Anthro 190
Intro to World
Population
Fall 2000
Two Population Awareness Week Lectures Critiqued,
and One Open Forum with Possible Solutions Suggested
This course
focuses on world population issues, or rather, over-population issues that were
intertwined with the lectures presented through Population Awareness Week:
Humans in the Biosphere. I attended two lectures, one by Michael Soule and the
other by Gloria Flora, and then an open forum for dialogue between the community
and speakers, including: Prof. Bill Romme, Dr.Richard Grossman, Steve Duran,
Dan Randolph and Gloria Flora. The purpose of these dialogues was to stimulate
awareness of and possible solutions for current energy and environmental
dilemmas.
The first
lecture proved to be a delivery of one of the most exciting ideas that I have
heard recently, stated by Michael Soule as, “Our mission is to protect and
restore the natural heritage of North America through the establishment of a
connected system of wildlands.” Basically this entails developing a corridor of
undisturbed ecosystems that will form a connection between national forests,
state parks, and yet to be developed wilderness areas.
This concept
was presented as a counter to recent measured imbalances in ecosystems affected
by human sprawl. Imbalances that affect such matters as the enormous amount of
species on the endangered or to-be extinct list; 50,000 a year or nearly one
quarter of the estimated species inhabiting Earth.
Besides
arguments for ecosystem preservation based on aesthetics and spiritual kinship,
Soule also delivered a grounds for protection of natural habitat that was
rooted in the necessity of biodiversity for human survival. This implies that a
healthy environment, consisting of a wide variety of all species, works to
ensure the proper functions of a dynamic food chain; this is necessary for
humans to flourish in that we live in a relationship within our environment-and
thus should wish for a varied and robust ecosystem to help support us.
Soule and his
group, The Wildlands Project, are working towards the balancing of the food
chain through the reestablishment of Keystone species, such as the wolf and the
bear. Species like these work to maintain ecosystem equilibrium through regulation
of populations of animals lower than them on the food chain-a delicate system
of checks and balances that keeps herds healthy and vegetation in stasis. But
top carnivores like these have large territories and migration patterns as
well, which is why the connectivity of wildlands is key to biodiversity.
Human sprawl is apparently not as great a cause of natural
habitat loss as are small ranchettes (houses built upon a couple acres), which
effectively subdivide natural regions into undiversifiable habitats. Instead
maybe we should live more together and maintain preserves for outdoor use.
The second
lecture presented by Gloria Flora, titled Beauty, Meaning and Solitude, dealt
much more with emotional or psychological reasons for protecting our natural
environment. She touted the 1974 Wilderness Act as an “outstanding opportunity
for solitude,” in that it provided space and time for introspection and a
freedom that we can only know away from the quick-to-judge, hustle and bustle
of the ‘real world.’
She also made
the case that natural lands contribute to a person’s sound psychological
development by providing a sense of place or connection to their universe.
Flora claimed that 80% of our sensory input is through the eyes, and thus to
scar the entire landscape with our actions is to deprive ourselves of any sense
of unperturbed beauty that we could associate with.
Flora, on a
leave of absence from the National Forest Service, remarked that only a tenth
of a penny of every tax dollar is set aside for the National Forest Service.
And with deteriorating conditions already apparent within parklands, this is
something that will obviously need to change if we are to pursue any semblance
of sustainability-that is to use and benefit from our environment in a way
tha
ops (which get 300+ days of sunny
delight per year) into solar panel banks. Who uses the roofs anyways? The
transformation of FLC into a more and more energy efficient and sustainable
organism could provide ample real-life projects for engineers, researchers,
even anthropologists! Just think how exciting a project this would be for such
a liberal and pioneering college!
Of course
maybe we couldn’t at first release the food vendors, but we could start with
mandating that they buy only lettuce that we grew ourselves. And then work on
up to beans for burritos, cage-free chicken houses for eggs in the morning,
cows to graze fields in off-years, even ethical hunting classes which study
animal populations before a hunt. Economists could pursue the details of the
coming Green Economy. Environmental studies could actually work with native
habitats right on campus, physics could do calculations onsite!
In short, maybe we should follow the lead of Northwestern College, and indeed put to use some of our societies greatest minds currently whittling away as students and professors. If pulling together to overcome energy and environmental issues is necessary, than I see no freer opportunity to accomplish this than at places of study like FLC.