JPR – Earth Precepts Program 6
Host: This week, Pepper Trail continues our series on taking
responsibility for the Earth with the Earth Precept that states:
☼ Do not remove living resources,
including soil, trees, and marine life, faster
than they can replace
themselves
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One of the beauties of natural
systems is the way in which the different parts interact with each other to create
balance and long-term sustainability.
For example, consider the predator-prey system involving cougars and
deer. If cougars kill large numbers of
deer, the deer population will fall, and then either cougars must switch to
another prey, or the cougar population will decline as the predators starve. If numbers of deer then rise too high, either
cougars will remove more deer and bring the population under control, or the
deer population will collapse as they overbrowse their food plants. Each phase of the cycle contains the seed of
the next; today’s decline prepares for tomorrow’s rise.
Unfortunately, modern
humanity tends to want to avoid these natural cycles of increase and
decrease. We cultivate the illusion that
we can control nature and take as much as we want indefinitely. Today’s precept reminds us that we must be
mindful of how nature works. To honor
this precept, we must study how the living resources that we depend upon
replace themselves, and limit ourselves to sustainable use.
One obstacle in following
this precept is that the term “sustainability” itself has been appropriated by economists
and politicians, and sometimes seems to mean nothing at all. How can we reclaim the critical concept of
sustainability?
First, we must insist that
sustainability is an ecological, not
an economic term. Sometimes we read that
agriculture in a particular area is sustainable because yields have remained
steady or even increased. However, these
so-called sustained yields may be due only to ever-increasing inputs of
chemical fertilizers and pesticides.
Such agriculture is not truly sustainable.
Second, we must work with
care to account for all the variables in a particular “sustainability”
equation. For example, consider a forest
that is being managed for timber production.
A certain logging rotation, say 60 years, might be sustainable in terms of
tree replacement, but not for the health of the river that runs through the
forest. Or that rotation might be
sustainable using low-impact methods, such as horse logging, but not with
industrial logging techniques that are more destructive to the soil.
Finally and most
fundamentally, we must be clear about the time span encompassed by the term
“sustainability.” Statements such as
“The use of coal-fired power plants is sustainable for at least 100 years” are
just another way of saying that these power plants are not
sustainable. The time span for
sustainability must be “forever” – or that tiny slice of forever that it is
within human powers to predict.
In practical terms, this
precept requires us to accept that we are not immune to nature’s cycles. A stark example is the situation of the
world’s fisheries. According to the
[World Fisheries Council], [90%] of all economically significant fish species
are now being overexploited. Our
response to declining fish numbers is usually to fish longer and harder for the
few that remain. This means disaster for
the fish and, soon after, for the fishermen, as the fishery inevitably
collapses. How much wiser to learn from
nature, and decrease our fishing pressure in response to decreases in fish
populations.
Next week, we’ll look at
species survival and extinction in more detail.
Until then, this is Pepper Trail.
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