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Cite As: 22 Ecology LQ 325 FOR EDUCATIONAL USE ONLY Copr. © West 2001 No Claim to Orig. U.S. Govt. Works 22 ECGLQ 325 (Cite as: 22 Ecology L.Q. 325) Ecology Law Quarterly 1995 Review Essay *325 LAW AND THE NEW ECOLOGY: EVOLUTION, CATEGORIES, AND CONSEQUENCES Jonathan Baert Wiener [FNa] Copyright © 1995 Ecology Law Quarterly; Jonathan Baert Wiener WESTLAW LAWPRAC INDEX LIT -- Literature Reviews & Analyses Contents Introduction ................................... 325 I. Evolution in Action ............................ 329 II. Evolution in Environmental Law ................. 333 III. Changing the Metaphor for Nature ............... 338 A. Stasis ...................................... 338 B. Separatism .................................. 340 C. The Challenge of the New Ecology ............ 345 IV. Adapting Environmental Law to the New Ecology .. 350 Introduction In a fitting testament to sterling scientific journalism, the 1995 Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction was awarded to a book about ecology. In The Beak of the Finch: A Story of Evolution in Our Time, [FN1] Jonathan Weiner brings to light the wealth of current empirical research demonstrating Darwinian evolution in action. Weiner focuses on the work of Rosemary and Peter Grant, two Princeton biologists who have spent much of the last twenty-odd years in the Galapagos Islands, studying the same species of finches that Charles Darwin saw over a century ago. Through Weiner's reportage, we witness the meticulous work of the Grants' jovially named "International Finch Investigation Unit" to marshal the hard evidence that Darwinian evolution is not merely a speculative theory or an ancient artifact, but that it is real and occurring now, driven ceaselessly by environmental selection pressures, in ways we humans can observe. Weiner's book is more than a biography of the Grants; it is also a tribute to Darwin, a survey of the cutting edge of ecological science today, and, most important, a bold call for a new metaphor for nature. Rejecting the conventional notion that life has settled into a stable equilibrium after millennia of evolution now long past, Weiner counters that, like Darwin's finches, all life on Earth is "in jittery motion. [Life is] alert and nervous in every part, ready to dart off in an instant. Life is always poised for flight." [FN2] To build his case that nature is relentlessly dynamic and that Darwin's hypothesized mechanism for evolution, natural selection, drives that dynamism, Weiner follows closely the marathon research program pursued by the Grants, as well as the research of numerous other evolutionary biologists who are documenting the impact of environmental selection pressures on species from elephants to E. coli. These new studies of evolution in action may not surprise those who have already accepted Darwin's theory. But Weiner points out that about half of the U.S. population does not believe in evolution at all, [FN3] and he argues that the new findings would have been cathartic even to Darwin. Darwin's theory of natural selection as the mechanism for evolution was a scientific revolution in its time. [FN4] Still, Darwin inferred from the present diversity of species only that evolution had occurred *327 in the past. Darwin thought that evolution must be so gradual as to be visible to human observers only in distant retrospect: that current biological conditions change so slowly as to be effectively fixed on any human time scale. Weiner reflects that: "Darwin did not know the strength of his own theory. He vastly underestimated the power of natural selection. Its action is neither rare nor slow. It leads to evolution daily and hourly, all around us, and we can watch." [FN5] The research that Weiner reports is part of a growing body of scientific evidence -- the "new ecology" -- that is changing not only our view of particular species and how they came to be, but our answers to ageless questions: What is nature, how does it work, and what is the human role? By both proving Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection and also challenging Darwin's concession to a relatively static view of nature, the Grants and their colleagues are showing that evolution is both real and rapid, observable in as little as a few years, and driven by changes in environmental conditions. They are suggesting a new way to see nature: dynamic, in motion, tumultuous. [FN6] This transformation of our vision of nature -- from a vision of stable equilibrium to one of perpetual change driven by environmental pressures -- is itself revolutionary, or at least a major aftershock of Darwin's original insight. [FN7] Certainly it challenges the social institutions through which we deal with nature -- chief among them environmental law. For the last several hundred years our expert and lay imaginations have been fixated on a vision of a "balance of nature" in static equilibrium. [FN8] Through the growing body of research that Weiner examines, the new ecology is now subverting and replacing the *328 vision of nature in stable equilibrium with a more realistic and sophisticated vision of nature in change, disturbance, and perpetual flux. [FN9] It is not that the evidence of rapid evolution by natural selection was not there before; it is that " '[p]eople never tried to look. They thought you would have to watch a population a thousand years. But that's changing now.' " [FN10] This revolutionary paradigm shift -- seeing nature with new eyes that enable the same facts to describe a fundamentally different system [FN11] -- is, Weiner argues, vindicating Darwin's theory even beyond Darwin's own expectations. Weiner summarizes: We have barely begun to digest the Darwinian implications of the present moment; we have barely begun to glimpse the degree to which we are all involved in the action and reaction of evolution right now. In this sense the revolution that Darwin began in 1859 is not yet completed. [FN12] Widespread acceptance of a dynamic, nonequilibrium concept of nature, and the application of such a concept in environmental policy, will require not only a body of scientific evidence but also a new metaphor or intuition to replace the deeply ingrained concept of "the balance of nature." Reluctance to accept the dynamic implications of Darwinian evolution derives " 'not from what reason dictates but from the limits of what the imagination can accept.' " [FN13] Changing the metaphors we use to describe nature is itself a defining signal of a revolution in thought. [FN14] Not surprisingly, then, the imagery of a stable equilibrium balance of nature has played a key role in shaping our social institutions for dealing with nature, including our environmental laws. By bringing to imaginable life the new paradigm of dynamism in nature, evolutionary biologists like the Grants, and their storytellers like Weiner, are offering a new vision that will remake how we conceive of the world around us and how we design our environmental laws. Weiner's ambition in The Beak of the Finch is thus to draw from the scientific findings of the new ecology a new metaphor for nature. As the ecologist Daniel Botkin sees it: *329 The potential for us to make progress with environmental issues is limited by the basic assumptions that we make about nature, the unspoken, often unrecognized perspective from which we view our environment. This perspective, ironically in this scientific age, depends on myth and deeply buried beliefs. We have tended to view nature as a Kodachrome still-life, . but nature is a moving picture show . continually changing and complex . [FN15] The ecologist Judy Meyer offers: "Unfortunately, we have not yet developed and popularized an image to replace that of the 'balance of nature.' I suggest 'the dance of nature' as an image that conveys a sense of change and movement in response to a myriad of influences." [FN16] It is on the cusp of this transformation that Weiner writes. He offers his own metaphor for the new view of nature: If we look at the billowing smoke of a volcano from close up, we see intense and rapid motion, enormous and dangerous turbulence. If we look at the eruption from far, far away . ., the smoke seems to hang in the air almost motionless . The evolution of life turns out to be rather like the eruption of a volcano. The closer you look, the more turbulent and dangerous the action; the farther you remove, the more the living world seems fixed and stable, hardly moving at all. [FN17] After briefly reviewing the evidence that Weiner presents for the new science of evolution in action, I consider how this new science and its metaphors will challenge and reshape humanity's chief institution for dealing with nature and our role in it: environmental law. Many of our environmental laws are rooted in a static and separatist conception of the way the world works that is rapidly becoming obsolete in the wake of the new ecology. But there are several signs on the horizon of a legal evolution to meet the challenge of the new ecology. i Evolution in Action The heart of Weiner's book is his affectionate account of the Grants' research program on Daphne Major, a small volcanic island in the Galapagos archipelago. In 1973 the Grants came to Daphne Major to study Darwin's finches -- the thirteen species of finches that *330 Darwin noticed when he visited the Galapagos in 1836. [FN18] The Grants' first visit ultimately grew into the most intensive and thorough study of natural selection yet conducted. [FN19] Darwin was not as thorough. Curiously, Weiner observes, his revolutionary thesis that evolution is driven by natural selection was backed by scant empirical research: Darwin never saw natural selection in action nor observed it creating a new species, [FN20] and even advocates of his theory found the lack of field evidence "pitiful." [FN21] From the early 1900's until even fairly recently, many biologists dismissed Darwin's theory, believing "[e]volution, yes; selection, no." [FN22] Weiner's " Story of Evolution in Our Time" is thus a report from the front lines of evolutionary biology, where painstaking field research is demonstrating that evolution by selection occurs.
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