Welcoming in a New Year is as good a time as any for reflection. Rather than make traditional resolutions or goals (I've done my fair share of reflection recently), I've decided to focus briefly on a single but not insignificant issue: survival. All life wants to survive (unless it's ill), because that is its common purpose. Some human lives are more concerned with saving certain other lives (human, animal, plant) or, more generally, saving the planet. Does the planet need "saving", or do we?
In the recently televised Earth: The Power of the Planet, a BBC series with Dr Iain Stewart, it was posed that the Earth was a rarity beyond popular recognition. A convincing argument was presented by citing various cosmological conditions that might prove Earth unique even in an infinite universe:
- The right distance from the sun for water to exist in a liquid state;
- The right mass to produce enough gravity to retain an atmosphere;
- The right moon to provide climatic stability (it reduces the planetary wobble that would otherwise cause extreme and frequent seasonal shifts);
- The right type of star (slow-burning and thus long-living);
- A nearby giant neighbour (Jupiter) whose massive gravity well deflects cosmic missiles.
Perhaps there were other characteristics too, but those are the ones I recall mentioned in the program. Such conditions are postulated as essential to "give life a chance". Although it must be said that these may be the conditions required to support "our kind of life"—alien requirements may be quite different. But the long and short of it is that we (our planet and all its life forms), alone or not, are undoubtedly unique. Unique things are generally worth saving. It follows that to be considered "worth saving" implies existential danger.
The final episode of Earth: The Power of the Planet described evidence that Earth has already survived a number of catastrophic events during its long history—such as metor impacts, ice ages, and polar reversal. However, from the fossil record such events can be interpreted as a stimulus to evolution (we mammals were given a boost by dino doom, for example). Reassuringly, Earth can apparently heal itself within a few million years, no overall harm done. What an odd predicament: we need danger in order to evolve.
There are tenuous reports of an acceleration in human evolution. Whether true or not, is the current pace fast enough to cope with the pace of change we are causing to our planet? You'd think as a species we'd be pretty smart by now, and able to fully recognize the danger we are in (and furthermore act on it). The Darwin Awards appear to refute this: if you're not familiar, they're given posthumously to people who deselect their own incompetent genetic material from the gene pool through acts of stupidity. Stupid people having been removing their defective attributes from the gene pool for many generations, but we don't seem to be getting any smarter, and continue making the same mistakes. Is natural selection therefore our best hope for survival? Is intelligent design, for that matter?
What about all the people "going green" and trying to save the daisies? It isn't the daisies that need saving, it's little Miss Daisy next door (or her descendants) that face the danger of extinction. Earth will go on without us, recovering from our interference, and somehow that's a comforting thought.
Yes, I know the above photo is of a dandelion flower. I didn't have a daisy in my collection, so sue me.
P.S. Happy New Year!
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Happy New Year :)
Very good points and question.
Have you checked out "idiocracy" at the video store? For all we know, going green may indeed be futile. Why worry, spend extra money and effort on going green? Miss Daisy's great great great grand daughters?
I'm up for being conservative with resources and making an effort where possible. It's just that right now certain things are still prohibitively expensive and/or pretty new to market; and this is not the house to upgrade in that sense.
Some of the things that have always interested me are survival techniques and more recently also going back to basics and conserving / living green. If you are (suddenly) without power, water, creature comfort xyz for a few days, it makes you think a little. We sometimes talk about having a remote place in case things go 'south' where we can live off the grid and with proper planning and scaling down might be able to live semi-sustainably. There was a guy who retired into a cabin he built himself with hand tools, somewhere in Alaska and lived there by himself for 20 years or so. A plane would drop off some supplies a couple times a year. Powerful stuff and pretty inspiring too. "Alone in the wilderness" We bought the DVD. I think I may very well build a cabin at some point. Might go crazy from solitude ;) but it would be interesting to build it.
Unfortunately 6 billion people can't have a cabin in the wilderness icerabbit, or live a sustainable lifestyle. The mass market/ global economy is a double-edged sword.
Our year in earthquake-prone Wellington convinced us to make some survival preparations in case of a break in the fragile chain that supports our non-wilderness existence. "Civil defense" in the UK is practically invisible, but NZ is much better organized. We followed most of the EQC suggestions in case of fuel rationing (thus inability to go shopping) or flooding (clean water rationing)—both of which have happened in the UK since I've been here.
You might think this funny, but over Xmas while my wife was in Germany the queue (this is Britain) to get into the local supermarket stretched back 2 roundabouts. I aborted my supply run and broke into the tinned reserves in our emergency kit!
Back to the point: we're fragile, not the daisies. I sometimes wonder to want extent our technology would protect us (compared to the rest of the animal kingdom) during/ after a cataclysmic event. I suspect most technology would simply cease to function, and that we might as well hide our nakedness under a pile of flower petals.
I would've turned around too instead of waiting for hours. There's nothing I would want to eat that will keep me in line for hours. Plan B. Crackers, spread, cheese & wine ;)
We live indeed in a very fragile society / eco-system. I doubt technology would help very long. Whatever runs on fuel or batteries can only run so long. Depending on the type and location of the event there are bound to be at least a number of services affected for months. Huge amounts of money have been spent under the homeland security umbrella (quite a bit of it not so wisely), but it is not monetarily possible to equip all public services for catastrophic events and have them on stand by. Maybe if the US were not engaged overseas and not hugely indebted.
We've seen what a hurricane can do to a city. What a tsunami can do to whole regions. The sad part of society, shown with some of the hurricanes has been that quite a number of people think the government should step in on day 1 and provide them all with all kinds of amenities and luxuries. Despite living in a hurricane zone, with an active hurricane warning ... some people had no food, no plan, ... Unbelievable.
Truth, we personally don't have emergency supplies either (we probably should) but are pretty flexible and pro-active. We can go without shopping for many days. Should there be an ice storm here, we have an emergency generator ready and depending on how bad the situation is, with moderation and zoning off some areas of the house, I should be able to keep the house from freezing for several days, at least. ( in a region like this, one should have a heating source that's not dependent on electricity, but this old house isn't easily retrofitted with a couple fire places ) Creatively one could join up with neighbors. Drain the pipes. Heat one house a bit instead of two.
But, generally speaking, it is sad how much of society lives day to day, without any concept nor preparation for a stormy day.