More on the Manzanita...

Larry E. writes after reading my post about the $200G manzanita transplantation:

A little follow up to our Manzanita story.

Part of the problem with this event is that it presupposes that somehow this is "The Best Time in History" (tm) (I swear I'm gonna trademark that someday). Somehow the species that are here now, are optimal, that the temperature now, is optimal, the sea levels are optimal, that somehow NOW is a better than all the times in the past or any potential future. That if a species goes extinct NOW, it is somehow more important than all the species that came before might come into existence.

The reality is that this NOW is a tiny, tiny blip in the history of the life on earth, the planet, the universe, or even just human history. Far more species have gone extinct than exist. Extinction is a normal, natural occurrence and if the Manzanita goes "extinct in the wild" whatever that really means, something else more suitable will eventually fill that ecological nitch. This give and take in nature has done quite nicely over the history of the earth.

While I applaud efforts to collect, study and even store plants and seeds etc. for future reference, attempting to preserve every existing species in the wild is at best misguided and at worse driven by financial gain. Pointing at the impact of humans as if somehow human existence is not also natural and instead, unlike all other species on the planet, represents a scourge, seems a bizarre exercise in self-loathing by groups of people that like all of the rest of us fly airplanes, drive cars, live in houses, but apparently feel terribly guilty about their own personal existence or are being used by those that seek financial gain.

In terms of planetary impact, the difference between humans and other species is that we alone are able to recognize and analyze our behavior and make conscious adjustments. Where the field mouse population will reproduce and feed and grow until it consumes all of the available resources, until it the population is checked by starvation, felled disease or predation; humans alone make deliberate adjustments. Creating laws to clean up rivers, protecting vast areas of land, treating their own waste products. Packing out our own waste from wilderness areas is the rule for humans, where the field mouse leaves its feces everywhere. Replanting forests where tree killing beetles won't stop until the last tree is gone. Locusts will destroy anything edible before they move on.

Lets stop with the self-loathing and instead start celebrating ourselves and our accomplishments.

I certainly agree with Larry's main point: that it's crazy to think of this moment in planetary history as somehow representing an ideal that must not change.  This is a logical fallacy (a mistake in thinking process) that many observers have noted, but it persists.  Most people have little sense or knowledge even of human history, much less the much broader palette of planetary history.

I suspect I would depart from Larry a bit when it comes to conservation: when it's clear that mankind's activities are needlessly imperiling a species, and when the mitigation can be done for a reasonable cost, I'm all for species preservation.  For example, many plant and animal species on Hawai'i are endangered for no reason other than mankind's meddling, and they can be preserved at a cost I believe is reasonable (thought others might disagree).  On the other hand, preserving a desert lizard subspecies (that wasn't even a subspecies until environmentalists identified that as a tactic) at a cost of forbiding all development in the Anza Borrego desert – that's a questionable cause with an unreasonable price tag.

In other words, I'd like to see some balance in these decisions.  How useful or beautiful or genetically important is the species in question?  Is it actually a genetically distinct species, with important differences from its nearest relative?  How much would it cost (either in direct cost, or indirect costs of missed development opportunities) to preserve the species?  This calls for an informed judgement call – something that bureaucrats in general and politicians in particular are horribly bad at.  A structure much like a court, with appointed judges, would, I suspect, be the most likely human organization to make those judgements wisely.  A Supreme Conservation Court, if you will...