Matt Yglesias discusses pandas. While I wonder whether or not it can be shown that pandas, like any other species has gone down an "evolutionary cul-de-sac", I do wonder sometimes if our worry over the exponentially-expanding extinction rate doesn't confuse our priorities somewhat.
When I took high school biology, my teacher made a cogent point - acceptance of Darwin's theory of evolution includes the sobering reminder that extinction is part of the process; a new species may arise to fill a void in the ecosystem. Or, the ecosystem may be changing and whole new areas of opportunity for new species may be opening up even as older ones become redundant or harder to sustain. Even we human beings will go the way of the dodo, giant sloth, and Packard at some point.
There are species such as the gray wolf, hunted to near-extinction due to the fact that they acted like predators (shocking!) and hunted ranchers cattle and sheep, that deserve a shot at saving. On the other hand, there are species like the Giant Panda that receive an enormous amount of attention because they seem cute, but whose evolutionary path has led them to such a narrow place in the ecosystem that extinction may be inevitable, even with human intervention. While they have become the logo for the World Wildlife Fund, and efforts at captive breeding are only beginning to pay off after a generation in zoos in the west, I have to believe that, should we humans allow nature to run its course, they will probably be gone in a century or two. While lamentable on some level, on another it is the way of things.
This, of course, leads us to the whole issue of species extinction in general, and what we human beings should do about it. Trying to determine whether this or that species is "worth" saving, or if the dwindling numbers of that species is due in any correlative way to direct human action, can become a fool's game. Sometimes the lines of correlation (not to say causality) can become so intertwined and twisted that untangling them is more trouble than it's worth.
Accepting Darwin, even in his modified, early-21st century form, means accepting that all species will disappear, at some point. Sometimes, they even die out because another species wins the competition for food, space, and other resources. Human action that creates detrimental effects on other species should not, ipso facto, be considered outside the bounds of Darwin's theory. We do have a certain right (for lack of a better word) to ensure the survival of our own species; if opening more land for cultivation, or creating new spaces for more human beings to live creates hazards for other species, that is part of the process of natural selection, after all.
I realize I am probably ticking off more than a few folks with this, but it's just some food for thought.
24 comments:
Nicely said, Geoff. Darwin understood that the result of evolution was not always in agreement with human opinions about "progress". Where we might decide to save endangered species is when it's our doing that's driving them to extinction. When a species is endangered because it's not suited to its undisturbed habitat, though, I'd be more inclined to let nature take its course, no matter how cuddly the species is.
It seems to me we might be funding research on the effects of the combination of ocean spoilage through pollution and global warming on the krill population. Much of the ocean ecosystem depends on the health of those little shrimp; should they disappear, or even become far more scarce, it would be far more devastating to the planet as a whole, human beings included, than the demise of the mountain gorilla or the panda.
Would totally suck if we found a disease that can only be cured by some compound found in panda scent glands, eh?
That's the question, how do we know a priori which species may be the linchpin of their particular ecosystems, and which ones may, in addition, be useful for drug discovery, etc.
@Alan: we don't know a priori; that's why we study nature. I'm also reluctant to set nature's value based on its usefulness to humanity; that's just one dimension of its worth.
First, may I just say Alan, meet Scott, Scott meet Alan. You two have far more in common than you may imagine . . .
Second, Scott, that is part of my point by saying that human beings do have certain fundamental rights over and against other species in the competition for resources, including space, water, and so forth. Also, while two decades ago one issue that was very hot was deforestation esp. in Brazil, to open up land for cultivation and cattle, the land itself is ill-suited for such use, so I wonder how much of an issue that continues to be. Far more worrisome, to me, is deoxygenating of various areas of the ocean; the demise of multiple fisheries - overfishing cannot be the only culprit - and all sorts of buried time bombs from the chemical, pharmaceutical, and military industries that have yet to go off.
This is why I do not get all that fussed over whether someone tosses a McDonald's bag on the ground; it's paper and will decompose. Buried barrels of various toxic chemicals that leach in to ground water, destroying the soil, mutating the flora and fauna - that scares the bejeebers out of me.
Yet, on a more related issue, I once had a discussion about this very topic, and I offered the observation, much as Scott did, that it is impossible to decide beforehand what species is and is not important; further, any death of any non-human creature brought about by a human agent, whether due to habitat loss, eco-system damage, or the kind of wastage we see on the side of the road (I have hit my fair share of raccoons, stupid animals) is no less natural than managed culling of wild herd of deer, wild sheep and goats, and predators through state-managed hunting. Indeed, there is no act more natural than dying.
Apparently, the person with whom I was talking wanted to make a distinction that, to my mind, just doesn't hold any water - that human beings doing things like claiming new land for cultivation, for grazing, for building shelter for new communities is an illegitimate use of resources and the resulting potential loss of animal and plant species was qualitatively different - morally objectionable in these and similar cases - from the kind of "natural" competition that results in species extinction in other cases.
I find that nonsensical in the extreme. While human beings may be the only species of which we are aware that has a sense of space, time, the otherness of other species, and the kind of awareness of our actions sometimes deemed "moral" (for lack of a better term), this does not in any sense give us the duty, therefore, to inhibit our actions on some a priori basis precisely because such actions might lead to the destruction of plant and animal species, some of which we might not even know exist. While managed growth and an attention to the real possibility that our actions can impact the larger ecosystem in ways we cannot understand beforehand, this shouldn't lead to stasis.
Why do you hate pandas so???
Dan, I don't just hate pandas - humpback whales, mountain gorillas, the golden-lion tamarin, you name pretty much any large species of fauna that gets all sorts of attention at the expense of smaller, yet (far more likely) more essential species make it that much harder to discuss the issue of species extinction. There is also the whole anti-hunting thing, including recent moves by Idaho to begin hunting gray wolves (a stupid decision, to be sure, but since I'm kind of powerless to stop it, my saying so doesn't matter all that much).
In all seriousness, I don't hate any of these species. What I hate is ill-thought-out discussions on the issue of species extinction, the human role in non-human extinction, and the almost-total lack of understanding of natural selection as part of the mix.
But they're so cute and cuddly and you just want to eat 'em up!
Oh, wait...
Panda - it's what's for dinner.
Panda - the OTHER black and white meat.
Pandwich - it's not just a sandwich, it's a meal!
Human society has developed to the point that almost all of us no longer participate in the ecological system as simply an additional animal species. Apart from the interior of the Amazonian jungle, Papua New Guinea, and other such habitats, the rest of humanity has an effect equal to nuclear weaponry.
This is, in no way, close to any conceptualization of Darwin regarding the founding principles of natural selection and extinction. We have become nuclear waste when it comes to the billions of years of ecological life; in a sense, we are more perverse than a killer meteor.
Evolution and its cycles are grossly ruptured in natural history, and the stakes - and the concerns and interests - are of a categorically higher order.
And not least because we are conscious of our actions.
Sorry, Feodor, but I don't buy that. That would make the emergent characteristics we usually term consciousness and society something "unnatural", rather than simply the result of natural selection.
I do not disagree that human social activity can be devastating on whole ecosystems. I do disagree that it is categorically different than, say, an emergent species crowding out others.
Acid rain is not "crowding out."
I've been joking thus far, but I think there is something to both arguments. Extinction IS natural and we ought not hyperventilate because a given species is going/has gone extinct.
On the other hand, there IS something UN-natural and less than healthy from a ecospheric perspective to human expansion. For our own sakes, if nothing else, we ought to be concerned about HOW we expand/grow/consume.
At least that's how it seems to me, but I have not fully thought out my position thus far.
Or maybe it is natural, but that would not make it healthy...
What other organism has a direct and fatal impact on an ecological system in which that organism does not live nor even lives anywhere near?
This phenomenon is outside the confines of evolutionary theory.
Acid rain is the result of human industrial activity, an outgrowth of part of our naturally-endowed ability to live together in large groups.
Other animals use chemicals to their advantage - as neurotoxins, as a way of creating space for themselves, to discourage predation, and whatnot.
When a species is introduced in to a new habitat - happens all the time, both through human and non-human modes of transportation - they wreak havoc on the ecosystem of their new habitat, destroying plant and animal life indiscriminately. For some reason, some people think that when human beings wreak havoc on the environment, there is something different about what they do.
Am I suggesting that acid rain is OK, then? Of course not! I am suggesting that much of the talk about species extinction seems to take place outside a Darwinian, or neo-Darwinian framework.
Do I think we human beings should take action to curb the detrimental effects on the biosphere? Of course. What I refuse to do is to assign a categorical difference to human activity as distinct from that of other animals. Unless you wish to suggest that human society is not an emergent phenomenon in evolutionary terms, and therefore natural, I suggest you pay closer attention to the argument being presented here.
What organism effects the entire ecosystem?
I'll ask you a counter-question. In the geological past, there have been multiple extinction events, one of which killed off close to 98% of the species of life then living. This, BTW, was NOT the result of extraterrestrial (meteoric bombardment) interference. Scientists have no idea what caused it. They only know that, in geological terms, it happened fast.
Even nuclear war would not devastate the planetary biosphere to that degree, let alone the varieties of human industrial pollution. If anything, natural laboratories such as what happened after Chernobyl and the Mt. St. Helens eruption show the remarkable resilience of life, the ability of new species to take over an area once the original flora and fauna have been removed.
The issue is not planetary, or biospheric, or ecosystemic survival. This is as full of hubris as the Baconian and Cartesian ideal of the control of nature through knowledge and manipulation. Rather, the issue is far more parochial - the survival of the human species. We are killing ourselves in a variety of ways.
The extinction of any species, while lamentable, is part of the process of natural selection. Even should human beings kill themselves off through the exhaustion of resources and the after-effects of industrial society making human life impossible, this would not mean the end of all life on earth. We need to concentrate on ensuring the survival of our own species - and certainly not condoning the unwarranted elimination of other species in the process - without succumbing to the idea that somehow we are killing planet Earth.
I forgot the question!!
Ahem and to whit:
Since there were no human beings present, if it could be determined that the activities of some particular species - say, a virulent virus or other biological agent - wreaked that kind of havoc on life on the planet, would that be as immoral an act, and outside the bounds of evolutionary theory, as you suggest human activity is?
Your use of "natural selection" is way too vague and analogous, more pop science than application of science.
Natural selection is a process whereby inheritable traits that may aid a species in survival and reproduction spread throughout a population over many, many generations. Given this time, the process can give rise to adaptations which specialize a species to thrive in its ecological domain and may give rise to a new species.
The burning of fossil fuels simply does not compute.
I suggest you pay much closer attention to the building blocks of your breezy argument.
I suggest you pay closer attention to the way I put "society" in all its inherent manifestations in an evolutionary context, i.e., what Ernst Mayr refers to as emergent characteristics.
Evolution gives rise to various emergent characteristics that cannot be deduced from the their constituent parts - in human beings, what we call consciousness and society are examples (the latter is more mine, but it does seem an emergent character, stemming from our being a sociable animal).
This whole argument stems from my own sense that there are other areas of ecosystem research, extinction prevention, and efforts to support biodiversity than "saving" the Giant Panda, the California Condor, or the Mountain Gorilla. This is not to say that human ecological depredations are not part of the mix in understanding their dwindling numbers. It is only to suggest that our efforts at supporting biodiversity are better served in researching other areas of the biosphere.
As far as burning fossil fuels is concerned, I refuse to tag that as a moral evil. It would be nice if we had the political will, as opposed to the technical skill, to make our use of these technologies less harmful to the environment. Seldom have human communities done so, so I am sanguine about the possibility of preventive action in that sphere.
Yet, you have not addressed the question I asked, which it seems is far more basic than the value-laden question you tossed my way. Extinction happens, and natural selection, which you seem to believe you understand better than I, seems to handle it quite well, given the reality of geological time. The issue is not, and never really has been, the health of the biosphere, or its sustainability.
On a moral level, the issue is the sustainability, not of the human species, but of human industrial society as it has existed for the past two centuries. Again, it is complicated by the morally dubious practice of politics and the depressing lack of preventive maintenance exhibited by human beings on these questions.
Seeking to place "blame" for species extinction on human industrial society is a cheap and easy way to ignore the far more complicated issues with which we are confronted, not the least of them being ecological triage such as which species to rescue from the brink. I also think it important to examine human social activity in an evolutionary context, because that is part of the mix. To say it doesn't compute is to ignore the reality that human beings have evolved as creatures that live together in groups, and seek through consciousness ways to solve the many problems that arise from living together in groups. Industrial society is part of the solution to one set of problems, that creates others in its wake.
One of them, however, is not moral responsibility for the destruction of other species on the planet.
Emergent characteristics exist all the way up from the emergence of DNA to human societies. You cannot deduce from cellular activity and function the emergence of the properties of tissues; again, from tissues to the function of organs.
Mayr argues quite forcefully against vitalistic thinking - the idea that emergent characteristics can be accounted for by some elan vital that metaphysically enables these properties to emerge. While understandable on a level of biochemistry, the emergent characters are not reducible to an understanding of the structure and function of individual or collective features of the constituent parts.
Thus, that which we call consciousness is not deducible from an understanding of the structure and function of the human brain as it exists in its various constituent parts. This does not mean there is a separation of consciousness from the activity of the brain; on the contrary, it is what it is and what it does. The kind of self-awareness that has been variously termed "mind", "consciousness", "intellectual activity" and whatnot cannot be deduced from a study of the parts of the brain, but only understood as a characteristic of the function of the tissues and electrochemical activity of the brain as it functions as a whole.
GKS, two crucial factors in Mayr's Darwinian synthesis via speciation which I don't think you've fully captured and cannot reconcile with the phenomenon of human ecological decimation that recognizes no "difference" and no "niche" but, instead, is obliterating both.
isolating mechanism: Any mechanism, such as a difference between species in courtship behavior or breeding season, that results in reproductive isolation between the species.
adaptive radiation: The diversification, over evolutionary time, of a species or group of species into several different species or subspecies that are typically adapted to different ecological niches (for example, Darwin's finches). The term can also be applied to larger groups of organisms, as in "the adaptive radiation of mammals."
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