with a forestry executive. The executive told him the forest had no value unless it was chopped down and sold. That world view doesn't even consider the fact that the forest takes carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and replaces it with oxygen. That its roots hold the soil in place so the salmon can spawn in the river below. That forest, Suzuki said, "provides services that keep animals like us alive, yet economists consider them irrelevant to the economy and dismiss them as an 'externality.' That is crazy. It is absolutely disastrous. What planet is this economy on?" Suzuki also decried an economy built on the need for permanent growth forever. "Not only is that not possible, but it is suicidal," Suzuki said. Suzuki spent the first part of his talk describing a biosphere in crisis. First, the oceans -- Suzuki said there's a reason why the fish on the menu at the restaurant are changing. More than 90 percent of the big fish like yellowfin tuna have been sucked out of the oceans, leaving smaller fish once dismissed as junk to be turned into chefs' creations. Pretty soon, Suzuki said, we'll be down to sardines and jellyfish. Meanwhile, the size and duration of ocean dead zones and huge islands of plastic in the oceans continue to grow. The oceans are also getting more acidic as excess carbon dioxide into the atmosphere turn into carbonic acid, "and the consequences of that on the food chain look horrendous." Elsewhere, 80 percent of the forests on the planet since 1900 are gone. And "there's nowhere you can go on this planet to escape the toxic debris of our industrial might." Suzuki called homo sapiens a "local tribal animal" for most of its history, suddenly faced with the huge burden on one limited biosphere of 6.7 billion members. There are now more human beings on Earth than rabbits, rats, mice or any other mammal. Suzuki said mankind's success was its invention of the idea of the future, "the idea that we could change tomorrow by what we do today," yet for the past 40 years "scientists have been telling us we are on a very dangerous path," and many people's response has been, "'We can't afford that' or 'I don't believe you.'" Asked Suzuki: "Why don't we pay attention to scientists any more?" Suzuki blamed three factors: first, a concered disinformation campaign conducted by polluters and spread on the Internet. Suzuki said that whenever he meets someone who still thinks global warming is bunk, "I ask where they got their information, and they say, 'There's a Web site,'" Suzuki said. "But you have to find out who sponsors these Web sites. Mobil Exxon put tens of millions of dollars into a campaign of disinformation, using the same people who used to work for the tobacco industry." Second, Suzuki blamed attention spans that are getting shorter and shorter. He said the next Web hit will probably feature messages even shorter than Twitter, and said "The Nature of Things" has been forced to get shallower, faster paced and sexier to attract viewers. Finally, Suzuki blamed "a huge shift in the way we live." In 1900 there were 1.4 billion human beings and only seven global cities of over a million inhabitants. Most of us were involved in farming, "and when you're a farmer you know how utterly dependent we are on nature." By 2000, humanity numbered 6 billion, and there were 400-plus cities of over a million. And "in a big city it's easy to think we're not like other species, we don't need nature, we create our own environment." Suzuki warned that humanity is in for a rude awakening if it thinks it can keep expanding and using up nature ad infinitum. But he also sounded as though he's optimistic that greener policies can turn things around short of some Malthusian Final Solution. "We have created the illusion that everything's still all right by using the rightful legacy of our children and grandchildren," he said. "We need a new economy that puts above all else the state of the planet that keeps us all alive and healthy." He said people have physical, social and spiritual needs, and those all need to be part of a new economic model. Suzuki's books include "The Sacred Balance" and "Good News For A Change: Hope For A Troubled Planet." Â© MMIX WWJ Radio, All Rights Reserved. wwj.com