Even on a small scale, say a new housing development, roads and streets are paved, creating an impervious coating over the surface of the land. This impervious layer prevents the water, both as rain and melting snow, from infiltrating into the soil, where it can be stored and can recharge existing aquifers and wells. Instead, the water remains on the surface, where it mixes with pollutants that collect on the pavement.

(Top) Note the water collecting in the gutters along the street. (Bottom) Observe the horizontal area covered with impervious materials comprised of the house roofs and a small portion of a school’s driveway and parking area.

Because paved roads and streets are lined with curbs and gutters, the now-polluted water is channeled into a storm drain. In addition, each house has an impervious roof that collects water and channels it into gutters along the edge of the roof. Upon collecting water, the gutters channel it, more often than not, out to the street, where it joins water from the street going down the storm drain. It is then conducted either directly into a sewage-treatment plant or directly into a ditch, stream, or river.

(Top) The opening through which water collected in the gutters of a house roof is emptying into the street-side gutter. (Middle) Water from a rainstorm is being guided in a street-side gutter toward a storm drain. (Bottom) Water from a street-side gutter is flowing into a storm drain on its way to the sea via the city’s water-treatment plant prior to being emptied into a major river.

When I was young, however, each home had a deep hole in the ground filled with gravel into which the water from the roof was drained; it was called a “dry well” and allowed the water to infiltrate into the soil. Why, I wonder, are they disallowed today?

In any event, none of this water is today usable by the local people. Beyond that, the storm water either adds to the cost of running the treatment plant, where it must be detoxified, or it pollutes all the waterways through which it flows, from its point of origin into the ocean—especially when people used the storms drain as a private disposal for substances that are toxic to the environment.

(Top) In contrast to the impervious roofs, streets, and parking lots, the open space of a school’s playground is acting as a catchment for water. (Bottom) Captured rainwater is infiltrating slowly into the soil, where it will be stored as groundwater and thus available for human use—as well as the landscape as a whole through vegetation, which captures energy from the sun and passes it on to animals in the food they eat, either directly or indirectly. The animals, in turn, nourish the soil by eliminating their bodily wastes, which nourishes the plants, which captures the sun’s light, which nourishes the animals in a self-reinforcing feedback loop.

The effect of roads, streets, parking lots, and the area covered by houses, all of which eliminate the infiltration of water, is cumulative. Enough roads, streets, parking lots, and roofs over time can alter the soil-water cycle as it affects a given community. Remember, the quality and quantity of water is a biophysical variable, irrespective the fact that many product-oriented economists and product-oriented “land developers” deem water an economic constant.

All these effects are hidden for some time in both the invisible present and the ecological lag period wherein they work synergistically in shifting the landscape from the more natural end of the continuum to the more cultural end. Beyond some point, these effects of urban sprawl upset the ecological integrity, and ultimately affect the quality of life, almost inevitably in the negative over the long term.

In dealing with this issue, one must consider that people’s generalized personality traits are an amalgamation of the dominant ways in which each person navigates life. They emerge from an interpretation of life’s experiences and are the springboard of both one’s personal limitations and capabilities. These traits are not cut-and-dried, however, but rather overlapping tendencies with varying shades of gray. While in the collective they form the diversity necessary for the existence of a viable human community, they can also be substantial barriers to sharing life’s experiences and thus a common understanding of the world we live in—the world we are constantly redesigning.

For instance, some people can take ideas seemingly at random from any part of a thought system and integrate them; these people have mental processes that instantly change direction, arriving at the desired destination in a nonlinear, intuitive fashion. Others tend toward thinking in a linear sequence, like the coupled cars of a train, wherein the mental processes crawl along, exploring this sidetrack or that sidetrack, while all the time constrained to a rigid forward or backward motion—and ultimately a dead end because every track terminates somewhere. If the nonlinear-thinker is at ease with open-ended abstractions but the linear-sequential thinker requires concrete examples of what is being discussed, their attempts to communicate may be difficult.

A public meeting in which the city’s water catchment is being discussed in terms of pending urban developments.

These two approaches can be thought of as product-oriented thinking and systems-oriented thinking. Product-oriented thinkers tend to focus on perceived products—economically desirable pieces of a system—in isolation of the system itself. Thus, they are likely reticent to accepting the fact that removing either a desirable or undesirable piece of a system can or will negatively affect its productive capacity as whole. Such a restricted view usually breeds a misunderstanding of both the component and the system of which it is an inseparable part. System-oriented thinkers, on the other hand, are inclined more toward a holistic approach by focusing primarily on the processes that govern a system’s functional capacity.

To demonstrate how these two ways of thinking might play out in the public arena, let’s imagine a couple of scenarios within a city to which the council and its planning staff must respond. In the first scenario, a small group of people living in the outskirts of the city want to build a church whose membership would most likely have a maximum of fifty or sixty people over time. In the second scenario, a developer wants to build a shopping mall in a densely populated suburb well within the city limits. In both cases, an issue arises with the parking lot. First, let’s deal with the church.

When the church members presented their plan to the city council and the planning staff, it becomes apparent that cost is an issue. To alleviate some of the potential debt burden, the church members want permission to gravel their parking lot instead of having it covered with asphalt. Upon hearing this request, a member of the planning staff immediately says it is impossible to gravel a parking lot because the regulations called for the surface of all parking lots to be asphalt. On this point, the staff member is adamant.

At length, after much discussion and the continual staff rejection of the church’s proposal, the church members say they would appeal the decision. There was, however, one member of the city council who had listened quietly to the whole discussion. Only now, when the church members say they will appeal, does the councilperson speak.

To everyone’s surprise, the councilperson points out that a graveled parking lot makes good sense in the case of the church for the following reasons:

1. With a graveled lot, the infiltration of rain would help recharge the groundwater, and was acceptable in this case because the parking lot was far enough removed from the aquifer the city used for its drinking water that the lot could not possibly affect the water’s quality.

2. There would be relatively few vehicles parked on the lot at any one time, and then infrequently, so pollution from oil, etc., would be minimal.

3. There would be no need for a connection to the city’s storm-drain system because the infiltrating water would be purified by its slow travel through the soil toward the distant river.

4. The city would save money over time on the inevitable maintenance of its storm-drain system because an extension would not have to install.

5. Additional money would be saved because the water would infiltrate into the soil, rather than being collected in the storm-drain system, where it would pass through the city’s water-treatment plant, adding to the annual cost of the plant’s operation.

6. As well, the surface of the parking lot would be much less expensive to maintain if it was graveled instead of paved.

After more debate, the city council voted to extend a waiver and allow the church to gravel its parking lot.

(Top) A gravel driveway into a gravel parking lot. (Middle) Young grass growing in the gravel of the driveway. (Bottom) Note the porosity of the gravel through which rain and melting snow can infiltrate the soil and thus add to the groundwater.
Observe the contrast with the parking lots below.

Hearing about the waiver granted the church, the shopping-mall developer goes to the city council and the planning staff and requests the same waiver for his shopping mall, putting forth the argument that it would save the city money. But in this case, the vote is unanimous in opposition to the waiver, which is denied because:

1. The aquifer, wherefrom the city draws its drinking water, flows directly under the site of the prospective shopping mall.

2. The volume of vehicles would discharge so much pollution over time that the probability of its negatively affecting the aquifer is virtually certain.

3. It is in the long-term interest of the citizen to protect the quality of their water from this source of potential pollution.

4. If the aquifer becomes polluted, it would affect the entire city as an irreversible, negative circumstance.

5. The immediate cost to the developer of paving the parking lot would be negligible when compared to the inevitable, long-term, negative, social-environmental impact of such a waiver and the ultimate cost to the citizens in a reduced quality of life.

Whether a shopping mall or a sports stadium, the parking lot is large and impervious. The question is: How much of the remaining open space, agricultural lands, and forested areas can we afford to give over to impervious surfaces, such as roads, roofs, and parking lots—especially in the face of global warming as attested by melting glaciers and rising sea levels worldwide?

In these scenarios, despite the fact that the church members and the developer are both narrowly focused on self-serving economics, the planning staff has successfully decided in favor of a systems approach in their land-use decisions, suggesting that a person’s understanding can change if the matter presented in a logical, dignified manner. We can surmise, therefore, that the scope of a person’s frame of mind, which simultaneously represents the person’s own familial and cultural foundation expressed as conceptual limitations, has its unique construct, thereby determining the possibilities of the person’s understanding.

These traits, coming in a variety of combinations, indicate how different and complex people can be in response to their life experiences. When people’s experiences and their shared understanding meld, a predominant worldview emerges—one tempered by each person’s degree of self-control. And today—more than ever—we humans need the self-discipline to protect open space for its biophysical capacity to capture and store water, which is becoming an increasingly urgent ecological service in the face of global warming—the effects of which are irreversible.

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Related Posts:

• Is Space A Resource?

• Open Space—A Biophysical And Cultural Necessity

• An Urgent Plea For Open Space

• Principle 9: All relationships are irreversible.

• Water–A Captive Of Gravity

• The Link Between Nature’s Commons And Our Cultural Commons

• Children Deserve A Voice In Their Future—Instructions for Adults

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Text and Photos © by Chris Maser 2012. All rights reserved.

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If you want to contact me, you can visit my website. If you wish, you can also read an article about what is important to me and/or you can listen to me give a presentation.

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Water is a physical necessity of life. Water is perhaps the most important commodity when it comes to the sustainability of a community and the world at large. A community’s supply of good-quality water is therefore precious beyond compare.

Santiam River in the Central Cascade Mountains of western Oregon, June, 2011.

The amount and quality of water available for human use is largely the result of climate and strategies for taking care of the biophysical integrity of water catchments. (Whereas most people use the term “watershed,” where “shed” means “to get ride of,” I use term “water catchment,” where “catchment” means “to capture” and store water, which is the biophysical function of such an area.) In North America and much of the Northern Hemisphere, sustaining the functional integrity of water catchments is particularly important in order to protect the annual snowpack from which the vast majority of all useable water comes. However, protecting the quality and quantity of society’s water supply is not a primary consideration of timber corporations, which operate where most of the annual snowpack is.

(top) A fifteen-foot (4.5-meter) snowpac in the high Cascade Mountains of Oregon in March 1958. (bottom) Snowpack in the Alps near Melchsee, Switzerland, on the 24^th of May, 1985.

People seldom realize that drinkable water in the Northern Hemisphere and the high mountains of the Southern Hemisphere comes predominantly from forested water catchments and/or glaciers above tree line. Even much of the prehistoric ground water that is pumped to the surface for use in agriculture came from these water catchments.

Deep-winter snow at North Santiam Lake in the high Cascade Mountains of Oregon in March 1958.

To illustrate, the Tibetan Plateau is the birthplace of five great, glacial-fed, Asian rivers—the headwaters of the mighty Indus, Ganges, Brahmaputra, Irrawaddy, Yangtze, and Mekong Rivers. In fact, Tibet is sometimes referred to as the Third Pole because it stores the most ice and water after the Arctic and Antarctica.¹

1. The Indus River Indus River is one of the chief rivers of southern Asia. From its source in Tibet, the Indus originally flowed some 1,900 miles through Indian Kashmir and Pakistan to the Arabian Sea, which is an arm of the Indian Ocean—but today it no long reaches the sea. The river’s drainage basin encompasses 332,000 square miles, most of which is in Pakistan.²

2. The Ganges River, the most sacred river to India’s Hindus, flows 1,569 miles from the western Himalayas south and east through the Gangetic Plain of North India into Bangladesh, where it empties into the Bay of Bengal. The Ganges drainage basin has the densest human population in the world, with over 400 million people or about 1,000 people per square mile.³

3. From its origin in southwestern Tibet, the Brahmaputra River flows 1,800 miles across the Tibet Autonomous Region of China, where it breaks through the Himalayas in great gorges to flow through the Indian states of Arunachal Pradesh and Assam before joining the Ganges in Bangladesh as it empties into the Bay of Bengal. Today, however, the Brahmaputra is under a grave threat from dams.⁴

4. The Irrawaddy River originates from the confluence of the N’mai and Mali Rivers, both of which have their source in the Himalayan glaciers of northern Myanmar (formerly known as “Burma”). The Irrawaddy River flows relatively straight from north to south through Myanmar before creating the Irrawaddy Delta as it empties into the Andaman Sea, which is part of the Indian Ocean. Its drainage basin is of about 98,487 square miles and covers a large part of Myanmar.⁵

Lang Tang (27,000 = 8,230 meters) in the Himalayas from an elevation 11,500 feet (3,505 meters) on Phulung Ghyang, Newakot District, Nepal, in May 1967.

5. Yangtze River flows for 3,988 mile from the glaciers in Qinghai on the Tibetan Plateau eastward through southwestern, central, and eastern China before emptying into the East China Sea at Shanghi. The Yangtze is not only the longest river in Asia and the third longest in the world but also drains one-fifth of China’s land area, and its river basin is home to one-third of the Chinese people.⁶

6. From the Tibetan Plateau, the Mekong River flows through China’s Yunnan province, Burma, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam, where it formes the Mekong Delta as it empties into the South China Sea. It is the seventh longest river in Asia and the tenth longest in the world. The Mekong’s length is estimated to be 3,050 miles, and its drainage basin is 307,000 square miles in extent.⁷

Nevertheless, because the glaciers are melting faster due to warming global temperatures, both floods and water shortages will increase in the near future. If water sources dry up or become contaminated, there will be fateful consequences for over a billion people. “Because water in this region does not have a price tag yet, we take this most precious resource and its fount for granted. . . . Our short-sightedness [symptomatic thinking] blinds us to the relation between our activities and their longer-term consequences. The great push for economic development in the last 50 years has been possible due to rapid use of Earth’s fossil-fuel resources. However, the hidden costs have been accumulating and are borne mainly by those least able to protect themselves. Sooner or later, all of us will have to pay the price.”⁸

It is a different story in the Brazilian Amazon, and tropical rainforests in general, because an intact rainforest creates its own internal and external climate in which about half of all the rainfall originates from moisture given off by the forest itself. Yet, each year in the Amazon rainforest of Brazil an area that is 80 percent the size of the state of Oregon burns. The major cause of this deforestation in tropical rainforests, which leads to this kind of extensive burning, is their conversion to such agricultural endeavors as pastures for cattle, palm oil plantations, slash-and-burn agriculture, as well as illegal and clear-cut logging.

 

Top: a stream in Pumalin Park, southern Chile, and bottom: a stream in southern Malaysia.

Never in the history of humanity has so much of the world’s tropical forests been disturbed in such a foreign and catastrophic way on such a large scale as during the last 50 years. The significance of this statement lies in the fact that tropical rainforests—one of the world’s oldest ecosystems—occupy only 7 percent of the Earth’s surface but are home to more than 50 percent of all species. What does this mean in terms of the Amazonian tropical forest? When large areas are deforested, local and regional climatic patterns change. Once the forest is gone, drought is likely to occur, which increases the probability of fire and decreases the probability that the forest will ever return.

The environment in the deforested areas of the Amazon has been altered to such an extent that the ecological processes that once maintained the tropical forest are unraveling in irreversible change. Once the forest has been even partially cleared or logged, the environmental conditions change swiftly and dramatically. Removal of the trees not only alters the internal microclimate of the forest by exposing its heretofore protected, moist, shaded interior to the sun but also leaves behind large accumulations of woody material that are exposed to the sun’s drying heat. Daily temperatures soar in the deforested areas by 10 to 15 degrees Fahrenheit, which causes the woody fuels to dry and become extremely flammable.

Henceforth, it’s not a matter of if the area will burn, but instead of when it will burn. The ultimate result is a quick, dramatic change from a dense, closed-canopy forest virtually immune to fire to a weedy, flammable pasture or other opening in which fires are common and often occur repeatedly—to the exclusion of a new forest.⁹

A curious thing happens in the United States, however, when water flows outside the forest boundary: we forget where it came from. We fight over who has the “right” to the last drop, but pay little attention to the supply—the biophysical integrity of the forested water catchments and their drainage basins.

As a nation with once bountiful resources, the United States has rarely faced limits to those natural resources. Yet, present trends and experience indicate that every additional drop of water conserved and thus available enables more economic growth, which further raises the demand for more water and more economic growth. Effective management of a reliable, sustainable source of water will thus necessitate attention to both demand and supply.

The availability of water for agricultural use varies by location and over time. Availability of water also depends on such variations in components of the hydrologic cycle as precipitation, evaporation, transpiration, infiltration, and runoff. Because these components are interrelated, a change produced by technology in one component of the cycle inevitably affects all other components, which is analogous to playing a multidimensional game of chess, wherein each of the three primary levels encompasses myriad sublevels, all of which are interacting. The three levels are inseparably interactive spheres: the atmosphere (air), the litho-hydrosphere (the rock that constitutes the restless continents and the water that surrounds them), and the biosphere (all life sandwiched in the middle, which includes human society).

Today’s game is at once a measure of complexity, uncertainty, interdisciplinary acuity, social-environmental sustainability, and social justice for all generations. As such, it demands an ever-greater systemic point of view seen with progressive clarity, as one ascends to higher levels of consciousness, which comprises the balanced integration of the intellect with the intuition, the material with the spiritual.

In the short history of the United States, there have always been more lands and more resources to exploit and a philosophy that technology could supplement natural resources when needed. Today, however, stretching such water resources to accommodate the continuing economic growth of the United States while protecting existing patterns of water use will require levels of technical development that are increasingly damaging ecologically and no longer feasible economically. Moreover, few people realize that only a small part of the water used in the United States goes to towns and cities. The overwhelming share is used for irrigation.

For example, withdrawals of water for irrigation range from 80 percent of the total use in Utah to 90 percent in New Mexico. Further, the use of water for irrigation is inefficient at best, as shown by a U.S. Geological Survey, which found that the loss of water by seepage from canals was one third of the amount actually delivered to farms for irrigation.¹⁰ And this does not include the loss of water to the atmosphere through evaporation from the miles of transportation canals or from the myriad overhead sprinklers going full blast during the heat of the day.

According to Professor Luna B. Leopold, the persistence of the pro-economic expansion bias of the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation is increasingly inexcusable. This attitude is still held in spite of the obvious strain on both the quality and the quantity of the supply of water. According to Leopold, “It is deplorable that the government agency most responsible for managing water in water-short regions continues to be so insensitive to the hydrological continuum and the equity among claimants.”

The hydrological continuum, as used by Leopold, is different from the hydrological cycle. The hydrological cycle continues for better or for worse, but the idea of a hydrological continuum implies the maintenance of a quasi-equilibrium operational balance among the processes within the hydrological cycle, which involve the air, water, soil, biosphere, and people. In other words, if withdrawals of water are balanced with Nature’s capacity to replenish what is used, the use of water can be measured in such a way that the available, long-term supply is protected.¹¹

There are thus two options in managing the use of water: The wise alternative is to begin now to protect the availability of the long-term supply by disciplining ourselves to use only what is necessary in the most prudent manner. The other is to continue taking water for granted, use all we want with no discipline whatsoever, and then wonder what to do when faced with a self-inflicted shortage, as is beginning to happen worldwide, due in part to the uncontrolled pumping of groundwater for the irrigation of agricultural crops.

Add today’s progressive global warming to the mix and it will only intensify tomorrow’s uncertainties—such as the increasingly quick loss of groundwater beneath the Central Valley of California, southern Argentine, the Middle East and Russia, northeastern China, Northern India, and the Canning Basin of western Australia because it is being pumped out of the world’s major aquifers for agriculture faster than it can be replenished. In fact, in Northern India the annual loss of groundwater is enough water to fill 7 million Olympic swimming pools. And in the Central Valley of California, the land has been sinking for decades as landowners drill more and more wells and extract more and more water. In addition, drought is taking a toll on groundwater recharge in such areas as the plains of Patagonia in Argentina and across the southeastern United States.¹²

By using all the water we want in a totally undisciplined manner, we are insensitive to both the care we take of the water catchments in each bioregion and the speed with which we mine the supply of stored, available water. Nevertheless, as Professor D.J. Chasan observed, “One might suppose that people would automatically conserve the only naturally occurring water in a virtual desert, but one would be wrong. Land and farm machinery have capital value. Water in the ground, like salmon in the sea, does not. Just as salmon are worth money only if you catch them, water is worth money only if you pump it.”¹³ We are therefore pumping groundwater as if there were no tomorrow. And if that were not enough, we are damming, diverting, and canalizing the streams and rivers worldwide to “tame” and “harness” their water for short-term use based on unwise economics, rather than nurturing the environment to ensure the availability of an adequate, long-term supply of water to fulfill the requirements of all generations.

Owyhee Dam on the Owyhee River in southeastern Oregon near the town of Adrian. Completed in 1932 during the Great Depression, the dam generates electricity and provides water for several irrigation districts in Oregon and neighboring Idaho.

Is water to become the next—and perhaps ultimate—economic/political club with which we bludgeon each other? Will water become the source of future civil and international wars? These questions are appropriate here because, as we witness the degradation of water catchments, we are also limiting the available supplies of potable water. In fact, Dr. Maria Neira, director of public health and environment for the World Health Organization, says a child already dies every 21 seconds from a lack of access to clean water.¹⁴

Our human challenge is that we tend to take things for granted until we lose them, and then it’s often too late to rectify the problem. To put it plainly, there are no problems in the world outside our own thinking and desire for quick gains. All the problems plaguing the globe today are the products of our self-centered, symptomatic thinking, just as they have been throughout history. In fact, every crisis in the world today—whether social or environmental—is a historical archive of human choices, decisions, and their subsequent actions, including those of yesterday, which prompted Winston Churchill to say:

“When the situation was manageable it was neglected, and now that it is thoroughly out of hand we apply too late the remedies which then might have effected a cure. There is nothing new in the story. . . . It falls into that long, dismal catalogue of the fruitlessness of experience and the confirmed unteachability of mankind.

“Want of foresight, unwillingness to act when action would be simple and effective, lack of clear thinking, confusion of counsel until the emergency comes, until self-preservation strikes its jarring gong—these are the features which constitute the endless repetition of history.”¹⁵

The only solution is simultaneously twofold: elevate the level of our thinking beyond that which caused the problem in the first place and begin now to consciously, purposefully protect the biophysical integrity of water catchments on a landscape scale by nurturing the cleanliness of the air, which affects the ecological integrity of the soil, which affects the purity of the water, lest everything else become non-sustainable. After all, like the aforementioned game of chess, the inseparably interactive spheres: the atmosphere (air), the litho-hydrosphere (the rock that constitutes the restless continents and the water that surrounds them), and the biosphere (all life sandwiched in the middle, which includes human society) are the essence of our home planet. And like migratory birds and anadromous fish, environmental crises, such as the pollution of air, soil, and water, know no political boundaries.

With the growing realization of the ecological interdependency among all living forms and their physical environment, it can hardly be doubted that even “renewable” resources are increasingly showing signs of suffering from the effects of society’s unrelenting, materialistic demands for more—ever more. These demands have degraded the renewability of resources in both quality and quantity. Water can be thus characterized, because it is increasingly degraded by air pollution, soil erosion, increases in temperature, and pollution with chemical wastes, salts from irrigation, and overloads of organic materials. Is it any wonder, therefore, that the hydrological cycle, as well as the hydrological continuum, is under stress?

The rub lies in thoughtlessness with which we humans use available technology. Most farmers, for example, are interested only in the short-term production of their own fields. Similarly, the county agents who advise them are often more likely to be concerned with the farmers’ fields than with the biophysical integrity of the river’s drainage basin as a whole. Further, engineers tend to see the hydrological system merely as a series of symptomatic problems to be solved.

As with any problem, there are solutions, but we tend to look for them not only outside of ourselves—our thinking and subsequent actions—but also just when and where the symptoms are obvious, and then only to alleviate the symptoms. The time for systemic action is now—to curb global warming and to commence repairing the damage we have inflicted on the biophysical systems that support us. In fact, now is the only time we have—or ever will have—to elevate our thinking to a higher level of consciousness with respect to the consequences of our decision and actions. Put plainly, it’s time to act as responsible trustees of our home planet as a biological living trust for the sake of the beneficiaries—all the world’s children, present and future.

Sunrise over Spirit Lake and Mount St. Helens in the Washington Cascades Mountains, January 1,1961.
 

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Related Posts:

• Principle 1: Everything is a relationship

• Water–A Captive Of Gravity

• Levees—An Ignored Lesson In “Conduit 101”

• Resource overexploitation (Oceanic Extinctions—Part 2)

• Our Human Impact on the World’s Oceans (Oceanic Extinctions—Part 3)

• The Self-Inflicted Cost Of Economic Myopia

• Children Deserve A Voice In Their Future—Instructions for Adults

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ENDNOTES

1. H.H. 17th Gyalwang Karmapa Ogyen Trinley Dorje. Walking the Path of Environmental Buddhism through Compassion and Emptiness. op. cit.

2. (1) The Indus River. http://geography.howstuffworks.com/asia/the-indus-river.htm (accessed January 6, 2012) and (2) H.H. 17th Gyalwang Karmapa Ogyen Trinley Dorje. Walking the Path of Environmental Buddhism through Compassion and Emptiness. op. cit.

3. Ganges. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ganges (accessed January 6, 2012).

4. Brahmaputra River. (1) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brahmaputra_River (2) http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/77154/Brahmaputra-River (accessed January 6, 2012), and (3) H. H.17th Gyalwang Karmapa Ogyen Trinley Dorje. Walking the Path of Environmental Buddhism through Compassion and Emptiness. op. cit.

5. Irrawaddy River. (1) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irrawaddy_River and (2) N’Mai River. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N%27Mai_River (3) Andaman Sea. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andaman_Sea (accessed January 6, 2012).

6. Yangtze River. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yangtze_River (accessed January 6, 2012).

7. Mekong. (1) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mekong and (2) http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/112224/China-Sea (accessed January 6, 2012).

8. H.H. 17th Gyalwang Karmapa Ogyen Trinley Dorje. Walking the Path of Environmental Buddhism through Compassion and Emptiness. op. cit.

9. The foregoing discussion to tropical forests is based in part on: Carol Savonen. Ashes in the Amazon. Journal of Forestry 88 (1990):20-25.

10. (1) T. Maddock III, H. Banks, R. DeHan, and others. 1984. Protecting the Nation’s Groundwater From Contamination. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Congress, Office of Technology Assessment, OTA-0-233. 244 pp.; (2) D. Hand. Breadbasket Ecology. Yoga Journal May/June (1990):23-24; and (3) S. McCartney. Watering the West, Part 3. Growing Demand, Decreasing Supply Send Costs Soaring. The Oregonian, Portland, OR. 30 September 1986.

11.The preceding two paragraphs are based on: Luna B. Leopold. Ethos, Equity, and The Water Resource. Environment 2 (1990):16-42.

12. (1) Richard A. Kerr. Northern India’s Groundwater Is Going, Going, Going … Science, 325 (2009):325–798; (2) V. M. Tiwari, J. Wahr, and S. Swenson. Dwindling Groundwater Resources In Northern India, From Satellite Gravity Observations. Geophysical Research Letters. 36, L18401, 5 PP., 2009
doi:10.1029/2009GL039401 and (3) Devin Powell. Satellites Show Groundwater Dropping Globally. Science News, 181 (2011):5-6.

13. D.J. Chasan. 1977. Up For Grabs, Inquiries Into Who Wants What. Madrona Publishers, Inc., Seattle, WA. 133 pp.

14. Carrie Halperin. How Climate Change May Make Killer Diseases Worse. http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/GlobalHealth/risk-malaria-diseases-rise-global-temperatures-climate/story?id=13277843#.Trbmbhw0i4A (accessed May 5, 2011)

15. Winston Churchill. In: T.A. Warren. Leaders Need Followers. The Rotarian, 1945 (October):10-12.

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Text and Photos © by Chris Maser 2012. All rights reserved.

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If you want to contact me, you can visit my website. If you wish, you can also read an article about what is important to me and/or you can listen to me give a presentation.

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Although a landscape is usually perceived as a finished product in the sense of a scenic vista, or an aspect of the land characteristic of a particular region, in reality, every landscape is a mural of Nature and, as such, is forever incomplete. When I think of a landscape, I think of a dynamic kaleidoscope of all the elements and all the scales of relationships and events focused for an instant, this instant, in the center of the Universe.

A petrified palm log 300 miles south of Alexandria into the western desert of Egypt.

I say “the center of the Universe,” because I am here participating in Creation as an active observer. I therefore stand at the exact center of the Universe, because as an individual human being, I am the center of all interdependencies; all interdependencies radiate from me and come back to me—just as they have over the millennia with the palm tree that lived, died, and became this log in the western desert of Egypt, which I saw over 45 years ago. As I am the center of the Universe, so are you; so is everything in Creation. The center of the Universe is therefore everywhere and nowhere.

In considering a landscape, think first of the dynamic geological processes, which evoke every conceivable scale of time, space, and relationship that formed the land and the resultant macroclimate (the prevailing climate of the times, as it effects the continent). In turn, the geological processes and the climate act together on the parent materials (the original rock from which a particular soil is derived in a particular location). The result is the topography of the area. These are the long-term biophysical constraints, which control and define a landscape in space through the long reaches of time.

A basalt rim in northwestern Nevada.
 

An old river channel at Kurkur Oasis in the desert of Egypt west of Aswan.

Geological processes constantly alter the surface of the Earth. One process is the collision of the oceanic plates with the continental plates as the former moves under the latter, thrusting the Earth’s crust upward into folds and buckles, which form ranges of mountains. These mountains have a profound impact on the overall climate of the area. They determine the amount and pattern of precipitation that falls in a given time, and they dictate the accompanying temperature. They determine when, where, and in what way the precipitation falls, be it rain or snow.

Mt. Shasta in northwestern California.

The type of parent material or rock of which the mountains are composed determines not only the way they will erode but also the type of soil that will be formed as a result of being exposed to a particular climatic regime. The effect of climate over time is known as weathering. The initial formation of the mountains, their sizes, shapes, and the types of parent materials of which they are composed determines part of the pattern of weathering and erosion. The prevailing climate also determines part of the pattern of weathering and erosion. Taken together, climate and weathering form the resulting topography or the physical features of the particular place or region at any given point in time.

Mt. Jefferson in the central Oregon Cascade Mountains.

In addition to and within the control of the long-term biophysical constraints, there are such dynamics as disturbance regimes, hydrological cycles, and microclimate. These are the short-term, biophysical constraints, which control and refine the definition of a given landscape in space through the short reaches of time.

A forest stream in the Nepalese Tarai prior to the onset of the summer monsoon.

Regimes of catastrophic disturbance, such as fire, flood, landslide, avalanche, or tornado, to which our North American ecosystems are continually subjected, are determined by and influenced by such things as macroclimate in conjunction with topography, the hydrological cycles, and the microclimate of a given area. A hydrological cycle has four apparently discrete parts: (1) the way water falls as rain and/or snow, (2) the way it sinks into the soil and is either stored or flows below ground, (3) the way it runs over the surface of the soil in streams and rivers on their way to the sea, and (4) the way it evaporates into the atmosphere to be cycled again as rain and/or snow. Microclimate, as used here, is the climate of an immediate area as determined by the topography and the vegetation, which exerts a local influence over the macroclimate, the prevailing climate of the times.

Between the nonliving, long- and short-term biophysical constraints of a landscape and the living components of the landscape (its plants and animals) lies the soil. The soil is a combination of both nonliving and living components of the landscape. It is an exchange membrane, much like the placenta through which a mother nourishes her child. The soil, which is derived from the parent materials laid down by the geological processes, is built up and enriched by the plants that live and die in it. It is also enriched by the animals that feed on the plants, void their bodily wastes, and eventually die, decay, and return to the soil as organic matter.

Lost Creek in northwestern Nevada.

And then there are the individual living organisms, which collectively form the species, which in turn form the collective communities that spread over the land. These organisms, through the exchange medium of the soil, are influenced by the short-term biophysical constraints even as they themselves influence those same constraints through their life cycle. The dynamic interactions of communities and soil are controlled and influenced by the long-term biophysical constraints that collectively form the landscape. And it is the landscape that we humans arbitrarily delineate into ecosystems as we try to understand the dynamic interactions between nonliving and living components of our world.

A chittal (spotted deer) in the forest of Gokarna in the Katmandu Valley.

To gain a sense of the dynamic nature of a landscape through time, we’ll take a peek at the changes wrought to the central portion of the United States—that which today is the Great Plains. Our view begins as the last glacial stage, the Wisconsin, named after the state, reached its maximum development between 70,000 and 10,000 years ago, and then receded into history.

While the glacier was at its maximum, temperatures lowered on the North American continent, and arctic plants grew as far south as what are now Virginia, Oklahoma, and Texas. Coniferous (cone-bearing) trees like pine and spruce grew in what is now the Great Plains, along with some deciduous (leaf-shedding) trees.

A recent forest fire at 11,500 feet up in the Nepalese Himalayas. The small, square building at the edge of the flat area is a Buddhist temple, and the whitish area is the tent of my research field camp in 1967.

As the last glacier receded and the climate warmed, the deciduous forest began to take over from the coniferous forest. The center of the continent continued to warm and dry, and fire began to play an increasingly important role in shaping the vegetation. Although the coniferous forest became confined to the cooler climates of the Rocky Mountains and westward, the grassland in the center of the continent expanded and withdrew as temperatures waxed and waned. During times of warmer temperatures the deciduous forest retreated eastward and grassland filled the area—and vice versa. Because the climate continued to warm and dry, wind-driven grass fires increased and helped the grassland eventually take over from the trees and shrubs to form the Great Plains of today.

So, although climate was a factor in the evolution of the grasslands that greeted the early European invaders in the center of the North American continent, so too were the vastness and the flatness of the Great Plains and the annual fire-carrying dieback of the grasses.

A fire-maintained shrub/grass landscape in northwestern Nevada.

When thinking about landscapes in the Pacific Northwest, I am often reminded of the fires, both large and small, that over the millennia shaped the great forests I knew as a youth. And later in life, as I studied the interactive connections between animals and forests, I found the recurring cycles of the birth, growth, and death of individuals, the waxing and waning of habitats and of plant and animal communities, and the evolution of species that eventually returned again to the distant unknown.

What seems clear to me now is that the Universal cycles are not perfect circles, as they so often are depicted. They are rather a coming together in time and space at a point where one “end” of a cycle approximates—but only approximates—its “beginning” in a particular place. Between its beginning and its ending, a cycle can have any configuration of cosmic happenstance.

Further, Nature’s cycles are most “real” and discernible to me as they pertain to and influence living organisms, those beings with whom I share the gift of life. Beyond that, in the non-biological reaches of the cosmos, cycles become more and more abstract as they extend either backward or forward into the continuum of time. Thus while cycles give dimension, context, and texture to the landscape, they are more real to me in the living here and now than they are when they penetrate into the formation of the short- and long-term biophysical constraining factors as they affect any given place on Earth.

In viewing a landscape, I am as aware as I possibly can be of all of the factors that have come together to create a particular place, as I perceive it, not just the events but also the cycles in which the events are embedded. In addition, I am mindful of the fact that everything in the Universe is subjected to the many dimensions of ever-changing scales, each of which is a facet of the Eternal Mystery that so deeply stirs my soul.

The weathered remains of a bristle-cone pine in the Sierra Nevada Mountains of California.

 

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Related Posts:

• The Law Of Cosmic Unification

• Principle 1: Everything is a relationship

• Principle 12: All systems are cyclical, but none are perfect circles.

• Principle 14: Dynamic disequilibrium rules all systems.

• Soil–The Great Placenta

• Air–The Breath Of Life

• Water–A Captive Of Gravity

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Text and Photos © by Chris Maser 2012. Photo of the bristle-cone pine stump is © by and courtesy of Sue Johnston. All rights reserved.

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If you want to contact me, you can visit my website. If you wish, you can also read an article about what is important to me and/or you can listen to me give a presentation.

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George Horace Latimer wrote: “It’s good to have money and the things that money can buy, but it is good [also] to check up once in a while and make sure you haven’t lost the things that money can’t buy.”

Despite Latimer’s admonition, we are today moving through an accelerated process of losing many things that money can’t buy, such as our spirituality, the quality and livability of our environment, and our dignity as human beings. We are also losing an ever-increasing number of fellow travelers—both plants and animals—on our planetary home in space. Such losses come about because we are progressively linear and materialistic in our view of the world and in our measures of success. We have accomplished all of this through the introduction into human culture and society of economically oriented, purposely created extinction.

THE TRILOGY

The motive behind this introduction is something called “conversion potential,” which is oriented almost completely toward the control of Nature and the conversion of natural resources into economic commodities. Our forests—indeed those of the world—are example. Clyde Martin, of the Western Pine Association, epitomized today’s thinking are early as 1940, when he wrote in the Journal of Forestry: “Without more complete and profitable utilization we cannot have intensive forest management. . . . When thinnings can be sold at a profit and every limb and twig of the tree has value, forest management will come as a matter of course.”—and so it has. Thus, conversion potential dignifies with a name the erroneous notion that Nature has no intrinsic value and must be converted into money before any value can be assigned to any part of it. All of Nature is thus seen only in terms of its conversion potential. It is this distorted, fun-house-mirror view of Nature that gave birth to the trilogy of extinction: (1) intellectually created extinction, (2) the economics of extinction, and (3) manifested extinction.

INTELLECTUALLY CREATED EXTINCTION

The trilogy of extinction begins in the human mind as a tiny worm of blindness that distorts wholeness into salable parts and relegates the “leftovers” to the trash bin. Old-growth trees—and the natural forests in which they grow—are a case in point.

In Nature’s forest, old trees often develop root rot, which so weakens them that they are easily blown over by strong winds. This is how Nature both invests and reinvests biological capital in the soil, which in turn nurtures and grows the trees of tomorrow’s forest. In the mirror of our linear, materialistic, human-centered society, such wholesome reinvestment is seen only as economic waste.

Neither seeing nor understanding the life and processes of a fallen old-growth tree as Nature reinvests it in the soil of the forest floor, economists and people of the timber industry at large continue to seek ways of eliminating such wasteful loss of wood fiber. To them, trees blown over by the wind just lie on the ground rotting and are good to nobody.

This concept of economic waste drives the corporate/political planning system to liquidate all possible old-growth trees and the natural forests in which they grow because the corporate/political pundits think of them simply as free profit that will be wasted if not cut and used. And there is no plan to ever again allow Nature’s forests to grow or trees within them to reach old-growth status; when they are cut, they are mostly gone–not only the large live tree but also the large snag (a standing dead tree) and the large fallen tree. “Intellectually created extinction” is a person’s conscious thought coupled with their purposeful plan to eliminate something from a particular area. The effect of an intellectually created extinction too often makes a potentially renewable resource into one that is increasingly finite.

In addition, the capitalistic idea of getting the maximum profit out of all resources with a minimum investment—be they potentially renewable (such as forests) or nonrenewable (such as fossil fuels)—is used not only to dictate but also to justify the unmitigated exploitation of our home planet. In this vein, the purposely planned, permanent liquidation of every available old-growth tree, without regard for the intrinsic value of its biophysical function or that of natural forests in general, constitutes the “intellectually created extinction.” As the world’s forests go, so too go all the species of plants and animals—including humans—that depend on them in one way or another for their existence, to the everlasting impoverishment of all life on our home planet.

THE ECONOMICS OF EXTINCTION

Intellectually created extinction through the process of economic planning is the precursor of the economics of extinction. It leads to the completion of the trilogy in the concept of manifested extinction and is thus the epitome of the materialistic, utilitarian view of the world, a view that totally disregards the sanctity of life and its ecological/spiritual functions.

The motto of the economics of extinction is profit over all—even if it means the loss of most of the world’s species of plants and animals and the crucial biophysical functions they perform. In this sense, liquidation pays, even in the purposeful extinction of a species, but conservation costs, and cost is unacceptable to profiteers.

In North America, the profit over all motto is therefore the guiding force in most natural resource industries, both on land and at sea. The profiteers in timber industry, for example, justify the liquidation of as much of Nature’s remaining centuries-old forests as humanly possible. They then use this same motto to justify the conversion of the liquidated forests into economically designed crop-like plantations of young trees to be harvested—theoretically, at least—over and over and over into the distant future on a “sustained-yield basis,” like fields of corn. But trees are only one part of a forest, the only part to which our distorted vision assigns “conversion potential.” By converting a forest into a repetitive plantation, the rest of the forest is destroyed, its soil impoverished, and its myriad organisms and processes dismissed as useless junk and impediments to the sanctity of the profit margin.

In 1908 President Theodore Roosevelt, concerned about the profit over all attitude in general and the timber industry in particular, convened the first-ever meeting of all the governors of the states to address the topic of the environment. His opening address to the conference is as pertinent today as it was 90 years ago. He began:

I welcome you to this Conference at the White House. You have come hither at my request, so that we may join together to consider the question of the conservation and use of the great fundamental sources of wealth of this Nation.

So vital is this question, that for the first time in our history the chief executive officers of the States separately, and of the States together forming the Nation, have met to consider it.  . . .

This conference on the conservation of natural resources is in effect a meeting of the representatives of all the people of the United States called to consider the weightiest problem now before the Nation; and the occasion for the meeting lies in the fact that the natural resources of our country are in danger of exhaustion if we permit the old wasteful methods of exploiting them longer to continue.³

Roosevelt went on to say: “Just let me interject one word as to a particular type of folly of which it ought not to be necessary to speak. We should stop wasteful cutting of timber; that of course makes a slight shortage at the moment. To avoid that slight shortage at the moment, there are certain people so foolish that they will incur absolute shortage in the future, and they are willing to stop all attempts to conserve the forests, because of course by wastefully using them at the moment we can for a year or two provide against any lack of wood.”⁴

“So this Nation as a whole,” he said, “should earnestly desire and strive to leave the next generation the national honor unstained and the national resources unexhausted.”⁵ In essence, his argument was that any right-thinking parent strives to leave their child reasonably prepared to meet the struggle of life and a family name to be proud of.

Even in Roosevelt’s time, intellectually created extinction led to the economics of extinction, which claimed the hearts and minds of those individuals who sold their souls to the corporate/political machine. Thus are the thoughts of the human mind translated into action against Nature. Now, almost a century later, we see the trilogy of extinction nearing completion with the visible loss of not only species but also whole ecosystems.

MANIFESTED EXTINCTION

How does intellectually created extinction, which leads to the economics of extinction, translate into manifested extinction? When, for example, the centuries-old forests are liquidated, no more old trees will stand as living monarchs, to die and stand as large dead trees, and to topple as large fallen trees and lie for centuries decomposing, providing a kaleidoscope of habitats and performing their myriad functions as they recycle and reinvest their biological capital into the soil from which they and their compatriots grew. As the trilogy of extinction is consummated in the forest, the large standing dead tree and the large fallen tree, which are only altered states of the live old tree, will go the way of the oldest living things on Earth, the ancient monarchs of the forest: down the economic hall of extinction.

And with the ancient forest will go such species as the northern spotted owl and the marbled murrelet, which have evolved in concert with that particular habitat. In fact, the owl and the murrelet have adapted to particular features of that habitat.

The northern spotted owl nests in tall broken-topped old Douglas-fir trees. The marbled murrelet, a seabird, nests on carefully selected large, moss-covered branches at least a hundred feet up in ancient trees, with other branches close overhead to protect the nest site. The murrelet’s nest tree is located several miles inland from the coast, where the murrelet feeds. Being so specialized in the selection of its reproductive habitat, neither owl nor murrelet is capable of adapting to the rapid changes wrought by the liquidation of the old forest.

Now comes an interesting twist to the story. It is not only species of plants and animals that will become extinct with the liquidation of the old forests, but so will the “grandparent trees.” As young trees replace liquidated old trees in crop after crop, the ecological functions performed by the old trees, such as creation of the “pit-and-mound” topography on the floor of the forest with its mixing of mineral soil and organic topsoil, become extinct processes. Why? Because there are no more grandparent trees to blow over.

The “pit” in pit-and-mound topography refers to the hole left as a tree’s roots are pulled from the soil, and “mound” refers to the soil-laden mass of roots, called a “rootwad,” suddenly projected into the air above the floor of the forest. The young trees that replace the grandparent trees are much smaller than the old trees and different in structure. They cannot perform the same functions in the same ways.

Of all the factors that affect the soil of the forest, the roughness of the surface caused by falling grandparent trees, particularly the pit-and-mound topography, is the most striking. It creates and maintains the richness of species of plants in the herbaceous understory and affects the success of tree regeneration.

One way uprooted trees enrich the forest’s topography is in creating new habitats for vegetation. Falling trees create opportunities for new plants to become established in the bare mineral soil of the root pit and the mound. With time, the fallen tree itself presents habitats that can be readily colonized by tree seedlings and other plants. Falling trees also open the canopy, and the opening allows more light to reach the floor of the forest. In addition, pit-and-mound topography is a major factor in mixing the soil of the forest floor as the forest evolves.

The extinction of the grandparent trees changes the entire complexion of the forest through time, just as the function of a chair is changed when the seat is removed. The “roughness” of the floor of the forest, which over the centuries resulted from the cumulative addition of pits and mounds and of fallen grandparent trees, will become unprecedentedly “smooth”—without pits and mounds, without large fallen trees.

Water moves differently over and through the soil of a smooth forest floor, one that is devoid of large fallen trees acting as reservoirs, storing water throughout the heat of the summer, and holding soil in place on steep slopes. Gone are the huge snags and fallen trees that acted as habitats for creatures wild and free. Gone are the stumps of the grandparent trees with their belowground “plumbing systems,” which guided rain and melting snow deep into the soil.

This plumbing system of decomposing tree stumps and roots comes from the frequent formation of hollow, interconnected, surface-to-bedrock channels that drain water rapidly from heavy rains and melting snow. As roots rot completely away, the collapse and plugging of these channels force more water to drain through the soil matrix, reducing soil cohesion and increasing hydraulic pressure, which in turn causes mass soil movement. The young trees of plantations cannot replace these plumbing systems.

Suddenly, the artistry and the biophysical sustainability of Nature’s ancient forest has vanished, and with its banishment go the lifestyles of a special breed of logger, log-truck driver, and mill worker, perhaps never to be replaced. Where once stood Nature’s mighty forest in the parade of centuries now stands humanity’s pitiful, ecologically sterile economic plantations—the epitome of the non-sustainable specialization embodied in the corporate/political motto: profit over all. Now the trilogy of extinction is complete!

THE UPSHOT

Every crisis in the world today—whether social or environmental—is a historical archive of human choices, decisions, and their subsequent actions, including those of yesterday. Despite all the evidence before us, we keep making the same types of decisions, ignoring volumes upon volumes of historical evidence depicting their dire consequences, each time expecting a new and different outcome. We humans face a growing cataclysm of suffering from myriad causes, not the least of which are ideological strife and its wonton destruction of irreplaceable resources and the growing threat of global warming. Yet those rare individuals who make decisions that would, in fact, further the social-environmental well-being of the Earth are too often thwarted by the self-centered, socially powerful minority who are afraid of loosing their economic advantage garnered from the status quo.

Nevertheless, whosoever makes a social decision is simultaneously making an environmental decision, and vice versa. This is an inescapable relationship because human society is an inseparable part of the environment, just as the environment is an indivisible part of human society. Therefore, every leader, regardless of their hierarchical level in government—local, national, or world—are all social-environmental decision-makers, whether they understand it on not, whether they accept it or not, whether the care or not. Thus terming someone a “social-environmental decision-maker,” a “social decision-maker,” an “environmental decision-maker,” solely a “decision-maker,” or a “leader” matters not because society and the environment that cradles it are enveloped in an inescapable, self-reinforcing feedback loop of reciprocity. Therefore, our human thoughts about the value of money versus Nature’s wealth determine the well-being or poverty of all generations.

 

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Related Posts:

• Current Crises: Wealth And Money—What’s The Difference

• Current Crises: Our Inner Vs Outer Landscapes

• Current Crises: On The Eagle’s Wing

• The Choice Is Ours

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ENDNOTES

1. George Horace Latimer. Money (accessed December 9, 2011).

2. Clyde S. Martin. 1940. Forest resources, cutting practices, and utilization problems in the pine region of the Pacific Northwest. Journal of Forestry 38(9):681-685.

3. The speech given by Theodore Roosevelt in 1908 was reprinted under the title “The First Environmental President” in the Forum section of July 22, 1990, edition of The Sunday Oregonian, Portland, OR.

4. Ibid.

5. Ibid.

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Text © by Chris Maser 2011. All rights reserved.

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If you want to contact me, you can visit my website. If you wish, you can also read an article about what is important to me and/or you can listen to me give a presentation.

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Conventional money knows no loyalty to a sense of place, a local community, a landscape, region, or even a nation, and so it flows toward a global economy in which traditional social bonds give way to a rootless quest for the highest monetary return at virtually any social-environmental cost. The real price we pay for money is the hold it has on our sense of what is possible—the prison it builds around our imaginations, which American journalist Sydney J. Harris captured in a few words: “Men make counterfeit money; [but] in many more cases, money makes counterfeit men.”

According to Bernard Lietaer, of the Center for Sustainable Resources at the University of California at Berkeley, “Money is like an iron ring we’ve put through our noses. We’ve forgotten that we designed it, and it’s now leading us around. I think it’s time to figure out where we want to go—in my opinion toward sustainability—and then design a money system to get us there.”

While textbooks on economics claim that people and corporations are competing for resources and markets, they are really competing for money by using markets to foster competition in the exploitation and commercialization of resources—both natural and human. “A more fascinating aspect of money,” notes author Caroline Myss, “is the fact that it can weave itself into the human psyche as a substitute for the life-force.” Through the way in which we spend money, according to Myss, we make our private beliefs into public declarations.

Today’s money is either a numbered piece of paper or an electronic computer trace—both of which are merely symbolic representations of energy—that allows a person to obtain either the necessities of life or fulfill a desire that constitutes the real wealth of life. But, in our confusion over the true nature of real wealth (if we have thought about it at all), we chase the Almighty Dollar and neglect those things that actually sustain a life of quality—both spiritual and material. Money has only extrinsic value, only the potential to be converted into something else that may have the intrinsic value of real wealth.

To illustrate, if you are marooned on a desert island without food or water, but with a trunk containing one million or even one trillion dollars, what value would it have? Oh, you could burn it to stay warm for a while, but you could not drink it to quench your thirst. You could eat some, perhaps, but it would not sustain you.

Now let’s suppose you’re a billionaire with inoperable, terminal cancer. Could all your money buy your way out of death? The cattle ranchers I use to work for as a young man were of the opinion that, “If you have your health, you have everything.” That notion goes a long way in defining true wealth.

Nevertheless, our fixation with the “money chase” makes it difficult to express the basic difference between money and wealth through the symbology of language. Real wealth means the biophysical integrity of the diverse ecosystems on which we rely for social-environmental sustainability is intact. It means human equality and dignity, meaningful work, having a good home and adequate food, a good education, and so on. In a healthy economy, money serves the people in helping to create and protect the real wealth, but is neither the dominant value nor the sole—or even the main—medium of exchange.

One of the most important indicators of economic health is social-environmental sustainability, which means not only quality interpersonal relationships but also quality, reciprocal relationships between people and their environment. A truly viable economy is based on love and reciprocity, where people do kind and useful things for one another with no expectation of financial gain. Such mutual caring is the soft social capital that both creates and maintains the fabric of trust, which in turn is the glue of functional families, communities, and societies.

Pathology and its subsequent dysfunction enters the economic system when money, derived as a convenient means of exchange, becomes the factor that defines the purpose of life for individuals and their communities. For example, the majority of Americans in a November 28 to December 1, 2011, pole said they would need an annual income of $150,000 to feel rich. And men had a higher median threshold, $150,000, than women—$100,000. Moreover, as people earn more, they want more. To wit, people earning $75,000 or more say they would need a median of $250,000 to feel rich.¹ Such focus on dollar amounts by the majority of a community’s or nation’s citizens results in the social and biophysical capital on which the well-being of every human, community, and nation depends being sacrificed on the altar of competitive exploitation, whereby those who already have money prosper at a level of social influence above of those who do not.

The growing dominance of money as master is also revealed in the increasing commercialization of human relationships. Not long ago, even in such rich, industrialized countries as the United States, at least half of the adult population—predominantly women—worked without salary to create and maintain home and community, which are among the most fundamental values of a healthy, sustainable society and its social-environmental economy.

Today, financially supporting a household usually requires two adults holding two, and sometimes three or four, paying jobs between them, but at the expense of quality human relationships because, of necessity, they rarely see each other, and the care of children and the home is either neglected or hired out. In addition, the once-shared, mutual caring has morphed into “community service,” which is the work of hired public employees—to the extent the public is willing to pay for it.²

As the soft social capital of mutual caring dwindles and the resulting quality of family life withers, a community’s members typically become increasingly apathetic or competitive. As human relationships become more and more dysfunctional, a community’s infrastructure crumbles into ever-greater disarray at an ever-increasing social-environmental cost to all generation.

Today, more than ever, the wisdom of Henry Ford is sorely needed: “The highest use of capital is not to make more money, but to make money do more for the betterment of life.”

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Related Posts:

• Current Crises: The Trilogy of Extinction

• Current Crises: Our Inner Vs Outer Landscapes

• Current Crises: On The Eagle’s Wing

• The Choice Is Ours

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ENDNOTE

1. Susanna Kim. Poll: Americans Need $150K Income to Feel Rich (accessed December 9, 2011).

2. The foregoing discussion of the difference between money and wealth is based in part on: David C. Korten. 1997. Money versus Wealth. YES! A Journal of Positive Futures, Spring:14-18.

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Text © by Chris Maser 2011. All rights reserved.

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If you want to contact me, you can visit my website. If you wish, you can also read an article about what is important to me and/or you can listen to me give a presentation.

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Until we shift the focus of our attention from the products of the outer landscape to the process of the inner landscape of our soul, we will continue to destroy our external environment. The movement to a socially-environmentally sustainable society cannot occur without a radical transformation of individual values and priorities. Today’s excessive materialism simply cannot survive the transition to a sustainable world because all material things created by humanity, including jobs in this technological world, have built-in obsolescence. This simply means that the more deeply and clearly we analyze the problems our world is facing, the more we realize that the crisis is not somewhere “out there,” but is within us—with the way we think.

OUR INNER LANDSCAPE

It’s a personal, inner crisis generated by the fear of poverty and insecurity—fed daily by the media—that manifests as a collective outer crisis of materialistic greed exemplified by excessive consumerism. The health, vitality, and honesty of our inner landscape governs the authenticity with which we treat one another, Planet Earth, and ourselves in the collective, outer tapestry of society and the environment that enfolds it. In other words, our crisis is not only one of spiritual bankruptcy but also a growing lack of trust and faith in one another as conscious, caring individuals.

“Authenticity,” which is the condition or quality of being trustworthy and genuine, is the spiritual voice of the heart, which each of us seeks and to which we each respond. It is the harmony between what a you and I think, say, and do and what we really feel—the motive in the deepest recesses of our heart. We are authentic only when our motives, words, and deeds are in harmony with our attitude.

Our attitude is the visible part of our behavior, whereas our motive is hidden from view. Emerson wrote, “Your attitude thunders so loudly that I can’t hear what you say.” And it’s when a person’s visible behavior is out of harmony with their motive that their attitude points to a hidden agenda, an ulterior motive. It’s this lack of inner harmony among thoughts, motives, and deeds that is currently plaguing humanity.

It’s the ulterior motive, perceived as a crime by the public at large, which causes a absence of trust based on a lack of authenticity. “Commit a crime,” wrote Emerson, “and the earth is made of glass. . . . Some damning circumstance always transpires.” The Scottish philosopher Carlyle summed up our choice about the authenticity of the individual when he said, “Change yourself, and then you will know there is at least one less rascal in the world.”

CULTURAL EVOLUTION

Ulterior motives are those self-serving motifs that are perceived by the public at large as being negative or dishonest. Such motives often come about when someone is resisting the necessity of altering their set of values to meet changing social conditions brought about by cultural evolution. Cultural evolution, in turn, is the collective change in societal values stemming from a shift in the collective social consciousness. In general terms, a social system is catapulted into the throes of evolution when it has reached a size and level of complexity that outstrips it resources or when its normal functioning is drastically disturbed by a collective shift in social consciousness—such as its citizens deposing a malevolent dictator. As Israeli statesman Abba Eban observed, “History teaches us that men and nations behave wisely once they have exhausted all other alternatives.” Put simply, people change when the pain of a present circumstance becomes overwhelming.

Although culture is learned from the past, modified in the present, and passed to future generations, cultural evolution does not follow so quiet and orderly a course. Evolution occurs in leaps of turmoil during which an old, rigidly adapted species or system is swept away and replaced by a new flexibly adaptable one. Thus, as a cultural system becomes destabilized, it can respond to a small (perhaps peripheral) disturbance, like the environmental movement of the 1960s, by amplifying it and making it the dominant factor in further cultural evolution.

If society learned one thing from the decade of the 1960s, it would be nice to think it would be that one cannot unilaterally destroy the “establishment order” without offering a viable replacement, that before an old paradigm can be cast out there must be a new one to fill the void. But, evolution, cultural or otherwise, doesn’t work that way.

Each new paradigm—each new leap of evolution in culture—is built on a sudden shift of insight, a quantum leap of intuition, which carries forward a modicum of old ideas. Those who cling to the old way and fight against change demand irrefutable proof that change is needed. The irony is that the old way also began as the new way and was also challenged to prove change was necessary or even desirable.

The personal and social trap of an old, rigid paradigm is that any system of belief that has become comfortable has also become self-limiting. At this point new data—whatever countermands the accepted, established order—cannot fit into the old way of thinking, which has grown rigid with tradition and hardened with age. It is therefore periodically necessary to crack open the old if a new thought form is to enter and grow, catapulting both the individual and society forward in a leap of cultural evolution, the offspring of which is a renewed sense of authenticity.

Moving forward may be difficult for those whose belief system and personal identities are invested totally in the old paradigm; they see no reason to change. For those who subscribe to a new paradigm, moving forward is easier because there is something toward which to move—a new vision. But, giving birth to a new paradigm can be physically dangerous if we charge others with being “wrong,” implying that we ourselves are “right.” Neither claim is entirely correct, however, in a world that is neither black nor white because our perceptions—based on a growing archive of knowledge—are constantly changing, both with time and age.

THOSE WHO WOULD MEND A DYSFUNCTIONAL CULTURE

Nevertheless, there comes a point in the history of every society when change is necessary if that society is to continue to evolve. And it all begins or ends with the willingness of the individuals—who collectively are society—to change. If the willingness to change is absent, as it almost always is, there comes crisis that takes the initiative out of the hands of the citizens and thrusts them forward kicking and screaming unceremoniously along the evolutionary path.

Consider Jesus, for example, a supremely gentle man, who preached the love of God above all else and the moral imperative of love, mercy, justice, and faith among all people. Jesus refused to knuckle under when challenged by the Pharisees of Jerusalem and by the administrators of the mighty Roman Empire. For his courage and faith, he was crucified. But when the Roman Empire began to crumble under the weight of internal dissension and corruption, the followers of the original disciples emerged from the catacombs and converted the emperor himself to their new faith.

Then there was the Buddha, who found enlightenment under the boddhi tree. The Buddha’s words and example transformed many parts of the ancient Hindu civilization during a time of social turbulence and dissatisfaction. Over the decades, the Buddha’s teachings have been carried throughout much of the Orient.

Centuries later, a few idealists with the courage to live their dreams of freedom, equality, justice, and brotherhood rejected the King of England and united thirteen colonies into a union of greatly different values, social structures, and economies, and from that union grew a new nation—the United States of America.

And within my lifetime, there was a humble man named Mohandas K. Gandhi, who told the British they could steal everything from him and even kill him—then they would have his dead body, but not his obedience. It was, of course, Gandhi’s obedience the British needed in order to enslave his spirit and keep India in subjugated. But Gandhi, a free man in his heart and mind, challenged the might and the treachery of the British Empire with truth and love. And in the end, the British consummated India’s freedom, because force, violence, and brutality simply could not stand against truth; love; and determined, peaceful nonviolence.

And there were others—who brought out the dark side of human society. Their time was brief, however, because truth and love always win in the end.

All of these people, saints and sinners, intellectuals and soldiers, armed with only an idea and the courage to act on it, could topple dominant regimes whose corruption festered internally. There have been others also who toppled lesser foes but who nonetheless changed the world.

Today, our world is so highly specialized, so culturally fragmented, so thoroughly interdependent, and so economically enmeshed that a tremor of instability in any part of the global house of cards—like the tiny temblor that initiates of an earthquake—will spread rapidly and destabilize most societies.

Unless we cause a global, nuclear holocaust or poison ourselves with pollution, humanity will survive, but the suite of social crises we are today facing are not only an interrelated product of our thinking but also unprecedented in dimension, and will mark the end of an era. The types of social, economic, and political organizations that have been created in modern times will undergo major and sudden changes like the collapse of the “Iron Curtain” and the current deposing of Arab dictators, in what is being called the “Arab Spring.” The outcome, however, will neither be determined by nor predicted by any past social experience with respect to the way the new social order will function.

The quiet time in the United States since the last burst of cultural evolution is over. We have again sailed into a maelstrom set in motion in the United States largely by ultra-conservative administrations, whose policies of fear—and the greed it spawns—set the stage for the mega-crisis we must now ride out.

There are those, however, who have consciously prepared themselves for this crisis and will live through it. This, despite the fact, as Jonathan Swift said, “when a true genius [or visionary] appears in the world, you may know him by this sign: that all the dunces are in confederacy against him.”

These are the people who have the foresight to “read the handwriting on the wall” and to act on it with courage. They saw the close of the twentieth century as the end of the old, dominant social system and the opening of the twenty-first century as the freedom to create a new and better social order. They look ahead, prepare, discuss, and perfect their ideas, and then wait patiently to implement them. They possess the inner vision, the knowledge, and the courage to act for the good of the whole when their inner knowing tells them the time is right. They will hold the helm of cultural evolution and give it what direction they can by asking bold new questions, those that guide the evolution of society for the common good of people and of Planet Earth. And here the watchword is “love” for all generations and for the Earth itself.

I know no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education.

Thomas Jefferson, September 28, 1820

 

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Related Posts:

• Current Crises: The Trilogy of Extinction

• Current Crises: Wealth And Money—What’s The Difference

• Current Crises: On The Eagle’s Wing

• The Choice Is Ours

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Text and Photos © by Chris Maser 2011. All rights reserved.

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If you want to contact me, you can visit my website. If you wish, you can also read an article about what is important to me and/or you can listen to me give a presentation.

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If our human society, as we know it, is to survive the future, we must strike a balance in all we do. I use the metaphor of an eagle to depict this balance for two reasons. First, because so many nations, such as the United States, Germany, Austria, Mexico, and the Roman Empire, have used, and still use, the eagle as their national symbol, and second, because an eagle cannot fly unless its wings are in balance. Put too much weight on one wing or the other, and all an eagle can do, regardless of its strength, is spiral downward until it crashes—as did the Roman Empire, as did Germany twice, and even as our social system is in the throes of doing today.

BALANCING OUR THINKING

To avoid such a crash, we must balance ourselves between linear thinking and cyclic thinking, because we need both to maintain our society. Cyclic thinking is in harmony with the inviolable biophysical principles that govern Nature and thus the three interactive spheres of our earthscape: the atmosphere (air), the litho-hydrosphere (the rock that constitutes the restless continents and the water that surrounds them), and the biosphere (the life forms that exist within the other two spheres). Cyclic thinking is also in tune with our spirituality, but even though we “do not live by bread alone,” we must have bread. Linear thinking is therefore necessary to produce some of the material products that maintain the physical aspects of human life and society within the cycles of Nature. Society is thus the body of the eagle; cyclic thinking is one wing, and linear thinking the other. For the eagle to fly straight and true, its wings must be in balance.

With this imperative of social balance, the main question that needs to be asked in terms of the future is: How do we balance ourselves, the human animal, with the spiritual and material energies of Planet Earth? Although I don’t have THE answer, I have an idea to share with you.

We are, for example, concerned today in our heightened ecological awareness with the things we are losing from the environment, such as biodiversity. In addition, however, we need to be far more concerned with the things that we are introducing into the environment, things with which it is not adapted to cope—such as our exploding human population, which is degrading the environment with its rapacious, material appetites. And once something is introduced, it is forever out of our control.

We introduce thoughts, practices, substances, and technologies into the environment, and we usually think of those introductions in terms of development. Whatever we introduce into the environment in the name of development will consequently determine how the environment will respond to our presence and to our cultural necessities. It is therefore to our social benefit to pay close attention to what we introduce. What any culture, including ours, introduces into its environment—and the attitude with which the introductions are made—is partly determined by the mythological view with which it sees its place in and of Creation.

MYTHOLOGY

The underpinnings of social values, and therefore chosen lifestyles, are rooted in cultural myths, including the various religions. A people’s thoughts and values, which are based on their cultural myths, translate into their lifestyles, and it is the cultural values of their chosen lifestyles that ultimately affect the land they inhabit.

Most Indigenous North Americans, for example, survived largely by hunting and gathering. They lived in a world where life was always balanced on a fine line between abundance and scarcity. To survive in such an unpredictable world, they reconciled themselves with Creation through their myths and spiritual connection with the Creator—The Great Spirit. Their lifestyles reflected this spiritual connection because they lived their myths through enacted rituals, which remained to a large degree in harmony with their changing environment.

Another and very different set of cultural myths was brought to the “New World” by the European invaders—largely from the pastoral scenes of Europe, first the Spanish followed later by the British and French. When they arrived in the New World, they saw not a land to be understood, adapted to, and nurtured but a wild, untamed continent to be conquered and plundered. They came from “civilized” countries with “civilized” myths and lifestyles and felt conquest was their duty to church and country of origin—even if it meant enslaving, massacring, and plundering the indigenous peoples.

What Europeans did not understand, however, was that their myths and lifestyles belonged to another place and another time in the evolution of human society and were incompatible with those of the indigenous peoples of the New World, or with the New World itself, for that matter. The myths and lifestyles of the Indigenous Americans belonged to the land they inhabited, whereas those of the Europeans belonged to a land halfway around the world.

The indigenous Americans had lived on and with the land for more than ten thousand years. Thus, in keeping with their myths, lived with the land and considered themselves to be an inseparable part of its spiritual harmony—something that could not be owned. The Europeans, in keeping with their myths, on the other hand, sought to conquer, harness, subdue, and own the land. Whereas the indigenous peoples viewed the land and all it contained as something sacred to be revered, the invading Europeans viewed the same land simply as an object to be exploited for short-term private gains and/or owned for personal advantage.

At best, the European’s ancestral myths and lifestyles became rigid through a long tradition of competition for power and the exploitation of Nature, both of which were incompatible with the land and the indigenous peoples. At worst, the European’s myths and lifestyles—which we have adopted with abandon—informed our current collision course with the survival of human society, as we know it. I say this because, although we are wise in our own eyes, we are blind to the truth that we neither govern nor manage Nature. We treat Nature wisely or unwisely, with respect or abuse, and Nature responds in accordingly, but we do not—and cannot—control Nature! In other words, we cannot “manage” Nature! We do something to Nature, such as overpopulating the Earth, and Nature responds, and in that response lies the lessons we are loath to learn. Which brings me to lifestyle.

LIFESTYLE

Lifestyle is commonly defined as an internally consistent way of life or style of living that reflects the values and attitudes of an individual or a culture. We, in Western industrialized society, have made lifestyle synonymous with a “material standard of living,” which we practice as voracious consumers. If, however, we are to have a viable, sustainable environment as we know it and value it, we must reach beyond the strictly material and see lifestyle as a sense of inner wholeness and harmony derived by living in such a way that the spiritual, environmental, and material aspects of our lives are in balance with the capacity of the environment—air, land, and water—to produce the necessities for that lifestyle.

Whether a given lifestyle is even possible depends on the “carrying capacity,” which is the number of animals that can live in and use a particular landscape without impairing the sustainability of its functional integrity. If we want human society to survive the twenty-first century in any sort of dignified manner, we must have the humility to view our own population in terms of local, regional, national, and global carrying capacities, because the quality of life declines in direct proportion of the degree to which the habitat is overpopulated and thus degraded.

CARRYING CAPACITY or “CULTURAL CAPACITY”

If we substitute the idea of “cultural capacity” for “carrying capacity,” we have a workable proposition for society. Cultural capacity is a chosen quality of life, a quality that can be sustained without endangering the environment’s productive ability. The more materially-oriented the desired lifestyle of an individual or a society, for example, the more resources are needed to sustain it and the smaller the human population must be per unit area of landscape. Cultural capacity, then, is a balance between the way in which we want to live, the real quality of our lifestyle and of our society, and the number of people an area can support in that lifestyle on a sustainable basis. Cultural capacity of any area will be less than its carrying capacity in the biophysical sense.

Cultural capacity is a workable idea. We can predetermine the local and regional cultural capacity and adjust our population growth accordingly. If we choose not to balance our desires with the land’s capabilities, the depletion of the land will determine the quality of our social experience by dictating our lifestyle. So far, we have chosen not to balance our desires with the capabilities of the land, but instead have equated “desire, need,” and “demand” as synonyms with every itch of “want.” Thus, we have not only lost sight of but also have no concept of Nature’s biophysical reality.

If we desire to maintain a predetermined lifestyle, we must ask new questions: (1) How much of any given resource is necessary for us to use if we are to live in the lifestyle of our choice? In this sense, “necessity” is a proposition very different from the collective “desire, want, need, demand” syndrome, so arguments about the proper cultural capacity revolve around not only what we want materialistically but also around what the land can produce in an biophysically sustainable manner. (2) How much of any given resource is it necessary to leave intact as a biophysical reinvestment in the health and continued productivity of the ecosystem? and (3) Do sufficient resources remain, after we have withdrawn what we need to support our chosen lifestyle, or must we modify our lifestyle to meet what the land is capable of sustaining?

Cultural capacity is a conservative concept, given finite resources and well-defined values. By first determining what we want in terms of lifestyle, we may be able to determine not only if the Earth can support our desired lifestyle but also how we must behave with respect to the environment if we are to maintain our desired lifestyle. By “environment,” I mean the three interactive spheres of our earthscape: the atmosphere (air), the litho-hydrosphere (the rock that constitutes the restless continents and the water that surrounds them), and the biosphere (the life forms that exist within the other two spheres).

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Related Posts:

• Current Crises: The Trilogy of Extinction

• Current Crises: Wealth And Money—What’s The Difference

• Current Crises: Our Inner Vs Outer Landscapes

• Current Crises: The Choice Is Ours

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Text © by Chris Maser 2011. All rights reserved.

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If you want to contact me, you can visit my website. If you wish, you can also read an article about what is important to me and/or you can listen to me give a presentation.

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A human social system is governed by the same Biophysical Principles that quite literally “grew us” as a species and that govern the survival and evolution of all living things. This is true even though a human society is composed of individually conscious and unique beings, each of whom possesses the free will to choose. We have compounded this simple statement, however, because we continually attempt to superimposed our human will onto Nature’s cycles and their dynamic balances.

That the Biophysical Principles govern human beings and their societies the same as they govern Nature was not understood, or perhaps even considered, when the Europeans invaded the New World. Thus, it is little wonder that they spoke grandly over the decades and centuries of “clearing the land” and “busting the sod,” of “harnessing the rivers” and “taming the wilds.” In keeping with this mentality, they begrudged the predators a right to life—and in the process became what they were against: the most voracious predators the Earth has ever hosted. And yet they only did the best they knew how in their time and their place in history. How could they have done otherwise?

Today, however, we stand at a different time and a different place in history. We are present now, and we are making history now. Yet even today, at the dawning of the 21st century, we fail to understand and accept that the Biophysical Principles by which the world—and our place in it—is governed function perfectly, that only our perception of the way the world functions is imperfect. What distorts our perception is that we focus only on that portion of the world we intend to exploit, and we ignore the biophysical processes that produce the products we value. This warped sense of Nature, as a mechanical being, gave rise to the platform of “deep ecology.”

A group of Norwegian environmentalists, primarily the philosopher Arne Naess, introduced the term “deep ecology” in the early 1970s. The term is meant to characterize a way of thinking that approaches social-environmental problems at their roots in such a way that the problems can be seen as symptoms of the deepest ills of our present society.

The idea of deep ecology contrasts with “shallow ecology,” which I think of as material ecology, because it merely addresses the symptoms through technological quick fixes, such as the installation of pollution-control devices and other regulations theoretically imposed on industry. It does nothing, however, to heal the problem. Although “new” technologies and reforms in our current political system are much easier to implement than are fundamental changes in our thinking and our materialistic sense of values, these “material solutions” and the people who propose them are clearly avoiding the heart of the problem. This avoidance of the real issues faced by those seated in spiritual bankruptcy—for whom more is better, bigger is better, I want control, I can never have enough, I want it all, me now —may ultimately cause the collapse of our current, social system.

There is a marked difference between the diversity of Nature, in which all parts are interactive and unified by the novelty of the creative process—particularly the spark of life—in which everything is always in the process of becoming something else. We industrialized humans, on the other hand, have chosen the linear metaphor of a machine not only for ourselves but also for our world. While a machine has many parts, it has neither internal intelligence nor moral sense to guide it. In addition, the parts are unaware of either their purpose or their functions. And while we can usually find or make one or more “spare” parts for a machine, we cannot do so with Nature. Therefore, if the condor becomes extinct, it is extinct. There is no way to reproduce one, no matter how noble the reason. If the tiger becomes extinct, it is extinct. There is no way to reproduce one, no matter how noble the reason. If the blue whale becomes extinct, it is extinct. There is no way to reproduce one, no matter how noble the reason. And that goes for their biophysical functions also. And so on and so on and so on.

Thinking like machines is only one step away from living like machines. Such a synthetic lifestyle not only alienates us from ourselves and from one another but also alienates us from Nature. In addition, such a mechanistic lifestyle leads to economic problems through the separation of social classes and to philosophical problems of the duality of thought in terms of either/or, right/wrong, etc. Our synthetic, linear, mechanical thoughts and lifestyles pit us against Nature, which makes our lives increasing complicated beyond the total complexity of Nature’s diversity. And this says nothing about the fact that the Biophysical Principles governing Nature—and us—are inviolable, despite our human hubris, especially those of us in industrialize countries.

And it is precisely because of our mechanistic thinking that we contend we can have more and more of everything simultaneously if only we can control Nature—manage Nature, as it were. In so doing, we save the pieces we value and either ignore or discard those we do not. We are thus simultaneously simplifying the biosphere and separating its parts by purposely discarding and accidentally losing pieces of it. We are redesigning our home planet even as we throw away Nature’s blueprint in the form of both species and processes. In short, we focus so narrowly on the products that we are destroying the processes that produce them.

We in Western industrialized society have become so linear and mechanical in our thinking, so certain of our knowledge, and so irrational in our use of it that we have forgotten that everything is defined by its relations to everything else. In the end, we must both understand and accept that everything—everything—is a relationship that fits precisely into every other relationship and is changing constantly. The paradox is that the only constant in life is change and thus perpetual, irreversible novelty.

As human beings of Western society, the way we deal with and fit into this pattern of constantly changing relationships is by thinking. We must recognize, therefore, that any human influence on the landscape or in the biosphere—positive or negative—is a product of our own thoughts, because our thoughts, after all, precede and control our decisions and, consequently, the outcome of our actions. We do nothing without first having the thought to do it. This means, for example, that the problem of pollution is neither in the soil, water, or air but in our minds (the cause). The problem only manifests itself (the effect) in the soil, water, and air through our decisions and actions.

We cannot, therefore, find a solution through science, technology, or the activities of land management without changing our thinking, because all these things, which lie outside of ourselves, are the results of our thoughts and subsequent decisions. The only possible solutions to our social-environmental problems lie within us, with how we think. Until we turn the searchlight inward, to our own souls, and consciously change our thinking, our motives, and our attitudes—and thus our behavior—we will only compound our own problems and those of all generations.

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Related Posts:

• Current Crises: The Trilogy of Extinction

• Current Crises: Wealth And Money—What’s The Difference

• Current Crises: Our Inner Vs Outer Landscapes

• Current Crises: On The Eagle’s Wing

• The Law Of Cosmic Unification

• Principle 1: Everything is a relationship

• Principle 14: Dynamic disequilibrium rules all systems.

• Children Deserve A Voice In Their Future—Instructions for Adults

• The Link Between Nature’s Commons And Our Cultural Commons

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Text © by Chris Maser 2011. All rights reserved.

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If you want to contact me, you can visit my website. If you wish, you can also read an article about what is important to me and/or you can listen to me give a presentation.

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Every crisis in the world today—whether social or environmental—is a historical archive of human choices, decisions, and their subsequent actions, including those decisions of yesterday. Despite volumes upon volumes of historical evidence depicting their dire consequences, we keep making the same types of decision, each time expecting a new and different outcome. Therefore, we humans—especially those of future generations—face a growing cataclysm of suffering from myriad causes, not the least of which are due to continuing ideological strife and its wonton destruction of irreplaceable resources and the growing threat of global warming and its social-environmental disruptions. Yet those rare individuals who make decisions that would, in fact, further the social-environmental well-being of the Earth are too often thwarted by most—but not all—of the elite, self-centered minority who are afraid of loosing their economic advantage of the status quo. Whosoever makes a social decision is simultaneously making an environmental decision, and vice versa. This is an inescapable relationship because human society is an inseparable part of the environment, just as the environment is an inseparable part of human society. Therefore every leader, regardless of their hierarchical level in government—local, national, or world—are all social-environmental decision-makers, whether they understand it on not, whether they accept it or not. Thus terming someone a “social-environmental decision-maker,” a “social decision-maker,” an “environmental decision-maker,” solely a “decision-maker,” or a “leader” matters not. They are all the same because society and the environment that cradles it are enveloped in an inescapable, self-reinforcing feedback loop of reciprocity. Decision-making—which defines all leadership—is an art, and like art, the quality of one’s decisions depends on one’s knowledge, life experience, and perspective based on that knowledge and experience, such as that of Abraham Lincoln, Mahatma Gandhi, Theodore Roosevelt, Adolph Hitler, Winston Churchill, Joseph Stalin, Jesus, Buddha, Golda Meier, or Nelson Mandela. With this in mind, I am the first to admit that anything written on decision-making—especially social-environmental decision-making—is incomplete, and always will be because perfect knowledge, with all its interactive ramifications, will forever elude us. That said, social-environmental decision-making, which is one of the most multifaceted of human endeavors, is about to get even more so. In the days gone by, decision-making was like playing a classic game of unidimensional chess, which was demanding enough, but those days are ended. As Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey acknowledged, “Leadership [decision-making] in today’s world requires far more than a large stock of gunboats and a hard fist at the conference table.” The goals and objectives of the past were much simpler than are those facing society today and in the future. Social-environmental decision-making to come is analogous to playing a multidimensional game of chess, where each of the three primary levels encompasses myriad sublevels, all of which are interacting. The three levels are inseparably interactive spheres: the atmosphere (air), the litho-hydrosphere (the rock that constitutes the restless continents and the water that surrounds them), and the biosphere (all life sandwiched in the middle). Today’s game is at once a measure of complexity, uncertainty, interdisciplinary acuity and cooperation, social-environmental sustainability, and social justice for all generations. As such, it demands an ever-greater systemic point of view seen with progressive clarity, which comprises the integration of the intellect and the intuition, the material and the spiritual. Some would argue that my blogs on leadership are too idealistic and impractical in the face of an exploding human population, that human needs are real and immediate, and question what I would propose to do about them. First, I would point out that the ideal is all that is worth striving toward and thus writing about. That said, the purpose of these blogs is to illuminate a peaceful path toward social-environmental sustainability for all generations. Second, we are bankrupting the global ecosystem, not only with our runaway population but also through the destructive wastefulness of social conflicts of all scales, which, nevertheless, are justified by some segment of society as exercising the sound decision-making of responsible leadership. Third, if we are to have social-environmental sustainability, we must accept a new paradigm, one that includes limiting our human population, our material appetites, and our behavior within the non-negotiable constrains of the biophysical principles that govern the universe and our place in it. Nevertheless, many—but not all—of the socially elite will resist any change that means altering their lifestyle and the mythological point of view through which they justify it. Although mythology as a fundamental frame of reference for how to lead one’s life is variously construed, it is here meant as an intellectual fabrication used to justify existing in one’s fear of change, rather than fully engaging life, which entails a measure of risk. The mythology of abnegating personal responsibility, like a chameleon, assumes a number of guises, of which I will discuss seven. MYTH ONE—I CAN’T CHANGE BECAUSE I’M LOCKED IN A common myth of being stuck, which has surfaced over the years, is the notion of being locked into a certain position or circumstance in life, of being out of control, and thus unable to change one’s current existence. The truth, however, is that we, each and every one of us, always have a choice, that no one is “locked” into anything, that change is always an option. Therefore, a person of psychological maturity will examine first and foremost the opportunities presented by an impending change, be they personal growth or material gain, and will weigh the associated risk accordingly, whereas a psychologically immature person will focus first and foremost on the perceived risk of loosing what they already have and so decline the opportunity presented, no matter how good or important it is intuitively known to be. Thus, as British philosopher James Allen observed: “Circumstance does not make the man; it reveals him to himself.” Or as author Anaïs Nin wrote: “We don’t see things as they are. We see things as we are.” Some years ago, for example, a man, I’ll call him “Bob,” who worked for the Environmental Protection Agency, as did I. Bob, who originally worked in a different state with a different government agency, had been sold on the job with the Environmental Protection Agency by a friend, and he took the job only to find out that it was neither ethically planned nor administered. Although Bob could have gone back to work for the agency he left, where he had felt good about what he did, he said that he was “locked in” to his new job despite his better judgment and that, when he allowed himself to think about it, he felt betrayed, miserable, depressed, and dishonest. When I asked why he did not go back to his original agency, which had gladly offered him his old job, Bob said it was too expensive to move again, that he had just gotten his family settled, that he was just learning the ropes of his new job, which he hoped might get better, but he did not see how it could. Finally, he said it was not fair to let his friend down, while steadfastly refusing to acknowledge that his friend had duped him. He had a litany of reasons that sounded good, but when really pressed, it turned out that Bob found it easier to stay, where he knew in his heart he did not belong, rather than risk the potential ridicule of changing his mind and admitting, by going back to his old job, that he had made a terrible mistake. True, his return would undoubtedly have caused short-term hardships, but it would have earned him his self-respect and the inner peace of feeling good about what he did to earn a living. Instead, Bob prostituted his fundamental beliefs to avoid the short-term pain of taking personal responsibility for what turned out to have been an unwise decision. In so doing, he paid a much higher personal cost over a much longer period of time. Another spin on this myth is that the “terrible known” is more comfortable than the unknown, even when one can clearly see that it promises to be better. How often I have heard someone say, “I can’t change jobs, even though I know I must do something else because I’m no longer fulfilled by my job nor doing it justice, but I only have a few years left until I can retire.” The real question is how many years of misery is one willing to accept rather than experiencing personal growth, joy, and fulfillment by risking change. MYTH TWO—I CAN’T COMMIT FUTURE LEADERS TO A COURSE OF ACTION When I worked as a research scientist in the USDI Bureau of Land Management and later served as an advisor to county government in my home county, I was told by more than one person faced with an uncomfortable decision that he could neither speak for nor commit future leaders to a particular coarse of action, that it was not fair to “lock them in.” In this way, they sought to avoid the risk of making a decision that would be unpopular with the people they feared might have the political power to turn them out of office. Despite one’s personal trepidations, some decisions (which in fact act as a “lock and key” to protect the future) must be made in the present moment, such as the legal acts that authorized the national parks and wilderness areas, created the national forests, and currently protect endangered species. If the majority of the people responsible for the passage of these acts had not had the individual courage embodied in psychologically maturity to act for the benefit of all generations, despite fierce opposition, our nation and all its people would indeed be culturally and spiritually poorer today, while a very few individuals would have made substantial amounts of money. Eighteenth-century British philosopher and statesman Edmund Burke succinctly addressed the problem of the monetary greed of the few at the cultural and spiritual expense of the many when he wrote: Men [and women] are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon their own appetites. . . . Society cannot exist unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere, and the less of it there is within, the more there must be without. It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things that men [and women] of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters. Burke’s statement brings to mind the test every public servant must confront and pass if they are to make socially responsible decisions. Senator William Pitt Fessenden of Maine aptly described the test, as he delivered the eulogy in 1866 for Senator Foot of Vermont: When, Mr. President, a man becomes a member of this body he cannot even dream of the ordeal to which he cannot fail to be exposed;   of how much courage he must possess to resist the temptations which daily beset him;   of that sensitive shrinking from undeserved censure which he must learn to control;   of the ever-recurring contest between a natural desire for public approbation and a sense of public duty;   of the load of injustice he must be content to bear, even from those who should be his friends;   the imputations of his motives;   the sneers and sarcasms of ignorance and malice;   all themanifold injuries which partisan or private malignity, disappointed of its objects, may shower upon his unprotected head.   All this, Mr. President, if he would retain his integrity, he must learn to bear unmoved, and walk steadily onward in the path of duty, sustained only by the reflection that time may do him justice, or if not, that after all his individual hopes and aspirations, and even his name among men, should be of little account to him when weighed in the balance against the welfare of a people of whose destiny he is a constituted guardian and defender. Two years later, his vote to acquit Andrew Johnson brought about the fulfillment of his own prophecy. This is often the price of true social responsibility; unfortunately, few people have the moral courage to pay it because, as James Allen wrote: “Men [and women] are anxious to improve their circumstances, but are unwilling to improve themselves; they therefore remain bound.” MYTH THREE—IT’S NOT MY RESPONSIBILITY BECAUSE IT’S NOT IN MY JOB DESCRIPTION It is quite common, I have found, for people afraid to make a decision to rationalize that the letter of the law, the letter of their job description, must be followed at any cost, rather than embrace the heart or intent of either and risk making a conscious choice based on their moral judgment of extenuating circumstances, social responsibility, or the greater good of humanity. And make no mistake, all decisions are based on morality because we humans are subjective creatures; we cannot be otherwise. If you think you are or can be objective, try holding a neutral thought in your mind for one minute. MYTH FOUR—I CAN’T MAKE A DECISION BECAUSE I LACK DEFINITIVE DATA We will never have enough data, let alone perfect data, which translates into all the data we desire to make an entirely safe decision. But not to make a socially responsible decision is still to make a decision, albeit one that usually proves to be unwise. For those who suffer interminable labor pains while giving birth to a decision, I point out that, in the end, there are but two choices—too soon or too late—because virtually all data are inconclusive. Generally speaking, however, I find that too soon is better then too late. On the other hand, claims of not having definitive data or enough data to warrant a change has long been used by the timber industry, among others, to justify business as usual. As a research ecologist in forestry and expert witness in the court of law, I encountered this argument endlessly from industrialists. The argument went something like this: We don’t have enough data to prove conclusively that we need to change the way we do business; therefore, we won’t change because it would introduce economic uncertainty into our business and cost us too much. If, however, you can prove definitively that change is necessary, we will consider it. Although the latter statement sounds reasonable, conclusive proof is, of course, impossible if one does not accept scientific data that goes counter to one’s desired outcome. This refrain is therefore played like a broken record, regardless of how much data are on hand that demonstrate the ecological necessity of change in order to ensure, as much as possible, a sustainable future for all generations. But not all people plead ignorance because of a lack of data to avoid making a responsible decision. I once sat next to a contractor on a flight from Alaska to Oregon. Knowing nothing about building a house, I asked him how he did it. “Well,” he said, “before I buy the first nail or board, I build the house a hundred times in my head so that I can see and fix all the potential problems before they arise. As long as the house stands as I built it, I’m the only one who really knows it, regardless of who buys it or how long they live in it.” Although the contractor did not have perfect data, he did the level best he could with the data on hand, and he took responsibility for his work. It was, after all, his identity as a person and an artisan that went into the construction of each house, and his integrity meant more to him than the money he could make by using cheap materials and cutting hidden corners. MYTH FIVE—IT CAN’T BE TRUE, SO I WON’T BELIEVE IT When one refuses to accept data, no matter how clearly valid it is, one is steeped in an interesting dichotomy—the need to know and the fear of knowing, which can be thought of as “informed denial.” In this instance, a person gathers all the data possible, always hoping it will affirm the cherished point of view, while simultaneously rejecting out of hand any unfavorable data by denying or refusing to believe its scientific validity. To give this notion a human face, I know a man whose refrain to anything that threatens his point of view is, “I’m skeptical.” With this statement, he summarily dismissed whatever he finds to be uncomfortable. Another colleague of mine used a slightly different approach. He simply went through his professional life ignoring whatever he did not want to deal with on the theory that, if something was ignored long enough, it would go away, including people. In addition, I once knew a wildlife biologist who worked for a Oregon Department of Fish and Game (as it was known at that time). He was perhaps the most extreme example of informed denial. His professional responsibilities included looking out for the welfare of a herd of elk that used parts of two counties as its habitat. Scientists within the same department studied this particular herd of elk across its geographical range, but the biologist would not accept any data as valid from the neighboring county if it posed for him an uncomfortable decision. This is known as the “NIH factor,” which means: not invented here, thus invalid. Informed denial is perhaps the most rampant myth when it comes to avoiding the personal risk of making an unpopular but socially responsible decision. I have found this myth in every conceivable bureaucratic closet in every level of government in the United States. If you doubt the accuracy of this statement, read the newspaper with an open mind and a discerning eye or listen to the news with an open mind and a discerning ear. MYTH SIX—YES, BUT I HAVE TO FACE REALITY ”What you say is all well and good, but I have to face reality.” or “It’s fine to be idealistic, and it would indeed be nice if things could be that way, but the reality is. . . .” Note how the foregoing statements summarily dismiss the other person’s point of view. Facing reality, as it is put forth to avoid making a socially responsible decision one feels is risky, boils down staying within the limits of someone else’s intellectual, political, or economic “bottom line.” Reality, however, is what we each make it to be based on the philosophical underpinnings of our individual worldviews. Such views are founded either on the fear of potential loss or on the faith of potential opportunities. Although the choice is ours, the vast majority of people unfortunately elect the former. MYTH SEVEN—WHAT YOU ARE ASKING CAN’T BE DONE; IT’S IMPOSSIBLE “What you’re asking is impossible; it can’t be done.” While I was still working as a scientist for the Bureau of Land Management, I wanted to hire an extremely well-qualified woman as a plant ecologist to help with some work. I went carefully through all the necessary hoops the personnel department put in front of me. After six months, however, the head of personnel told me I could not hire the woman, that it was impossible. When I asked him why, he simply repeated that it was impossible. Finding his answer unacceptable, I went to the State Director and explained the situation. “Ridiculous!” he exploded. With that, he picked up the telephone, called the head of personnel, and the woman was hired within fifteen minutes. As it turned out, the head of personnel had use inappropriate judgment a few weeks earlier and had been reprimanded. So, when my request reached him, he was taking no chances. His problem was that, by not acting appropriately this time out of fear of criticism, he would once again get himself in trouble. By suggesting that the required decision is impossible, one is pleading impotence from a position of authority, thereby seeking to avoid personal responsibility. When Napoléon Bonaparte was confronted with such a situation, he said, “You write to me that it’s impossible; the word is not French.” So, in the end, what are these myths protecting? They are protecting our resistance to change by attempting to hide behind the abnegation of personal responsibility for our decisions. In the process, however, we are perpetuating life in the maw of our fears.   Related Posts: • Principle 1: Everything is a relationship • Our Institutionalized Resistance To Change • Democracy • The Challenges Of Leadership • The Essence Of Leadership: Personal Values And Philosophy Of Life Text © by Chris Maser 2011. All rights reserved.

If you want to contact me, you can visit my website. If you wish, you can also read an article about what is important to me and/or you can listen to me give a presentation.

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In this article, I speak for all forests—boreal, temperate, tropical, and mangrove in both hemispheres. I say this because all forests everywhere are under constant economic attack by various corporations—as are resources in general worldwide. We are today facing a global forest crisis that will ultimately affect the world’s supply of potable water, as chronicled by:

• Water—A Captive Of Gravity

• How Water Gets From Its Source To Cities And The Ocean

• Roads, Urban Sprawl, And Water

• The Hydrological Continuum

Bear in mind, as you read this piece, that our continued social-environmental crises are created and fostered by two contemporary human traits: (1) quick-fix, symptomatic thinking and (2) people, including governments, insisting on living beyond their monetary means. Corporate advertising drives both in our global economic paradigm of more, more, more—a paradigm that is perpetuated by the news media’s sensationalizing the need for constant (= linear) economic growth, which is a biophysical impossibility in an interactive universe of ever-novel, cyclical processes.

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OUR ECONOMIC MYOPIA

The lead article in my hometown paper, the Corvallis Gazette-Times, opened on February 13, 2007, with the headline, “Timber filibuster falls short.” The first paragraph said, in part: “An attempted filibuster by Oregon Sen. Gordon Smith fell short Monday as procedural wrangling foiled his bid to extend payments to rural counties hurt by cutbacks in federal logging.” Smith goes on to say, “We are talking about people’s jobs, children’s schools and general public safety in 700 timber counties in 39 states.”

As has been the case throughout history, this “short fall” is self-inflicted through the kind of economic shortsightedness tucked into the language of the “Multiple Use Sustained Yield Act of 1960,” which is based on a linear, economic assumption totally at odds with ecological reality. The assumption is that biological processes in a forest remain constant, while we humans maximize whatever forest product or amenity seems desirable. The errors associated with this kind of linear thinking over the past several hundred years illustrate the dismal results of ignoring the perpetual novelty, cyclical nature, and inviolable biophysical principles of ecological reality. Much as some people might want it otherwise, we cannot circumvent Nature’s inviolate, biophysical principles because they are beyond the capacity of humanity to alter. Forests—or any other resource, for that matter—are not the endless producers of commodities and amenities that we have heretofore assumed them to be. I will use forests to demonstrate the foregoing point because more people are familiar with them than with other resource systems.
 

In the beginning, when vast forests of ancient trees spread across much of the Pacific Northwestern United States, the forest industry became incensed whenever the federal government put up a timber sale on public lands. “How dare the federal government compete with private industry,” was the cry, because such competition would lower the price of lumber. But once the owners of industrial forests had liquidated the available timber on their own lands, a new voice was heard, one that whined because the federal government was not allowing the capture of windfall profits reaped from cutting the public’s ancient forests, wherein the industry had no investment prior to logging.
 

There was yet another facet to cutting timber on public lands. Namely, the counties wherein the forests grew were given a share of the revenues. When, therefore, a county wanted more money, pressure was placed on the government agency in charge of the forest to sell more timber. The pressure to sell more and more timber was based on the economic principle of sustained yield (sustained cut), which postulates that, once a forest is converted to a plantation, the latter can and should produce wood fiber at a specified level in perpetuity. Were this the case, however, it would not only require a constant or accelerating rate of growth but also assumes the constant capacity of the soil to nurture the desired growth. There was no room within this claim for even a slight decline in soil fertility from over-exploitation, erosion, and compaction, or presumed catastrophe, such as fire, disease, or a change in climate.

With passage of the “Multiple Use Sustained Yield Act of 1960,” a new, economic ploy came into being. It was called: Non-declining, even flow. Simply put, this economic mantra translated into a sustained cut, ostensibly to stabilize jobs and thus community economics, but at the tremendous price of a foregone biologically sustainable forest—the self-inflicted cost of economic myopia.
 

Today, the forests, which could have been sustainably harvested, are a historical wish, and the coveted “timber receipts” with them. Nevertheless, the monetary insatiability of the counties was as much a part of their decline as was the monetary insatiability of the timber industry. What, if anything, have we learned?

OUR LINEAR FOLLY

I still hear the same rhetoric I heard ten, twenty, thirty years ago: Namely, we need more money; therefore, we need to cut more trees. Only there are no more big, old trees that can be wisely cut if future generations are to have viable forests to meet their life’s requirements. With this in mind, I wonder how our thinking would be affected if the “Multiple Use Sustained Yield Act” had been conceived and written as the “Multiple Use Sustainable Yield Act” or even as the “Sustainable Forest Act?”

I wonder because a forest is a continuum of interdependent processes in relation to time, completing its cycle only in the memory of several human generations. And because a forest is an interactive, biophysical system defined by its function, as opposed to its pieces in isolation of one another, it is driven by continual change and novelty, which precludes the existence of an independent variable or constant value other than the number one. We do not seem to understand this, however, or we ignore it, because all of our models—economic, managerial, and even ecological—are short term and linear. This is not only because we chose to based them on desired outcomes but also because we do not have the capability to construct them in any other way.

Thus, while linear models can only predict in a linear function within the span of a few years, the cyclical nature of a forest touches that “predictable” line for but the briefest moment in the millennial life of the soil, the womb from which the forest grows. Yet, in this instant, with grossly incomplete knowledge and shortsighted, unquestioning faith in that knowledge, we insist on a sustained-yield prediction into the unforeseeable future from our plantation management. When, therefore, we liquidate an old forest, we do so thinking we can forever have a rapidly growing plantation that has a magical sustained yield, even as we ignore the interacting, biophysical variables of forestry: soil, water, air, sunlight, climate, and diversity in all its myriad forms.

Changes in global climate are dynamic, however, and will alter Earth’s biophysical cycles on Nature’s scale of time and space—not humanity’s. None of these alterations is quantifiably predictable in the short term, and only slightly more so in the long term, which makes an assumed, constant value effectively moot—economic or otherwise. This leaves computer predictions ecologically “deaf, dumb, and blind” when it comes to forest cycles. Hence, yields from plantations may be moderately predictable in the short term, but cannot be sustained in the long term. On the other hand, plantations that emulate a natural forest, may become sustainable, but only when we have the humility to learn how to nurture the long-term, biophysically health of the soil of which the trees are but a visible extension.

Because of the dynamic nature of evolving ecosystems and because each system is constantly organizing itself from one critical state to another, an ecosystem cannot be “managed” for an absolute value of anything, such as a given sustained yield of timber. The only sustainability with respect to humanity is whatever ensures the ability of an ecosystem to adapt to evolutionary change (such as global warming) in a way that may be favorable for us.
 

We must, however, devise a new paradigm before we can change our strictly utilitarian-economic focus, which forces us to view the forest and all it contains simply as commodities to be endlessly exploited. In other words, we cannot have an economically sustainable yield of any forest product (such as wood fiber, water, soil fertility, wildlife, or genetic diversity) until we first have an ecologically sustainable forest, one in which the biological divestments, investments, and reinvestments are balanced in such a way that the forest is self-maintaining in perpetuity.

A NEW PARADIGM

In the new paradigm, we must accept the forest as a living organism with which we cooperate and through such cooperation are allowed to harvest products as the biophysical capability of the forest permits. But what, you might ask, does the concept of sustainability mean in terms of a forest?

“Sustainability” means we must first have a biophysically sustainable forest in order to have a biologically sustainable yield. We must have a biologically sustainable yield in order to have an economically sustainable industry. We must have an economically sustainable industry in order to have an economically sustainable community. And we must have an economically sustainable community in order to have an economically sustainable society. When sustainability is put in purely economic terms, the primacy of Nature’s inviolable biophysical principles becomes clear.

We must first practice sound “bio-economics” (the economics of maintaining a healthy, biologically sustainable forest), before we can practice sound “industrio-economics” (the economics of maintaining a healthy, economically sustainable timber industry), before we can practice sound “socio-economics” (the economics of maintaining a healthy, culturally sustainable society). It all begins with a solid foundation, which in this case is a healthy, biologically sustainable forest.

Many of today’s “forest practices” are counter to sustainable forestry. Instead of training foresters to take care of forests, we train plantation managers to manage the short-rotation, economic plantations—rowcropping, as it were. Forests have evolved through the cumulative addition of structural diversity, which in turn initiates and maintains process diversity, complexity, and stability through time. We are reversing the rich building process of that diversity, complexity, and stability by continually replacing forests with plantations designed within narrow, short-term, economic constraints.

Every acre of Nature’s forest replaced with a plantation is an acre that is purposely stripped of its biological diversity and ecological sustainability, thereby reducing it to the lowest common denominator—endless exploitation based on simplistic economic theory. The simplistic economics of the agriculture paradigm has not proven to be ecologically sustainable anywhere in the world in the medium and long term. Thus, the concept of a “plantation,” a strictly simplistic, economic concept, has nothing whatsoever to do with the biological sustainability of a forest. Under this concept, forests are replaced with plantations of genetically manipulated trees accompanied by the corporate-political-academic promise that such plantations are better, healthier, and more viable than the indigenous forests, which evolved with the land over millennia.

“Sustainable,” however, means producing economic outputs as the forest gives us the biophysical capability to do so in perpetuity. This, in turn, necessitates maximizing the biophysical integrity of the forest, as well as procuring all products and amenities within the long-term sustainability of the forest’s biophysical capacity.

To accomplish ecological sustainability, we must shift our historical paradigm from the cherished notion of sustained yield, wherein the forest is managed so an equal volume of merchantable wood fiber is not only produced annually but also projected forever into the unknowable future. I say this because the timber industry was sustained, until recently, by the superabundance of existing timber, rather than by carefully creating and implementing plans for the caretaking of biologically sustainable forests.

The timber industry has survived by changing its technology and standards of utilization, which has enabled more of the existing timber to be cut and processed. Although this has improved the industry’s economic efficiency of use, it has delayed the apparent need for a critical assessment of the forest’s actual condition, and has made no provision for the necessities of either forest health or the life requirements of future generations.

The most productive forests in Oregon (those below 4000 ft elevation) were the first to be cut out. To maintain the “sustained yield” from the less productive high-elevation forests (those above 4000 ft) the increase in annual acreage cut has been five times the increase in volume cut during the last 40 years. Are we adding to other ecological blunders of world forestry by mining our high-elevation water-catchments?

Further, the practice of “sustained-yield forestry” excludes of all other human values except the production of fast-grown wood fiber. Young forests (up to 60 years old) do not produce the highest quality water. They are not conducive to recreation. Spotted owls, marbled murrelets, and elk are not sustained by them through time. They have lost the attractiveness of diversity. In addition, genetically engineered, “improved” trees in fast-growing plantations produce problem lumber because of weak wood that tends to shrink, warp, and break under stress.

In Short, sustained yield is nothing more than short-term, economic exploitation, wherein the inherited principal is summarily cut without reinvesting sufficient biological capital in the forest to at least balance the account. Ecological principles of diversity, interactive process, and the forest’s cycle through time are violated in order to practice the diminishing return of “sustained yield” forestry—which is, nevertheless, the circular, economic firing squad wherein the insatiable timber industry and the counties are now caught with their fingers glued to the trigger.

“Sustainable-yield forestry” has not been practiced in the Pacific Northwest, because our “sustained yield” (which equates to sustained cut) has come from the ancient forests we inherited from Nature and for which we can claim no credit. In fact, even the stated concept of sustained yield has been violated by continually increasing the cut of these old forests whenever more money was desired.

If, therefore, human society is to survive as we know it, we must become trustees of our natural resources, which means letting go of the exploitive, colonial mentality—use it until it collapses, then someone else can deal with it. Much as we might wish otherwise, humanity is not in control of Nature. If we go back to the original sense of the word “re-source,” we will find that the ecological sustainability of our forests is embodied in a word we blithely use but do not fully understand. “Re-source” means to use something and then be the source of its renewal—not its demise!
 

The choice is ours today. To all generations, we bequeath the wisdom or the folly of our decisions. What will our choice of actions be with respect to forests: the continuance of our current exploitation or the unconditional gift of a biological living trust whereby truly sustainable forests are maintained for all generation, present and future?

 

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Related Posts:

• Principle 1: Everything is a relationship

• Principle 2: All relationships are productive.

• Principle 3: The only true investment is energy from sunlight.

• Principle 4: All systems are defined by their function.

• Principle 5: All relationships result in a transfer of energy.

• Principle 6: All relationships are self-reinforcing feedback loops.

• Principle 7: All relationships have one or more tradeoffs.

• Principle 8: Change is a process of eternal becoming.

• Principle 9: All relationships are irreversible.

• Principle 10: All systems are based on composition, structure, and          function.

• Principle 11: All systems have cumulative effects, lag periods, and           thresholds.

• Principle 12: All systems are cyclical, but none are perfect circles.

• Principle 13: Systemic change is based on self-organized criticality.

• Principle 14: Dynamic disequilibrium rules all systems.

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The photograph of the waterfall was taken by and © by Sue Johnston. Text and other photos © by Chris Maser 2011. All rights reserved.

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If you want to contact me, you can visit my website. If you wish, you can also read an article about what is important to me and/or you can listen to me give a presentation.

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