Newsgroups: soc.culture.usa

[Someone requested that I crosspost this here from sci.environment. I don't
read this group so I'm not sure what relevance he thought it would have.
In any case, here it is.  --Alan McGowen]

/ hpindda:talk.environment / dean@vexcel.com (Dean Alaska) / 12:31 pm  Dec  7, 1992 /
In article <723614394snx@sound.demon.co.uk> Jimgw@sound.demon.co.uk writes:
>In article <y459uB1w165w@momad.uucp> Talk.Environment writes:
>>Paul Cass posted the Following:
>>
>>>*  No population can keep growing indefinitely (principle of
>>>carrying capacity).
>>
>>This is false. There is no reason why technology cannot increase carrying
>>capacity indefinitely. If there is a reason, I would like to hear it.
>>
>There may not be a theoretical reason why technology cannot increase
>carrying capacity forever, but I would like to know of a _practical_
>reason why someone is _sure_ that it can.  It may be the subject of a good
>bet but the stakes are too high for me.  I guess I'm just too conservative.

This point of Dean's (that the question is one of risks rather than of 
theoretical limits) is so good that it deserves a little elaboration.

In nonhuman species, carrying capacities arise from the physiology, 
reproductive biology, and behavior of the species interacting with an 
environment which contains (limited) resources, competitors, preditors, 
and diseases. The limitation of resources arises from the finite amount of 
area available for habitation or primary production, and the fact that 
primary production is inherently limited by the solar constant, the 
efficiency of photosynthesis, and the availability of water and essential
nutrients. Real or *effective* carrying capacities are usually lower than
the maximum the environment could possibly support, thanks to competition
and predation. When all constraints of competition and predation are removed
from a species its niche typically expands from what it is in the presence
of those forces (its "realized" or "effective" niche) to the niche which is 
determined by its physiology (its fundamental niche). Such an expansion is 
call an *ecological release*. The all-time champion ecological release event
is probably H. Sapiens. It is the realized niche at any given time which 
interacts with the environment to determine the carrying capacity at that
time.

In a human society with technology (and here I am using "technology" in
the broadest possible sense of the word, i.e. it includes stone spearpoints,
grass baskets, and knowing when the game will migrate through your valley
-- not just computers and camcorders and cars) the physiology of foraging 
is augmented by technology. In effect, technology modifies the fundamental
niche of humans -- it changes our tolerances (we evolved in the tropical
savanna but can live in cold climates by making savanna-like microclimates
around our bodies). It also, of course, eliminates almost all predators,
many (but not all) competitors, and many (but not all diseases), thus
making our realized niche closer to the fundamental niche set by our biology
+ technology. All of this is the case for any human society whatsoever --
modern or prehistoric -- but there is one technological innovation which
makes more difference than any other to our ecological impact, and that is
the use of fossil fuels.

By using fossil fuels (or other sources of energy not derived from ongoing
primary production by photosynthesis) humans are able to make changes in
ecosystems using (locally) orders of magnitude more energy than flows through
those systems naturally -- more energy than can be handled by the repair 
processes which which evolution has equipped them down through eons of 
natural disturbances.  We can operate on an intensity and on a scale which 
overwhelms those repair processes and which eliminates the buffering of 
redundancy which arises from the sheer size of ecosystems and populations. 
Thus we can modify the world in ways which no other species can -- stealing 
from the future of biotic productivity and diversity (e.g. by mining soils 
and reducing habitat area) in order to increase our current numbers. This is
what we have been using technology for increasingly in the past few 
centuries -- undermining the biotic future for present consumption and 
reproduction; -- for a one-time bonanza.

And it is one-time, not just because the fossil fuels will eventually run
out but because the biological support system has a finite capacity, which
arises from its evolutionary history of only photosynthesis-derived energy 
flows, and which is being degraded, and would continue to be degraded even if 
some other kind of energy (e.g. nuclear) were to replace fossil fuels. It's
not lack of energy for *us* that is limiting -- it's *too much* energy for
the biosphere. It's not just that we are not living within *our* means,
energetically speaking, -- we are not living within *its* means.

Now there are two fundamentally different possible responses we could make 
to this situation. 

One way would be to bring our use of energy and other impacts on the biosphere
back down to what it can tolerate -- and help it to repair the damage we
have already wrought. We would live within *its* means -- not because we were
technologically incapable of living beyond those means (at least for a time),
but because the price of doing so would be that we would wreck it, which we
don't want to do. Bringing our realized niche back into line with what the
biosphere could support indefinitely is a coevolutionary process -- coevolution
is the process whereby niches evolve in response to the evolution of, or to
constraints imposed by, other species or a whole ecological community -- except
that of course we would be doing it *culturally*, not by waiting for our gene
frequncies to change. This business of accepting a *realized* niche for 
ourselves which is constrained by the ecosystems of the planet instead of a 
*fundamental* niche which is constrained only by our technological limits at
the moment is what "ecocentrism" is all about: putting the needs of ecosystems 
first. 

Notice that this ecocentric approach does not have to mean that humans are
forever confined to the Earth or must live only like Pleistocene 
hunter-gatherers. But it does mean that we can't leave the Earth by engaging
in biotic deficit spending. Any technology can be pursued so long as we
do it in way and on a scale which is compatable with the continuance of the
rich diversity of life which is the biosphere -- so long as we don't step 
out of our ecosystemic impact budget at any point along the way. 

The other approach is to say "we don't need to accept any limits other 
than those imposed by basic physics. If the biosphere is currently a
limit in any way, we will just develop more technology to free us from
that limit. Even if our own biology in some way ties us to the biosphere,
that is just another limit which can be overcome. We can change our biology,
perhaps, or become thinking machines if need be. It doesn't matter what 
becomes of the biosphere so long as intelligence, civilization, and machinery
expand through the universe." This approach, which values technology above
the biosphere, I call "technocentrism". 

Now the choice between technocentrism and ecocentrism is simultaneously moral
and pragmatic. Technocentrism involves willingness to gamble the biosphere
-- and the only life we humans have or know we will ever have -- on the
chance that we will be able to innovate our way out of any scrape we ever
get into. Against this likelihood is that fact that every living system in
the history of the Earth has equilibrated to some limit.  The technocentrists
point to a few decades or centuries of exponential growth of technology as
evidence that we need not concern ourselves with what has happened to other
species -- we, they say (echoing religion strangely) are Truly Different.

But how do we know that technology will itself continue to exponentiate?
How do we know that even this is not simply a transition to some new stable
state of culture? In short, there is colossal risk involved in the 
technocentric path -- the most colossal risk imaginable. But even beyond
the question of risk is a deeper question -- is that the way we want to go,
even if we can? Should it be the human goal to seek an indefinite expansion
of power, no matter what is destroyed in the process, so long as we can
get away with it and survive? Even if we ourselves may have to change in
unforseen ways, to be dictated only by the needs of that power and the 
technology which supports it? 

This is not a scientific or pragmatic question -- it is a moral one. At least
to some of us -- and I think in fact to the vast majority of people -- this 
path is reminiscent of the dreams of a Hitler. It is tinged with psychosis. 
It might turn out that if we followed it, it would be a blessing if we were 
to fail and become extinct. Does the universe really need an exponentiating 
civilization of conquering power-worshippers who cheerfully wrecked their 
own world to get warmed up? Is that a worthy thing for us to try to become? 

Perhaps, too, these nightmares are really just manifestations of maladaptation,
already arising from a mismatch between the world our brain evolved in and
the world it lives in now. Perhaps it is in such nightmares that we see
the first intimations of what it is that may end the exponentiation of
technology and equilibrate it, coadapt it to the biosphere -- and make it
a true adaptation at last. 
		
			*	*	*	*

The choice couldn't be more clear. One way says expand the human niche as
far as we can and trust to the cleverness of technologists to figure out
something whenever we get into a jam. The other way says shrink the human
niche down to a coevolutionary stable state with the biosphere (at least
on Earth) -- a state which is compatible with the maintenance of the Earth's
biological diversity and ecological and evolutionary processes. That is the
human niche. If it can someday be extended off the Earth without expanding 
it *on* the Earth, fine. Maybe if we first demonstrate that we can after all
live within the means of one biosphere without harming it we will acquire 
the longevity as a species -- and the moral right -- to attempt projects on
such an immense scale. [And probably the first step towards learning how
to make new biospheres is restoring the one we have now.]

------------
Alan McGowen