Crisis in the Deep Blue

Denis Hayes
Seattle Post-Intelligencer

After a daring, 900-mile chase across the Bering Sea, the captain of the Sherman received permission to open fire if necessary. The crew of the Coast Guard cutter swiftly uncovered its machine guns and began manning battle stations.

The target was not a boat full of terrorists or drug smugglers. It was the Arctic Wind, a Korean-owned, Russian-crewed, Honduras- registered fishing boat that had been using illegal, 8-mile-long drift nets in American waters off the coast of Alaska. When the Sherman finally got serious, the Arctic Wind quickly backed down and let the Coast Guard seize its illegal catch.

This incident illustrates several problems afflicting the ocean. The Arctic Wind was flying under a flag of convenience that provided little if no oversight. Its owners viewed the ocean as a vast commons from which they could take whatever they wanted. And the Arctic Wind’s nets contained much bycatch — dead sharks, puffins, albatross, porpoises — in addition to the illegal salmon.

Like the owners of the Arctic Wind, most humans have long viewed the oceans’ bounty as limitless and thought of the oceans’ capacity to absorb waste as infinite. Lord Byron expressed the sentiment two hundred years ago:

Roll on, thou deep and dark blue ocean — roll!

Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain;

Man marks the earth with ruin — his control

Stops with the shore.

But the poet never encountered rockhopper gear, global positioning systems or persistent organic pollutants. Today, the shore no longer provides a meaningful boundary. In January 1998, 1,600 marine scientists, fishery biologists and oceanographers authored a joint statement that the oceans are in serious trouble and that trouble is mostly traceable to human abuse.

Congress subsequently created yet another commission to advise it what to do about the ocean’s failing health. The Commission on Ocean Policy, which has held hearings all over the country, was in Seattle this month, listening to fishing interests, shipping executives, environmentalists, coastal officials, tribes, scholars and others. Although witnesses sometimes disagreed sharply about the best solutions, they displayed a remarkable consensus on the nature of the problems.

Wild fisheries are shrinking

Several salmon and steelhead populations were recently listed as threatened or endangered in the Pacific Northwest. Similar collapses have affected many other major fisheries, from New England cod to Peruvian anchovies. In recent years, the global wild fish catch has fallen in all but two of the world’s 15 major marine fishing regions.

This bleak situation has been masked by two factors that have keep total worldwide fish “tonnage” relatively stable. From the mid-1980s to 2000, aquaculture production grew from 7 million metric tons to 36 million metric tons. Second, fishers are turning to smaller, less valuable fish (pilchard, mackerel, pollock, dogfish, monkfish and other species) that once were considered trash. They are fishing their way down the food chain; the South Pacific catch of orange roughy fell 70 percent in six years.

Fish are at the top of the marine policy agenda because they are an important part of human diets and regional economies. Worldwide, humans obtain more of their animal protein from fish than either beef or pork.

Nearly 1 billion people in Asia, island states and coastal Africa get most of their animal protein from fish. They are having increasing difficulty competing for fish in a global economic marketplace where most of the world’s commercial catch — 83 percent by value — is exported to industrial countries.

Trawlers are “clear-cutting”

Bottom trawling is analogous to clear-cutting ancient forests: Both activities completely destroy complex, stable ecosystems. While you are reading this, European trawlers are mindlessly obliterating 4,500-year-old cold water corals off the coasts of Scotland, Ireland and Norway. Norway has already lost more than half its coral.

There are, however, two important differences between trawling and clear-cutting. First, bottom trawling is invisible to anyone who is not hundreds of yards under the surface of the ocean. As the rock group America sang in “A Horse with No Name,” “The ocean is a desert with its life underground, and the perfect disguise above.” There are no protesters camping out on the ocean floor or chaining themselves to trawlers.

Second, the scope of bottom trawling is vastly greater than that of clear-cutting. Each year, trawling disrupts 150 times as much area as is clear-cut around the world. Advances in fishing technology have essentially eliminated what were once de facto refuges from trawling.

A flood of pollution

A vast flood of fertilizer, feed-lot run-off, pesticides and industrial pollutants courses down virtually every river in the world. Most of the world’s population and most of the biggest cities are on coastlines, where sewage, oil, heavy metals, pharmaceuticals, artificial hormones and other biologically disruptive substances flow directly into the sea.

In a particularly dramatic example, the drainage basin of the Mississippi River touches nearly every state from the Rockies to the Appalachians. The flood of pollution has created a “dead zone” in the Gulf of Mexico that, at its summer peak, is about the size of New Jersey. With the dead zone utterly devoid of oxygen, anything living in this huge region must flee or die.

If an 8,000-square-mile “dead zone” popped up on land, it would get fixed in a year. But there is no similar level of urgency for problems at sea.

Climate change

Climate change is the issue the oil industry most wants to forget. In the Bush administration, the Ocean Commission will be under pressure not to mention global warming. But trying to tackle ocean issues while ignoring climate change is like discussing urban design without mentioning the automobile.

At some point, global warming will shut down the North Atlantic Current. Historically, this shutdown has taken about 10 years to accomplish, and millennia to reverse. It renders much of Europe uninhabitable.

At some point, the West Antarctic Ice Sheet will collapse, raising all the world’s oceans 16 feet to 20 feet. The last time this ice sheet disappeared, the world was 4 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than today. Scientists believe the Earth’s temperature could increase by as much as 10 degrees Fahrenheit this century.

Climate change has already been tied to widespread death of coral reefs and more intense tropical hurricanes. In the Northwest, a decline in winter snowpack will likely to have traumatic consequences for Pacific salmon.

The future of the world’s oceans is intimately bound up with the future of the world’s climate.

The list of problems goes on and on. A few solutions enjoy broad support.

Submerged lands under U.S. jurisdiction make up more than 4.4 million square miles, more than the nation’s land area. From Maine to Guam, from Alaska to Puerto Rico, these regions encompass far more marine diversity than those of any other nation. The time is ripe to create a system of marine reserves that fully protect rich samples of all the major marine ecosystems. The reserves should be of sufficient size to allow the recovery and permanent protection of broad swaths of biological diversity, providing refuge for species throughout their life cycles. These marine reserves should enjoy a degree of enforcement and protection similar to that accorded our national parks.

Almost inevitably, fishing will shift from a “hunting and gathering” industry to one dominated by aquaculture. Already, fish farms produce about 40 percent as much tonnage as all commercial fishing vessels. But these “farms” bring potential perils as well as benefits.

Most international attention has been focused on the destruction of fragile, coastal ecosystems in tropical countries. However, salmon farming in Cascadia is one of the fastest-growing sectors of the global industry. The proposed lifting of a Canadian moratorium on new installations could lead to hundreds of new fish farms between Vancouver Island and southeast Alaska over the next few years.

Escaping exotic Atlantic salmon and the introduction of diseases into pristine waters will have a proven detrimental effect on wild Pacific salmon stocks.

It is reasonable to demand that pens be designed so that non-native fish cannot possibly escape, even during storms. Moreover, fish farms must be required to treat all their sewage, which can be as much as is produced by a small city.

Agencies with marine responsibility are scattered all over the place. They should be consolidated into one department with a clear mandate. Ocean advocates tend to prefer a new Department of Oceans. Others prefer that the Interior Department have a marine division that parallels its authority over public lands. There is widespread agreement that the current placement of ocean science and fisheries management in the Department of Commerce has worked poorly.

For 3 billion years, all life on Earth was marine. Like other terrestrial critters, we humans still carry the sea with us. Our tears, our sweat and our blood recapitulate our salty origins.

As might be expected after so long, the sea is incredibly diverse. For example, 32 of the 33 animal phyla are found in marine habitats — only insects are missing. Fifteen of these are exclusively marine phyla, and five more are predominantly marine.

Contemplating this astonishing variety — much of it under serious stress — beneath the surface of the ocean offers a new dimension and new urgency to Aldo Leopold’s famous observation in A Sand Country Almanac: “We know now what was unknown to all the preceding caravan of generations, that men are only fellow voyagers with other creatures…. This new knowledge should have given us, by this time, a sense of kinship … a wish to live and let live; a sense of wonder over the magnitude and duration of the biotic enterprise.”

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Denis Hayes is president of the Bullitt Foundation and international chairman of the Earth Day Network. The opinions in this article represent only those of the author.

©1999-2002 Seattle Post-Intelligencer

U.S. Secretary of the Interior Columbus Delano, speaking in 1873:

“I would not seriously regret the total disappearance of the buffalo from our western plains, in its effect upon the Indians. I would regard it rather as a means of hastening their sense of dependence upon the products of the soil and their own labors.”

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Oh, Give Me a Home Where the Buffalo Roam

Eric Stewart

When I headed to West Yellowstone, Montana to observe Montana’s Department of Livestock (a group with absolutely no background in any biological sciences) in their inexplicable war upon North America’s last wild herd of bison, I had two motives. The primary concern was the bison themselves. After about three years of hearing sporadic reports of their ongoing slaughter, I must admit I was a bit baffled as to how this could still be going on. From everything I had heard, this issue had everything going for it to attract the public attention. I kept thinking, “This has all the elements of the sensational”; after all, the bison are, next to the bald eagle, the single most revered symbol/totem of the “New World.” There was the MDoL’s refusal to accommodate an offer to have all the cattle in question vaccinated from a microorganism that, although potentially dangerous, had NEVER been known to transmit from bison to either human OR cattle. Elk – yes. Bison – no! Another reason of mine for plugging into the Buffalo Field Campaign was that in the past four years my focus as an activist and a journalist had strayed from being primarily ecological to other, less universal concerns. I make no apologies; they are important issues. Yet without nutritive soil, decent air, healthy water, and a biodiverse ecosystem, what befalls Yugoslavia, Colombia, Afghanistan, Palestine, Venezuela, or Indonesia matters not at all.

One of the first things that grabbed my attention during my week long tutelage, workshop, and exercise in setting aside my personal differences with people for the attainment of a common goal, was that the bison had NEVER been listed as an endangered species. Apparently, the “reasoning” behind this fallacy is that they are, genetically, not appreciably different from cattle. This is baseless as such a study has never been conducted. So goes the argument, a female bison’s ovum can be fertilized by the sperm of a domesticated bull, something that never occurs in nature, i.e. all “beefalo” are a result of artificial insemination. By this reasoning, your Rottweiler is a wolf merely because it can become impregnated by one and this DOES occur without the meddling hand of man.

In fact, Yellowstone’s bison don’t even officially exist, managing to not be listed as a species even present there by the National Park Service. They’re there alright – and they’re big. You can’t miss them. Given the fact that there is a considerable mandate for their protection, one can only conclude that their exclusion is political in nature. Perhaps putting the bison on paper would open legal doorways for their protection. It seems that there have been people in key governmental positions for some time with interests vested against such a scenario, and the bison; perhaps for a hundred and fifty years.

Think on this: a yearling calf that is not infected with brucellosis and is not posing a problem for anyone can have his/her head auctioned off. These “trophies” have gone for as little as a dollar, indicating that people who attend such auctions find it distasteful – not Montana’s Department of Livestock! Such auctions netted the MDoL, last year, over $180,000 – an established motive?

Is it any wonder many Montana reservations refuse the meat offered by the MDoL obtained from such crimes?

BRUCELLOSIS

There is not a single recorded incident of transmission of brucellosis from bison to either cattle or human. A Texas A&M study is often cited to argue otherwise but in that study bison were HEAVILY dosed with the microbe and the bison and cattle were confined together in tight quarters.

Human health arguments are, as well, severely flawed. Despite hundreds of people butchering Yellowstone bison, many with their bare hands, not one of those contracted the bacteria. There ARE five known cases of transmission from elk to human, however.

The principle route of transmission of this protist is through contact with an infected, aborted fetus. As such, pregnant bison pose a theoretical risk of transmission yet the window for such an occurrence, as I shall demonstrate, and as is ALREADY demonstrated by its never having occurred, is infinitesimal.

Some have argued that cattle could become infected by licking a live, newborn calf. After spending a week watching these monolithic, four- legged forces of nature playing, grazing, and battling for dominance, I am pretty sure that any domestic cow or bull that tried to get near one of the bison’s young would be quickly and properly escorted from its erroneous ways.

In order for brucellosis to be transmitted from bison to cattle, the following factors must ALL be in place:

1. A pregnant female bison must walk out of Yellowstone National Park between June and October (when cattle are present in the general vicinity) and this is uncommon.

2. The female must abort – something that is extremely rare.

3. The aborted fetus must remain un-scavenged until cattle enter the area. I was just there and there are scavengers aplenty of the kind that aren’t affected by brucellosis. Besides, the herd will almost always eat the aborted fetus, the placenta, the mucus – everything.

4. Cattle must arrive within four hours if the fetus is left in direct sunlight after which, it dies.

Despite all of this, Montana’s MDoL has shown that they are willing to kill any bison of any age or sex, regardless of whether or not it is known that they are brucellosis-free, that steps out of the park.

Know that a 30-60 day period of separation between bison and cattle is observed, further diminishing this already microscopic window of risk. When ranchers were offered to have the cattle vaccinated (the vaccine has been shown to be 70% effective) they declined. This would have reduced the hair-thin risk window by another seventy percent.

RECENTLY A couple of weeks ago, a judge ruled that this year’s grazing allotments must be canceled because an Environmental Impact Statement, required every ten years, was not done. A few days later, the MDoL killed twenty-nine of these creatures. They posed no threat to any cattle or human yet the MDoL, in their arrogance, were sure that an appeal with absolutely no base would go through. It didn’t. Another judge ruled the same. No cattle this year. Do the EIS. Too late for those twenty-nine.

A few days later, after the capture facility had been packed up for the season, in their spite, they came back out for the sole purpose of shooting two bison that were practicing something that Shane (head cowpoke) and his boys do not: do unto others as you would have them do unto you. This was a new experience for me, losing a bison I had actually known, though it happened after I left West Yellowstone.

He was magnificent. He was peaceful. He practiced a creed we usually only speak about practicing: live and let live.

This mighty manifestation of the same force that powers the universe was marked – in two ways. He was marked and tagged from having been already tested for brucellosis – meaning he was KNOWN by his murderers as not being a carrier. He was also marked in a different way, targeted to satisfy the urge of a few deranged primates who get off on playing the hunter.

CULTURE WAR?

The bison were the livelihood of millions of people indigenous to the Americas. As it turns out, it is for this reason that at the turn of the century, only twenty-three remained.

In 1871, R.C. McCormick, the congressional delegate from the Arizona Territory, introduced a bill in the U.S. House for the protection of the bison, but it never made it out of committee. He tried again the next year by showing other congressmen an illustrated article in Harper’s Weekly that warned of their impending extermination.

McCormick also read letters on the House floor from army officers, Indian agents, and the head of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, all of whom urged that the federal government take action.

McCormick overplayed his hand, however, when he read a letter pointing out the devastating effect the loss of the bison had on the plains Indians. It reminded congressmen who favored a “hard-line” Indian policy that allowing the destruction of the bison would expedite their goal of undermining the native population. Widespread newspaper reporting of the continued decimation of the bison generated support for protective legislation, so that a bill finally passed both houses of Congress in the spring of 1874. President Ulysses S. Grant pocket-vetoed the measure. Secretary of the Interior Columbus Delano had recently reported to the president that “the total disappearance of the buffalo” was an effective way to encourage the Indians to adopt an agricultural lifestyle, which (white) reformers desired. Grant’s chief military advisors on Indian policy, Generals William Sherman and Philip Sheridan, argued that the Indians would be forced to capitulate to the army once the bison were gone.

By the mid 1880’s, only a few hundred bison existed, located primarily in the area of Yellowstone National Park. The 1872 law establishing the park prohibited the “wanton destruction of fish or game for the sole purposes of merchandise or profit.” Poachers, though, took advantage of the absence of enforcement mechanisms and lack of funding for the park’s first five years. Conditions were so bad in 1886 that a U.S. Cavalry unit had to police the park. The situation remained much the same until 1894 when President Grover Cleveland signed the Yellowstone Protection Act into law. It banned killing game, cutting timber, or removing mineral deposits upon penalty of fines and jail time.

CONCLUSIONS

Just as in the nineteenth century, white man wages war on something that does not threaten him. That was the legacy we as Americans inherited. We railed, at times, for being held accountable for the sins of our grandfathers. Shall we rail against being held accountable for the sins of OUR age? Well who else WOULD be responsible? Who is there to account for such if not ourselves? Will our children get by in spite of our apathy? I offer a different scenario – a vision that I hope you can identify with: may they thrive BECAUSE of our EFFORTS!

Aho Mitakuye Oyasin!

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 References:

Slaughter on the Montana Range

Sacred Buffalo, Holy Cow: The Struggle for the Western Range

Dispelling the Cowboy Myth: an Interview with George Wuerthner

Federal Judge Rules That Cattle Grazing on Public Lands Prompting Buffalo Slaughter Should Be Halted

Montana DOL kills 29 buffalo

QUICKTIME VIDEOS Need a Player?

You will need to cut and paste these movie URLs into your address bar to reach the movies. Otherwise angelfire will stop the connection.

A slice of life on the bison front (919 KB) http://www.angelfire.com/mi/smilinks/Buffalo_Mist.mov

I was hurt to find out about 29 bison being slaughtered two weeks ago. It seems the MDoL has 202 confirmed kills this year including 72 from April 29-30 (12.1 MB) http://www.angelfire.com/mi/smilinks/72_Slaughtered.mov

Originally posted by Eric Stewart, BFC Volunteer 2002 under the title “A WEEK IN MONTANA”. 

Image Copyright © 2001, 2002 Buffalo Field Campaign and/or CMCR ~:~
Text portion of this page Copyright © 2002 Eric Stewart
The Buffalo Field Campaign’s Home Page

Simon Hunt writes: In an unprecedented and totally unexpected way, Hopi Elders for the first time in history have openly shared their sacred, and heretofore secret prophecies with the world. Robert Ghost Wolf, noted Native American Prophet and author arranged for two Hopi Elders to appear for three hours on the nationally aired Art Bell show (out of Pahrump, NV) and freely discuss their sacred, and heretofore secret prophecies. It has been said by many who have had limited access to the prophecies in the past, that the Hopi prophecies of the coming earth changes are among the most ancient and accurate available. The Elders have come forth at this time because they believe that we have passed the point of no return and major changes are imminent, beginning within the next few months. It is their hope to ìsoften” the effects by appealing to all to return to a simpler, more spiritual way of life.

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This Is the Hour!

You have been telling the people that this is the Eleventh Hour.

Now you must go back and tell them that this is the Hour!

And there are things to be considered:

Where are you living?

What are you doing?

What are your relationships?

Are you in the right relation?

Where is your water?

Know your garden.

It is time to speak your Truth.

Create your community.

Be good to each other.

And do not look outside yourself for the leader.

This could be a good time !

There is a river flowing now very fast.

It is so great and swift that there are those who will be afraid.

They will try to hold onto the shore.

They will feel they are being torn apart, and they will suffer greatly.

Know the river has its destination.

The Elders say we must let go of the shore, push off into the middle of the river, keep our eyes open and our heads above water.

See who is in there with you and celebrate.

At this time in history, we are to take nothing personally. Least of all, ourselves.

For the moment that we do, our spiritual growth and journey comes to a halt. The time of the lone wolf is over. Gather yourselves! Banish the word ’struggle’ from your attitude and your vocabulary.

All that we do now must be done in a sacred manner and in celebration. We are the ones we have been waiting for.

The Elders Oraibi
Arizona Hopi Nation

Reason Wilken writing about Daniel Quinn’s Ishmael: “For generations we have embraced the notion that industrial civilization evolved naturally from hunter-gatherer societies, when in reality it was a distinct split that began with the dawn of the Agricultural Age. Hunter-gatherer societies have not been entirely replaced by industrial civilization, and there a number existing today. Despite this fact, our cultural attitude has created a stigma surrounding smaller self-sustaining societies like these. Non-industrial people are ìuncivilized”, ìprimitive” and ìignorant” no matter how organized or self-sufficient they are.

“Gradually, our culture is beginning to realize that we are flawed in some ways and we cannot sustain our current drain on natural resources indefinitely. But even if it were widely accepted that industrial culture has a finite lifespan (which is quickly running out), it is unlikely that we would all be capable of adopting a simpler style of life. Even if the life of the earth were at stake (as it might soon be), it is still not plausible to believe that we would make the switch. The very philosophy underlying industrial (or as Ishmael calls it, ìTaker”) culture runs contrary to hunter-gatherer ( ìLeaver”) principles. This is not to say that Takers are bad and Leavers are good, just that their respective ideals are not complementary.

“At the core of the Taker culture is a strong desire to care for and advance humanity. This is accomplished by growing enough food to support a large population, expanding the areas of the world in which humans can live, and making extensive use of natural resources to sustain our growing needs. Technologically, a great many advances have been made by industrial peoples: the invention of the steam engine (and subsequently the airplane and automobile), the ability to utilize the full potential of land through agriculture, and the ability to treat many diseases through discovery of new drugs. Unfortunately, most of this has been at great expense to the environment. At the core of Leaver culture is a strong desire to care for and respect the biological environment that sustains them. The majority of the time, Leaver peoples take not what they need but what is available. This may mean moving around in order to find more animals to hunt or food to gather. It may also mean that some members of the population will perish in the event that enough food cannot be found.

“In principle, this is absolutely unacceptable to industrialized people. To the Takers, it seems obvious that we have to utilize every resource and milk the earth for everything we can in order to sustain and expand our race. Who in their right mind would allow members of their society to perish just because enough food could not be found? If supplies are tight, the answer is not to cut back consumption, but to increase supplies! If resources do eventually run out and the industrialized peoples do perish, then it will be with honor while trying to advance humanity. As Takers, we would almost rather die in glory while trying to further our race than to ìrevert” to hunting and gathering. Accepting the earth´s limitations and switching to a simpler life that could be supported on available resources would be conceding to failure.”

This morning we feature further thoughts from wiseman Daniel Quinn.

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Talk about wealth!

It’s never easy to catch Mother Culture in her lies – even for me, with all my practice. She teaches that the way we live is the only human way to live, and thinking about other ways is an utter waste of time. The characteristic that Mother Culture attaches to the Leaver lifestyle most predominantly is absence. Leavers lack technology (untrue, but no matter), lack history (what they have is merely prehistory), lack the noble institutions of civilization, lack the opportunities for wealth and luxury that we enjoy. The last of these is one of the trickiest of Mother Culture’s deceptions, because at first glance it seems unarguable. Even very modest Taker households boast amenities that would seem miraculous to our ancient ancestors and that would still seem so to Leaver peoples not yet in contact with our culture. In this light, it’s easy to accept the idea that the Taker way is the way of wealth and the Leaver way is the way of poverty.

The answering trick to Mother Culture’s trick is almost always this: When she holds up a picture of Nothing, look for Something. When she holds up a picture of an Absence, look for a Presence.

The Leaver way is not a way of poverty, it’s a way of wealth — but the wealth of the Leaver way isn’t the wealth of products, it’s the wealth of human support. Mother Culture never has names for things she cannot see, and there is no name in English (or any other language I know) for this support. It’s not comraderie or friendship or neighborliness. It’s motivating origins are not to be found in love or charity or kindliness. In Leaver societies, people look after each other for much the same reasons that people in Taker societies take jobs and have careers. In Leaver societies, people look after one another not because they’re saintly but because looking after one another assures that they themselves will be looked after. If they don’t look after one another, then the community disappears — and no one is looked after.

When the members of Family A fall ill, Families B, C, and D share their food with them, because they all know that someday they too could fall ill. When a child is injured, the nearest adult runs to help it, because that adult knows that someday his or her own child may need help. When an aged person becomes sick and helpless, the family of that person isn’t alone with the problem. All share the burden, because all know they will have a similar burden someday and will need others to share it. Those who give support shall receive support.

It’s an economy. An economy based on support instead of products. It works like the diagram to the right…

The Taker economy, by contrast, works like that on the left…

Everyone knows the Taker economy works, but they find it hard to believe that the Leaver economy works too. This is because Taker wealth is so much more visible than Leaver wealth. Products can be photographed, packaged, and put in store windows, but support can’t. There are many other striking differences between these two kinds of wealth.

Taker wealth can be put under lock and key, but Leaver wealth can’t. For this reason, Taker wealth is inherently divisive. Behind the locked doors of my house are my furniture, my appliances, my television sets, my radios, my computers, my clothes, my records, my books. I’ve worked for them, I’ve earned them, and no one else in the world has worked for them or earned them — and this is the dividing line between them and me, between theirs and mine. The law of every Taker nation in the world confirms all this. Leaver wealth, by contrast, is not divisive but inherently unitive.

Taker and Leaver economies are mirror images of each other. Takers are rich in products but poor in human support; Leavers are rich in human support but poor in products. But note this: Takers complain noisily and endlessly over the shortcomings of their economic system, but anthropologists find that Leavers (until their cultures are undermined by Taker contact) seem remarkably content with theirs.

Ever wish you were as secure as a baboon?

The experience of Leavers as one of cradle-to-grave security. This security is not the result of utopian design or nobility of character. It’s the result of eons of evolutionary shaping of their communities. In brief, community structures that did not provide cradle-to-grave security for their members did not survive. The structures we know are the ones that survived. They’re like the species we know: They survived because they worked.

Many readers may wonder if this “cradle-to-grave security” isn’t an exaggeration I indulge in for the sake of making a point. Not so, I assure you. In fact, there’s little reason to be surprised that Leaver peoples should enjoy such security. After all, among our neighbors in the community of life, the very same security is enjoyed in every species whose members form communities. Ducks, sea lions, deer, giraffes, wolves, wasps, monkeys, and gorillas (to name just a few species out of millions) enjoy such security. It has to be assumed that the members of Homo habilis enjoyed such security — or how would they have survived? Is there any reason to doubt that the members of Homo erectus enjoyed such security or that they conferred it upon their descendants, Homo sapiens?

No, as a species, we came into being in communities in which cradle-to-grave security was the rule, and the same rule has been followed throughout the development of Homo sapiens right up to the present moment — in Leaver societies. It’s only in Taker societies that cradle-to-grave security has become a rarity, a special blessing of the privileged few.

In Taker societies, needed support is provided by paid ”professional classes” of support-givers. If your mother becomes ill, for example, your community doesn’t rally round to share the burden of her care. You have to pay people to do that, and the more you spend, the better your mother is cared for and the less heavy your personal burden is. The same is true of any condition that could be alleviated by human support. In Leaver societies, this support is available to everyone in the community, automatically, free of charge. In Taker societies, you pay for it or you don’t get it. And, my oh my, do we ever pay for it!

I haven’t the time or inclination for such research, but it would be fascinating to know how much it costs us to get all the support that is free in Leaver societies. Virtually all services for which we pay taxes are provided for free by members of Leaver societies as an ordinary part of belonging to the community, and they don’t find it especially burdensome to provide them. ”Professional classes” of support-givers are nonexistent or very small; most shamans, for example, do not ”make their living” by healing or by performing religious ceremonies, and most tribal chiefs do not ”make their living” as political leaders.

People sometimes ask if it wouldn’t be possible to achieve the Leaver lifestyle simply by leaping out of the Taker lifestyle into nothing. The answer is no, because the Leaver lifestyle isn’t nothing, it’s an economy — an economy based on a different sort of wealth and on a different sort of economic transaction: not products for products but support for support.

If you’d like to explore the possibility of moving toward a Leaver lifestyle in your community, don’t concentrate on giving up Taker things. To concentrate on giving up Taker things is to concentrate on a negative. The Leaver lifestyle isn’t an absence of Taker things, it’s a presence of something else, and that presence is support.

I’ve conjectured that we can reinvent Leaver-style support systems for ourselves incrementally, bit by bit, by working within our own communities and building on each other’s successes the way inventors of the Industrial Revolution built on each other’s successes. I’ve received a lot of encouragement for this idea, but as yet no one has reported trying it. I suspect the idea of offering any kind of support to anyone makes people very nervous. That’s fine. Don’t start by offering anything. Start by bringing out into the open the fears and reservations you have about the whole idea. That’s progress, because it’s a start.!

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Read Reason Wilken’s full review of Daniel Quinn’s Ishmael, and you can find Ishmael in bookstores everywhere, including online at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Borders. Check the links here.

Go to Daniel Quinn’s web site

More by Reason Wilken

I found the following thread at the Energy Resources Yahoo Group. The authors assume that the readers are aware of the fossil fuel depletion crisis.  Basically, we will soon be running out of petroleum–the easiest to extract and use of the fossil fuels, and since the current trend towards economic globalization is only possible with unlimited cheap energy, the proverbial shit is about to hit the fan.

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Globalization and Fossil Fuel Depletion

Steven Zoraster: Instead of saying that “globalization is bad”, those who oppose it should propose a mechanism for turning it off, and suggest what the results would be.

I will propose a strawman scenario for turning it off: The main industrialized countries [1] impose a 200% tariff on all imports from “non-industrialized” countries. This throws those non- industrialized countries out of the world economic system. Suddenly West African countries can not sell cash crops to the United States and Europe. Bangladesh can not sell textiles. Vietnam can not sell shoes or locally produced clothing. Argentina can not sell locally produced meat and wheat. The island states in the Caribbean can not sell bananas. The Philippines will not be able to sell sugar. Russia and India can not sell computer software. Malaysis can not sell computer chips. Mexico can not sell finished goods completed at those plants along the United States border. The demand for oil from Saudia Arabia, Nigeria, Venezuela, Algeria, Egypt and Indonesia will be reduced.

On the other hand, coffee from Central and South America and rubber from Malaysia and various metals from South America and Africa will probably remain in demand, because there are no substitutes. The ship building industries in Japan, Germany and Korea will immediately collapse. The price of wheat and rice in the United States will fall because there will be no export market. (No country which needs the food will be able to pay for the stuff.) On the other hand, the sugar cane industry in Florida, which is hardly ecologically friendly, will suddenly find the domestic demand for its product rise.

I claim this model will work for the turn off part. There certainly isn’t any need to impose simultaneous controls on the flow of capital to undeveloped countries, since nobody is going to want to invest there anyway.

I will leave it to someone else to explain how this is good. Or describe another scenario for turning the system off that will make the results “good”.

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Brian Abernathy: Mr. Zoraster, With all due respect, I think that the mechanism for turning off globalization will be the depletion of fossil fuels and their subsequent impact on global economic systems. Whether or not globalization is bad or good is not really the question, for me at least, but rather it’s the question of whether or not it (globalization) is sustainable. I suspect that it is not because it relies very heavily on fossil fuels. The effects of its demise will likely be the same from your scenario or mine, painful and deadly. However, the last thing we should be doing is trying to get more people more deeply involved in the global economy. Rather, we should be trying to teach them to live sustainably within their own bio- region with fewer and fewer cash crops and direct labor going into the global economy and more diversified, locally grown agricultural and locally made craft products for their own people.

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Dick Lawrence: The entire centuries-old trend toward interdependence and globalization – including rapid and large-scale industrialization of countries like China and India – is at risk, and inevitably will start to grind away, in reverse, as fuel availability peaks and then declines. The entire enterprise relies on fossil fuel to keep it going.

This includes the urbanization of population into vast megacities, which are only sustained by a river of fuel, food, and water from the countryside and from agricultural regions in other countries. The people are there for jobs. The jobs are there for industry. The industries by and large rely on fossil fuel. Cut off any of these resources and the city will abruptly collapse, a catastrophe for millions. Remember too that their sources of food rely on a largely industrialized form of agriculture, totally dependent on fossil fuel in its present form for its “efficiency”.

We could debate for days the “rightness”, “wrongness” or morality of globalization and 3rd-world industrialization, but none of that will change what’s on the way: within 10-15 years the unsustainability of these enterprises will hit home, the big decline will be on, and within 40 years gas and oil will be essentially gone and everything will be different. How different, we can only speculate, but we can reliably predict that per-capita available energy will be vastly lower than it is now, and extrapolate the consequences from there. By 50 years out, humanity will be largely subsisting on renewable forms of energy, plus nuclear. Neither one of these will run the tractors and factories of the future in anything like the quantity we have today. But, there will be even more of us to feed, more of us looking for jobs.

The tragedy is that we should be laying the infrastructure for that future now, with the truly cheap and available fossil fuels we have. But no one is doing that. Preparing to survive on renewables, on any kind of large scale, takes an energy and capital investment, and no one is making that investment today except on a very small scale. The economics of it are broken so it makes no sense from a business or personal financial perspective. Governments are in the best position to take the bully pulpit, make the case for preparing for change, and set up the economic environment to make the investment more genuinely reflect the value of energy. But, democratic governments may ironically be in the worst position to do that – the electorate won’t stand for an investment in anything more futuristic than next year, unless it’s Social Security.

The tragedy is, as Brian points out, we should be actively working to reverse the globalization trend, to make nations and regions and populations more independent, not less; we should be preparing everyone for a less energy-intensive future. Instead we are careening obliviously, full speed, in the wrong direction.

There are many arguments for globalization, and many other against it, all with legitimate appeals to equality, morality, and other high principles. We on this forum should realize that most of that is irrelevant; energy in the end will dictate the rise and fall of our civilation in its present form. How we go down should be our (collective) responsibility, but obfuscation and denial prevent all but a few from seeing the rocks ahead.

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Ron Patterson: Dick, you wrote a fantastic post. I agree with almost everything you wrote as well as what Brian wrote in his post. But on I must take issue with your assertion that there will be more people fifty years hence.

As you state, 50 years out we will largely be subsisting on other forms of energy, forms that will not lend itself to running tractors, trucks or producing fertilizers or pesticides. This will mean a lot less food will be produced.

Just as population has always expanded to consume the available food, the population will likewise shrink to as the food supply needed to sustain it shrinks. All we have to do is connect the dots. If the fuel supply shrinks and the remaining fuel becomes much more expensive, then the food supply will shrink and what food is available will be much more expensive. The global population will shrink, almost in lock step with the availability of fuel to produce food.

Scott Meredith posted a good paper on the connection between food and population on the Alasbabylon list. An excerpt follows:

The prevailing lay and scientific attitudes beg the Malthusian question ìhow will the US continue to feed its population and still maintain its food and exports to needy nation?” In other words, ìhow are we going to feed all these people”? This indicates a denial of the certainty that increasing the availability of food will further increase the population, thereby increasing the number of starving and malnourished people. Thus, it does not address the Quinnian question ìhow are we going to stop producing all these people (Quinn, 1997)?” since it is through exports from food-rich to food-poor areas (Allaby, 1984; Pimentel et al., 1999) that the population growth in food-poor areas if further fueled.

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And from the Alas Babylon Yahoo Group, we have another interesting suggestion.

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Curbing Overpopulation

Newton Ellison: Unfortunately, men, starved or not, are hardwired to screw anything – dumb animals, another man (anywhere we can) or our well-oiled fists, if there’s not a woman around. Often, if there’s a woman handy, like it or not, we make babies.

And now that we have reached the carrying capacity of this great little planet, new ideas are needed.

The first thing we should do is take over the Roman Catholic Church and execute all known pedophiles. Then we put in a new Pope who approves any kind of birth control short of 3rd trimester infanticide.

Next, a new “Human Resources” plan: Any parent of a boy child of seven years must take the kid in to get a vasectomy, a new electric car or two or three and a paid up 4-year college scholarship.

If, by age 25, this boy child demonstrates capacity to support a family, and has an agreeable lifetime mate, his vasectomy can be reversed until the couple has two children, and then they may, under strict rules, not be re-vasectomized. (TKW->I would think only one child until we get the population down under two billion.)

But that’s the rule, after two. Any woman knows, therefore, that her sex partners who are not married and making his wife’s two babies is shooting blanks. That’s easily confirmable. And a really frisky gal can always get her tubes tied.

This is not a perfect system. Some may abuse the rules. But it is a pretty good start, doncha think?

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There are a lot of intelligent people writing on the Yahoo Group boards. If you are interested in the Fossil Fuel Depletion-Global Warming-Overpopulations crisis, take a look at the public archives of these two  lists.

Energy Resources Yahoo Group,  Alas Babylon Yahoo Group