Countering Nature’s Self-Regulating Hypothesis
January 12, 2009
Thanks to reader Richard for the news tip!
Environmentalism, at least in my perception and I’m sure I’m not alone, has taken on a character of evilness, a movement that binds our freedoms, stifles our economic growth and leaves us powerless. This is nothing new when we rediscover history. Those who have gained the upper hand by convincing the people that they are destroying the planet we live on, received the ultimate power to control and manipulate the people, never ending in anything good.
We constantly debate about our environment, from the current, sometimes hysterical, theory of man-made global warming, to the wildlife that surrounds us. Inevitably in those discussions arises the role of man. Are we the cause or the cure?
The most popular hypothesis for the modern day environmentalist is the one that declares that Nature is self-regulating, that left alone it would do just fine. This same hypothesis paints man as a negative influence that needs extreme regulation, restrictions and in some circles removal. This hypothesis was made famous in the 1970s by a scientist, James Lovelock, and was known as the Gaia Hypothesis.
I have never been able to understand how man can create these theories and hypotheses while attempting to exclude man from the picture. I have my own theories but I’m sure none would hold up to the scrutiny of the scientific community. Whether we believe man is the cause or the cure, we can’t deny the fact that we are here.
Before I address this further let me say this. In examination of the Bible, we discover that the sequence of creation began with an earth that was dark and appears to be lifeless. Over the course of five days (and yes we have always debated as to whether these where actual days or some unknown span of time), God created plants, animals, light, dark, water, land and all living things, excluding man, and He called them good.
On the sixth day He created man and gave him rule over all the other things He created for him on the previous 5 days. If you believe in creationism, then you probably also believe that God intended for man to be the cure and not exclusively the cause of our perceived environmental problems today.
The Gaia Hypothesis, like with any event that attempts to remove man from the equation, can become a powerful tool used by some to render the people powerless and gain control over them.
It seems this theory of man being the culprit and that Nature will take care of itself if man is removed is popular and readily acceptable. However, there is one person who is willing to offer his own hypothesis that Nature left to its own devices will destroy itself and that man is what keeps it in check.
Peter Ward, a paleontologist, tells the Boston Globe that “life is toxic” and that “It’s life that’s causing all the damn problems.” As one would suspect, Ward is meeting with his share of criticism but he says he has thick skin and welcomes the dissent. Ward calls his theory the Medea Hypothesis.
What does Ward think of the Gaia Hypothesis?
Ward holds the Gaia Hypothesis, and the thinking behind it, responsible for encouraging a set of fairy-tale assumptions about the earth, and he’d like his new book, due out this spring, to help puncture them. He hopes not only to shake the philosophical underpinnings of environmentalism, but to reshape our understanding of our relationship with nature, and of life’s ultimate sustainability on this planet and beyond.
Ward thinks that it is going to require the manipulation of man to save the planet. As you read through his ideas of what that might entail, perhaps we get a taste that his hypothesis might be as radical as Lovelock’s of the 1970s were and are. Ward seems to buy into man-made climate change.
To combat climate change, Ward sees that role including engineering projects on a previously unimaginable scale, like cooling the atmosphere by seeding it with sulfuric acid or installing giant shields in space to deflect away sunlight. As the scientific consensus around climate change has spread and hardened, these so-called “geoengineering” projects have received more of a hearing, but most climate and earth scientists remain skeptical because of the enormous uncertainties about what their full effects would be.
Is there sense to be made of this somewhere in the middle, if that’s a correctly asked question? I think there is. If we choose to fall back on the Bible creation, we will see that God gave man the rule over the plants and animals, etc. He knew of the need to eat to sustain life. Somehow over time, man has come to think that there is some great distinction between wild and domestic animals.
What God did not give man control over was our atmosphere, our climate and weather. I think it is clear we don’t have an ounce of control over it, although some with very large egos would like to think we do.
Not having control over our climate doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t be good stewards. Like all things we are entrusted with we should care for it in the best fashion possible and practical. This means doing what we can to keep our environment clean. This keeps us healthy.
Those who espouse to the theory of evolution also often concur with the Goreites, that man is destroying our planet through anthropogenic carbon dioxide. Within the evolution theory we must realize that the duration that man has been on this planet is but a mere speck in time, a span that offers us little history to form real evolutionary traits and trends. Man is also an extremely tiny aspect of the entire environment we are subjected to. We have much to learn.
Our wildlife needs managing as well. Relying on Nature to do the job isn’t and never was in the cards, if only in the simple realization that man is all a part of the whole picture. Like stopping the dumping of toxins into our waters and onto the land, allowing wildlife to go unchecked provides a stage for diseases that can be spread to man that are just as harmful or more so than toxic wastes. It is fairy tale thinking to believe that man somehow can be separated from the rest of nature and that it will miraculously balance itself out.
Tom Remington
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