Interventionist Conservation Travis Kavulla

2 2

he cult of pristine wilderness more: his book’s eponymous God is a cultural construction, species. Lynas is concerned with Tand a relatively new one,” solving the large-scale man-made writes reporter Emma Marris in her ecological problems that he believes new book-length essay, Rambunctious pose a serious threat to the planet’s Garden. Contrary to environmental- future. But his argument is unortho- ists who seek to restore or conserve dox. “Until now, environmentalism “pristine” enclaves of nature from has been mostly about reducing our human encroachment, Marris argues interference with nature,” he writes. that nature is everywhere, from the “My thesis is the reverse: playing barren Arctic God (in the sense to the birds in a Rambunctious Garden: Saving of being intelli- suburban back- Nature in a Post-Wild World gent designers) yard. Nowhere By Emma Marris at a planetary is nature static Bloomsbury ~ 2011 ~ 210 pp. level is essential and unaltered by $25 (cloth) if creation is not human beings; to be irreparably The God Species: Saving the Planet ecosystems are in the Age of Humans damaged or even plastic, constant- By Mark Lynas destroyed by ly changing and National Geographic ~ 2011 ~ 280 pp. humans unwit- adapting to new $25 (cloth) tingly deploying conditions, and our newfound to the activities of different plants powers in disastrous ways. At this and animals. This constant flux in late stage, false humility is a more the earth’s rambunctious ecosystems urgent danger than hubris.” ought to give us pause when consid- Marris and Lynas are both voices in ering the impact that Homo sapiens, a growing chorus of environmental- the gardening animal, has had on the ists who acknowledge an important environment, both before and after and active role for human beings, and the advent of modern technology seek to solve environmental problems and industry. not simply by restraining human If man is nature’s gardener in activity but rather by harnessing Marris’s work, for climate-change human innovation and creativity. By activist Mark Lynas we are even dispelling the myth of the “pristine

Summer 2012 ~ 117

Copyright 2012. All rights reserved. See www.TheNewAtlantis.com for more information. Travis Kavulla wilderness” and recognizing the role pre-industrial human beings on their that man has played in shaping the environments throughout history. natural world for millennia, Marris The idea that indigenous peoples forces the environmental movement lived in a timeless balance with their to articulate more sensible aims than environment is based on a simplis- recreating a simulacrum of ecosys- tic and inaccurate ideal vision of tems that purportedly existed prior a golden age before the arrival of to the advent of industrial civiliza- modernity and industry. For exam- tion. Lynas, for his part, argues for ple, while Native Americans did not “technofixes” to save the planet. He reach the technological development takes a dim view of the hard-line of industrial Europe, they did form belief that solving major environmen- impressive civilizations that exer- tal problems will require “a world- cised a remarkable scale of control wide change in values, a program of over the land. Marris observes that mass education to reduce people’s the mound-building peoples who desires to consume...‘smashing the lived near modern-day St. Louis lived power’ of transnational corporations, in “a London-sized city that flour- or even the abolition of capitalism ished from about a.d. 950 to 1250.” itself.” The welcome efforts of these Archaeologists have found evidence two authors to correct the errors that the population of the Americas and prejudices of environmental- at the landing of Columbus was at ism are signs of a slowly maturing least comparable to that of Europe. environmental movement that seeks But centuries later, when the inte- practical solutions for the future, not rior of the continent was explored grand ideological transformations to by Europeans, perhaps 95 percent restore some mythic past. of these people had perished from diseases that had been brought from arris locates the genesis of Europe and outpaced exploration. Mthe pristine-nature cult in Such large populations cannot but America with nineteenth-century indelibly shape the nature that sur- transcendentalists like Thoreau and rounds them. Emerson and with later naturalists The people we now consider like John Muir and Aldo Leopold. indigenous to North America are For these writers, European indus- themselves relatively new arrivals, trial civilization had despoiled the coming to the continent some thir- natural beauty of America, which had teen to fifteen thousand years ago. before then existed in harmony with There is growing evidence that this the indigenous peoples. The central arrival brought with it “prehistoric problem of this view is that it is false. anthropogenic change,” including It fails to acknowledge the impact of the extinction of some of America’s

118 ~ The New Atlantis

Copyright 2012. All rights reserved. See www.TheNewAtlantis.com for more information. Interventionist Conservation largest animals. Marris catalogues a terated and timeless form whatever list of the megafauna that could be they first glimpsed upon their arrival, found at the first moment of man- while ignoring the influence Native kind’s arrival: “wild horses, mam- Americans had had. This view of moths, mastodons, sixteen groups of nature shaped the environmental pol- ground sloths, the glyptodon (some- icies of the 1960s. In his influential thing like a four-thousand-pound 1963 report for the U.S. National angry tortoise with a spiked mace for Park Service, “Wildlife Management a tail), short-faced bears that would in the National Parks,” A. Starker make polar bears look puny, camels, Leopold — the son of naturalist Aldo saber-toothed tigers, lions, and chee- Leopold — recommended that “each tahs.” And, Marris says, indigenous park be maintained, or where neces- peoples around the world brought sary recreated, as nearly as possible not only extinctions, but also exot- in the condition that prevailed when ic new species to the environments the area was first visited by the white they settled in millennia past. By the man.” When the Wilderness Act of time Captain Cook landed in Hawaii 1964 was passed, Leopold’s vision in 1778, he found a place that was, in of wilderness as a pristine environ- Marris’s words, “very much shaped ment was insinuated into the law: “A by the Polynesians who had been liv- wilderness, in contrast with those ing there for at least one thousand areas where man and his own works years: a semi-domesticated landscape dominate the landscape, is hereby filled with species the Polynesians recognized as an area where the earth brought with them, including taro, and its community of life are untram- sugar cane, pigs, chickens, and rats, meled by man, where man himself is and missing others, including at least a visitor who does not remain.” There fifty species of birds, who were hunt- are now 757 so-called “wildernesses” ed out by the first arrivals.” Even so, in the United States, covering a com- the islands still manage to be home bined area about three times the size of today to many species found nowhere the state of New York. But the theory else. of wilderness that gave rise to these These examples of the history of lands’ designation does not recognize human impact on the natural envi- the role of Native Americans who ronment prior to the age of European had lived on and shaped the “untram- exploration and the modern indus- meled” areas that the Wilderness Act trial era are important because they aimed to preserve. show that early European and later This notion of preserving nature at American explorers, with whom a “holy baseline,” as Marris calls it, written history of the Americas origi- is not simply historically and scien- nates, set down as nature in its unadul- tifically problematic; it can also lead

Summer 2012 ~ 119

Copyright 2012. All rights reserved. See www.TheNewAtlantis.com for more information. Travis Kavulla to poor environmental policy deci- what less concerned with flora and sions. An example Marris gives is the fauna, and less convinced of the prop- U.S. war on Phragmites, a supposedly osition that nature in its state of per- invasive reed brought to America petual change is resilient to human from Europe in the eighteenth or activities. He is also tackling a bigger nineteenth century that has come to problem: not just the preservation of dominate certain marshlands along nature here and there, but “saving the eastern seaboard. According to the planet” from a myriad of global recent studies, Marris points out, ecological problems. Unlike Marris, the Phragmites reed was a common who highlights the ways human species in America until a few tens beings have shaped nature for mil- of thousands of years ago, when lennia, Lynas argues that modern ground sloths ate the reed to local man has a special mission of stew- extinction. So when the very similar ardship because, unlike other species European lineage of the reed was and unlike our prehistoric ancestors, inadvertently reintroduced to the who relied on the combustion of Americas not so long in biological woody materials found above ground, terms after its demise, it should have modern humans have unlocked the been unsurprising — one might even energy reserves that otherwise would say natural — that the reed found and have remained in situ: coal, oil, natural filled its earlier niche. “Learning to gas, and other fossil fuels. Burning love exotic species” — species that these sources of carbon at the expect- have been recently introduced to an ed rate will result in “planetary-scale ecosystem — should be a goal of mod- destruction and perhaps a mortal ern conservationists, Marris argues. threat to civilization.” If a creature is going extinct locally, This is rather shrill, to say the due to predation, climate change, or least. Climate change will pose chal- habitat loss, moving the species to lenges for civilization in the decades somewhere it can thrive should be ahead, but it is “a manageable risk, considered part of the “rambunctious not an existential crisis,” as Jim gardening” necessary to achieve the Manzi explained in these pages (see goal of preserving biodiversity in a “Conservatives, Climate Change, and changing world, not a problematic the Carbon Tax,” Summer 2008). “invasion” of one species into an oth- Marris, for her part, recognizes that erwise pristine wilderness. climate change will, depending on its magnitude, reorder life on the he work of Mark Lynas, an planet, but does not speak of it as Tactivist who once assaulted the a catastrophic disaster. Indeed, in “skeptical environmentalist” Bjørn recognizing the impermanence and Lomborg with a cream pie, is some- instability of ecosystems, she tends

120 ~ The New Atlantis

Copyright 2012. All rights reserved. See www.TheNewAtlantis.com for more information. Interventionist Conservation toward an almost postmodern envi- Lynas embraces nuclear power as an ronmentalism that lacks a clearly alternative to greenhouse-gas-emit- defined mission, looking instead to a ting fossil fuels. “menu of new goals,” no single one of By advocating “technofixes” for which will be valid in all situations. environmental problems, Lynas gores Lynas’s thesis, on the other hand, another sacred cow by champion- is that the “Earth system has inher- ing the genetic engineering of crops, ent ecological limits within it” that reversing another position on which cannot be crossed without plunging he was previously in line with envi- the planet into ecological cataclysm. ronmental orthodoxy. If crops could These “planetary boundaries” num- be genetically modified to fix nitrogen ber nine in all, from biodiversity loss directly from the atmosphere, rath- to climate change to the nitrogen er than requiring farmers to spread cycle (these already crossed), to yet- nitrogen fertilizers across their fields, to-be-exceeded limits on freshwater there would be less of another green- use, ocean acidification, and ozone house gas in the atmosphere and depletion. Despite his sometimes less risk of algae blooms and dead alarmist rhetoric, Lynas deserves zones in waterways and oceans. Here, credit for seeking solutions to the too, Lynas adopts a view contrary environmental problems he is con- to the fashionable assumption that cerned with — solutions that embrace large-scale agriculture, genetic modi- rather than restrict human ingenuity fication, and fertilizer and pesticides and economic activity. He admirably generally are a problem to be over- comes out against population control come. He writes, “The key reason why as a method for accomplishing envi- free-choice organic agriculture...will ronmental goals like curbing green- always be a marginal activity globally house gas emissions. And unlike many is because it uses much more land other environmentalists, he does not to feed the same number of people.” recommend restricting global energy While nitrogen-based fertilizers have consumption in a world where billions upset the nitrogen balance (one of the are still deprived of electricity, fuels “planetary boundaries” Lynas is con- for heating, and many of the other cerned with), without these fertilizers amenities that people in the devel- or some other technological solution oped world take for granted. Instead for providing food crops with nitro- of simply haranguing energy users gen, the Malthusian limitations on into cutting back their consumption, human population would indeed be a Lynas writes that the key to fighting reality. And Lynas, unlike all too many climate change is providing realistic radical antihumanist environmental- alternative sources of energy. And, ists over the past two centuries, does in a reversal of his previous stance, not see this as a good thing.

Summer 2012 ~ 121

But despite the pragmatic solutions arris’s and Lynas’s works are that Lynas offers, keeping the earth Memblematic of a recent turn within the “planetary boundaries” toward realism in the environmental he describes may be more difficult movement, or at least in some quar- than he imagines. As he observes, ters of it. Consider that both authors cutting carbon dioxide global emis- call for privatizing or monetizing at sions in half by 2050 “would require least some resources that are often the construction of 12,000 nuclear regarded as public or outside the power stations — with one plant com- market: Lynas calls for water and car- ing online every single day between bon markets, and Marris makes the now and then.” This is simply not case for “ecosystem services.” Their going to happen. If Lynas is cor- endorsement of private markets is a rect, we are on a collision course. notable shift, and has been employed International agreements on cli- only sparingly in what have ended mate change have been feckless and up being some of humanity’s largest disappointing, Lynas observes. It is environmental success stories, such as impractical to think that the leaders the sulfur-oxides trading scheme that of dozens of countries can be con- led to an enormous reduction in acid vinced to accept limitations today in rain in the United States. The envi- order to prevent a costly disaster in ronmental movement, in some quar- the long term. And although he con- ters, is recognizing that righteous cedes that unforeseen technological indignation toward all industry is no advances — nuclear fission, nitrogen- solution at all. In the past decade espe- fixing fertilizers, genetic engineer- cially, environmental groups that once ing of crops — have overturned some would not have dreamed of sullying commonly held assumptions about themselves by allying with a for-profit environmental doom and gloom, he enterprise have begun to cooperate misses one logical conclusion of his with industry. Environmentalists need thinking: that as climate disaster to “become comfortable with...big comes closer, a “technofix” may arise corporations,” Lynas writes. And no that, say, removes carbon-dioxide less than the Nature Conservancy’s from the atmosphere. Merely assum- chief scientist, Peter Kareiva, chides ing that man created the problem, fellow environmentalists for “scolding that he is a “God species” capable of capitalism” and refusing to partner impressive things, should not lead us with corporations. As he remarked to infer that the best solution is the in a recent article for Breakthrough costly one we can implement today; Journal, “By pitting people against the best solution may be the one that nature, conservationists actually cre- comes when necessity gets around to ate an atmosphere in which people see mothering invention. nature as the enemy.”

122 ~ The New Atlantis

Marris points to Costa Rica as an of nature to dedicate scarce resources example of putting a dollar sign on toward saving. conservation. Costa Rican farmers Still, despite the welcome turn are paid generously to prevent defor- toward realism represented by Mar estation, and the country sells itself ris’s and Lynas’s books, the feeling as an ecotourists’ paradise. Although that there is something to “save” still neither Marris nor Lynas is willing to pervades the environmental move- go as far as the libertarian and conser- ment, as evidenced by the verb’s vative free-market environmentalists appearance in the titles of each work. would like, they do sound rather like As Marris makes clear, certain things those Western Republicans who have cannot be saved; our view of nature long championed the view of land use must include acceptance of it as ever- that agriculture is not the enemy of changing. Climate changes and extinc- conservation but its natural ally. As tions happen, and we do our best Rep. Denny Rehberg (R.-Mont., now to identify why, to us, nature is and running for a Senate seat) said on the ought to be important, paying com- floor of the House of Representatives: mensurately for its conservation and “I understand that when you have structured reordering. Lynas’s proph- undergrazed grass, it kills grass as ecy of an impending catastrophe and much as overgrazed grass. I notice concomitant plea to “save the planet,” that when you have timber, when you meanwhile, sounds like a generous have underthinned timber, it creates helping of fatalism, tempered by a the same devastation as clearcutting.” sense of the possible. Lynas undoubt- Foresters and ranchers have an incen- edly is on to something in his calls for tive to avoid the extremes of underuse environmentalists to use (rather than and overuse, but the protection of land repudiate) the system. But if things and of the plants and animals that live are as dire as he says, it seems clear on it has no value to man as a practi- that our economics, our politics, and cal matter until prices are attached to our science and technology are not up them. It has taken the environmental to the task of the grand “saving” the movement, with its naïve belief that crisis would require. all of nature is priceless, a long time to acknowledge the need to make Travis Kavulla is chairman of the the difficult decisions necessary about Montana Public Service Commission. which species, wildernesses, and parts All views expressed here are his own.

Summer 2012 ~ 123