[obol] Are humans "natural"?

[Mike Patterson]

I'm going to try to break this down the way it was broken down
to me by Neal Maine.  

We can break down the human perspective into two piles: knowledge
claims and value claims.  

Knowledge claims are things we believe we know based on facts, data, 
cause and effect, science stuff.  If we remove sequestered Carbon 
compounds from the ground and convert them to Carbon Dioxide at a 
rate that is greater than the planet's ability to recapture and 
sequester CO2 and the natural consequence is more heat capturing 
CO2 in the atmosphere.

Value claims are statements that usually assign good or bad to a
things.  The most rudimentary of these center on basic survival:
food, shelter, personal safety, but they are also culturally based 
and are informed by family, religious tenets, societal pressures.
Is a warming planet a good thing or a bad thing?  Are the things
we are able to do because we can convert the energy stored in these
compounds more important than the possible longterm consequences?

Fire suppression is a good thing for Douglas-fir trees looking to
expand their genome into the Willamette Valley.  It's a bad thing 
for Oregon Oaks trying to maintain an ecological foothold.  By taking 
a side in the ecological power struggles that define our biosphere,
we are acting on our values, sometimes informed by science and
knowledge claims, sometimes by other considerations.  And everytime
we squish a bug or plant a flower, everytime we walk into WalMart
or buy from a roadside vendor we are taking a side that will have
an ecological consequence, exactly because we are part of the planet
and there is nothing we can do about it.  Thermodynamics, Heisenberg's
principle....  

Assigning something to "unnatural" is a value claim and a pretty
non-specific one at that.  How many of you out there at one time 
or another committed an "unnatural" act?

I prefer exact language which is less subject to debate, less likely
to picked up by the sinister forces of disinformation and used against
me.

I like "native spaces", "historical flora and fauna", "non-native"
"invasive", "permiable surfaces", "agricultural spaces", "urban landscape",
"super-fund site", "point-source polluter".....

Call the things what they are and make a cogent case for why you believe
they are a good thing or a bad thing.

>       On the nonbird hot topic this week on obol (man as part of nature):
> Don't we use the words "nature, native, natural" simply to define what is
> and isn't man-caused?  I don't think the intent is to say people are 
> aliens
> from outer space and therefore everything we do is "unnatural", for lack 
> of
> a better word.  What would be a superior system to describe man-caused
> effects that won't give the illusion man is from another planet?  We need 
> to
> be able to talk about our manipulation of the environment somehow.  Lona
> Pierce, Warren 

-- 
Mike Patterson               
Astoria, OR                    
celata at pacifier.com  
 
I'm not jealous or 
Why I've never Seen Black-throated Blue Warbler in Oregon
http://www.surfbirds.com/blogs/mbalame/archives/004174.html