Pollan,Michael OnlyMansPresenceCanSaveNature

8/11/2019 Pollan,Michael OnlyMansPresenceCanSaveNature

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F o R u M

ONLY MAN'SPRESENCE CAN

SAVE NATURE

T e ongoing public con-versation about the environment is grounded in theancient dichotomy of man versus nature. So far wehave sought to resolve the argument through a seriesof truces-either sequestering large tracts of wilder-ness in a state of imagined innocence, say, or limitingthe ways in which man can domesticate nature'simagined savagery. A recent contribution to thisconversation suggests that we have postponed toolong a true settlement and that man is now talking tohimself Nature has ended.

But others say that we must radically change theconversation and begin to talk not of man versusnature but of man and nature. This line of thinking

suggests that we must discard what is, in fact, a falsedichotomy and find new answers to old questions.What do we se e when we look into a quiet stand of trees? Lumber? The planet's breathing apparatus?The habitat of animals? Home? In order to examinethe rapidly changing metaphors that locate man's place in the world, Harper's Magazine recently asked five environmentalists with backgrounds in science, political activism, or philosophy to discuss the shift,ing definitions of nature and of ourselves.

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The following forum is based on a d iscuss ion held at the Ritz-Carl ton Hotel in New York Ci ty. Micha el Po lla n se rved as mo de ra tor.

M I CH A E L P O LL A N

is executive editor of Harper's Magazine.

DAN IEL B. BOTKIN is professor of biology and environmental studies at the University of California at Santa Barbara

and the author of Discordant Harmonies: A New Ecology for the Twenty-first Century, which will be pu bl ishe d th is mo nth by Oxfo rd Unive rs ity Pr es s.

D A V E F O R E M A N

was chief lobbyist for the Wilderness Society and cofounded the environmental group EarthFirst! in 1980. He is the author of Ecodefense an d The BigOutside. His book Confessions of an Eco-Brute

will be published by Crown this winter.

JA MES LOVELOCK is an independent scientist who developed the Gaia theory, which regards our planet as a self-regulating system

that behaves as if it were a l iving organism.

F REDERI CK TUR N ERis Founders Professor of Arts and Humani ties at the Univers ity of Texas at Dallas and the author

of the epic poem Genesis. His last piece for Harper's Magazine, about the cultivation of l ife on Mars,appeared in the August 1989 issue.

RO BE RT D. YAROis senior v ice president of the Regional Plan Association in New York Ci ty, where he is preparing a new

regional plan to manage future growth in the New York tri-state metropolitan region.

Beyond the Wilderness

MICHAEL POLLAN: Let us say we're in the town of Pineville, Connecticut. On the edge of town isa stand of virgin pine trees left to Pineville yearsago with the stipulation that it be "kept in astate of nature." Known as the TabernaclePines, this forest is extraordinary, with treesmore than 150 feet tall. A hurricane camethrough recently and devastated the forest. Sev-enty percent of the trees are down. The place isa mess, almost impassable. I am the curator of this forest, and I have to make a recommenda-tion to the town. Do we leave it as it is-is that

a state of nature?-or do we clear it out and replant pine, so that the next generation mightenjoy some semblance of the old forest?

DAVE FOREMAN: Leave it as it is. Too often wethink that nature is a snapshot in time. It's not.

Nature is a continually evolving process. Alarge tree is often more important after it falls.

POLLAN: Important in what sense?

FOREMAN: A Douglas fir may stand for 800 yearsand provide various services to the life around it. After it falls, it provides even more servicesfor the next 500 years-to beetles, termites,and fungi.

3 8 H A RP ER 'S M A G AZ IN E I A P RI L 19 90

DANIEL BOTKIN: It's been shown that the shape and form of a stream and the life in it are often afunction of the trees living and falling along the banks.

Forests are not static. They have a biographynot unlike a human's. Their infancy is the openfield or devastated forest. First, "pioneer spe-cies" begin to grow: herbs, grasses, and thenshrubs. Afterward there are several stages of trees. These stages are dynamic and diverse.The forest's maturity is known as its "dimax"-a more stable and less diverse mix of species that

will persist for some time. In old age, a forest,such as the Tabernacle Pines, becomes sus-ceptible to fire or hurricane. These stages of development, or forest succession, are quiteinterconnected. Take your fallen trees. Certainseeds regenerate best when they fall into thenest of a rotting log.

FOREMAN: Often you will see a "nurse log," with aseries of trees growing out of it. After the logdecays, you can sometimes see an archway inthe roots. A forest will rejuvenate better if it'snot replanted. When we try to jump-start thenatural stages of forest development by replant-ing, we remove necessary nutrients, such as rot-


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ting logs, and the forests are crippled. Nature isnot a pretty, manicured place maintained for human beings. It is a dynamic continuum, oftena violent one.

JAMES LOVELOCK: If the land is surrounded by other forested areas, I agree. If the Tabernacle Pineswere an is land of trees, I think i~would have been a kind of garden anyway. It might be more proper-even natural-to replant and rebuild.

FREDERICK TURNER: Leaving the land alone is at-tractive, bur, as James Lovelock says, it might be as natural to do something with it. Certainlynature is not a manicured garden. Nature is a setof complicated feedback sys-tems, constantly exchanginginformation. Some are self-duplicating-preserving thesystem as it is-and they are

called homeostatic. Othersare open-ended systems, con-stantly creating novel statesand new ecologies. In anopen-ended system, the mostcrucial element is the humanspecies. So I would say that if the town is not involved in this question of leaving the forest alone or replanting it, onewould then be violating nature, because absentfrom this process is the quintessential elementof nature-us. Humankind is more w h a t n a t u reis than anything else.

POLLAN: Not just equal but more?TURNER: More. Consider the fundamental tenden-

cy of evolution from the big bang to the higher animals. It is a tendency toward greater reflexiv-ity, greater open-endedness, greater complex-ity, and greater "encephalization"-that is, alarger proportion of nervous tissue. Evolution in pre-living chemical systems occurs slowly and has no way of changing itself. Sexually repro-ducing life can record itself and then reshuffleand recombine the recordings. It can improveitself; that is evolution. Then you have organ-isms that thrive in societies, which is justanother, perhaps more sophisticated, way of passing on information to another generation. Nature has had this tendency toward increas-ingly more complex ways of passing on infor-mation from the big bang all the way up.Humankind is what nature has been trying, allthese millennia, "to be."

BOTKIN: My problem is with the language "a stateof nature." Nature does not exist in one state but in many states. If nature achieved a singlena tu ra l state, then the answer to all environ-mental problems wouldbe to let nature grow tothat state. But once one knows that nature is

dynamic, with changing states and different fu-tures-and that these states range literally fromfire to ice, with a variety of possible landscapesin between-then the choice becomes ours,mankind's, and that choice is "natural." Sowhat is the nature we prefer? If you scratched beneath the assumptions of the average NewEnglander, you would discover that the idea of a

"THE LAN D SC

ARTIFICIAL AS C

IT MAY NOT

LANDSCAPE OF

POLLAN: Are you saying that without man's inter-vention, nature doesn't know what is best for the planet?

TURNER: If one made the decision without human beings. then the decision would be, I think,

unnatural.

'\ NECTICUT IS AS

NEW YORK CITY.

ED, BUT THE

o IS A HUMAN

"forest" is what the Pilgrims saw. It's as good aforest as any, so I would let the area grow back through the particular stages of succession thatthe Pilgrims saw. This means gardening the for-est and weeding out the exotics-those speciesintroduced by Europeans.

POLLAN: You would weed?

BOTKIN: Yes, the ailanthus, or tree of heaven; Japa-nese honeysuckle; the exotics. I'd do a little behind-the-scenes management.

ROBERTYARO: I would leave the land alone, but for a different reason. The landscape of Connecti-cut is as artificial as Central Park in New York City. It may not be as contrived, but the land-scape of New England is a human creation. Un-like your England, Professor Lovelock, which isan over-tended "garden," New England is anunder-tended garden. Early in this century,Massachusetts conducted an inventory of sceniclandscapes and found a fewremnants of forest inan otherwise open agricultural landscape. Fiftyyears later, when I conducted a similar inven-tory. I found that only 10 percent was agricul-tural and most of the rest was second-growthforest. Connecticut is quite similar. So I would leave Tabernacle Pines alone so that the peoplecould learn the natural processes that shapetheir landscape. Dr. Botkin's goal of creatingthe forest succession of the Pilgrim era won't beuseful on these few acres. I would turn to thelarger canvas of the abandoned New England

landscape. There are 130,000 acres of public

FORUM 39


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land in Connecticut.Let's manage it and re-create a massivePilgrims'forest.

LOVELOCK: The TabernaclePines were knocked

down by a hypotheticalhurricane. In fact, therehave been many realhurricanes here, in En-gland, and e.lsewhere.And we're getting moreof them. I might followE. F.Schumacher's max-im: Act locally, think globally.Thus, one won-ders if it is sensible to plant the same kind of pineswhen the globalcli-

mate ischanging somuchnow.

POLLAN: What might be agood alternative?

LOVELOCK: Let nature selectwhatever would bestsurvive under these newconditions.

TURNER: The pointabout genetic material iscritical. What might wewant in our new forest?For example, should our goal be to maximize biomass-that is, theweight or mass of living

material? But how doyou 'define "living"? Whatabout most of a coral reef or heartwood, which isdead? Should the goal beto maximiie the mass of living tissue or maximizethe mass of DNA and RNA, the carriers of he-redity? Should we farmthe planet for genetic di-versity? But one mightthink, Doesn't this idea

slight other means of passing on information between generations-learning, rituals, librar-ies, this conversation,computers? Therefore,should we maximizener-vous tissue-or the den-

sity of human culture-since that would maxi-mize the amount of information getting passed on ro other generations?

On Ju ly 10 , 1989, a s tand of 200- to 300-year-old trees in Connecticut called the Cathedral Pines(top) was devastated by a tornado (bottom), pro-voking a debate about what should be the "natu-ral" disposition of a tract of damaged land. Oneside argued that the owner, The Nature Conser-vancy, should clear the area and replant it. An-other side held that the forest should be left to

decompose and regrow on its own. Recently, The Na ture CO Tl5ervancy decid ed to clear the perimeter of the Pines in order to manage any potential !ires.The cen te r- fu ll o f d ow ned t rees , spl in te red trunks, and uprooted s tumps-will remain in a"state of nature." The hypothetical forest d is-cussed in the opening section of this forum is based on this cata.$trophe,

BOTKIN: But the migrationof the seeds is no longer possible from, say, thesouthern areas. So if youwant to go that route,you would have to go toVirginia, collect theseeds, and then plantVirginiapine or southern pine.

POLLAN: SOaren't we reallytalking about gardening our state of nature, notleaving it alone?

FOREMAN: To a degree. First, we need to recognizethat your Tabernacle Pines are tied not only toConnecticut and New England but to Central

American rain forests. The songbird popula-tion-which needs all these habitats-is crash-ing right now because of the destruction of theseforests.

Second, there is the opportunity for wilder-ness restoration on a grand scale in New En-gland. One of the largest uninhabited areas inAmerica is in northern Maine, 10 million acreswithout year-round inhabitants that stretchdown to northern Vermont, New Hampshire,and the Adirondacks. Within my lifetime wecould have a preserve in New England-withwolf, caribou, moose, and eastern panther-ri-

valing those in Alaska. We must use the ideas of

42 HARPER'S MAGAZINE / APRIL 1990

conservation biology:core wilderness reserves,surrounded by buffer areas in which steadilydecreasing human use isallowed as we get closer to the core, with biologi-cal corridors connectingthe core preservesfor thetransmission of geneticmaterial and wildness.

' .

BOTKIN: The idea that we should find a singlequantity to maximize is intellectual baggage from

the nineteenth century. It is essentially the me-chanical ideal, the metaphor of the engine withone peak of humming power. This metaphor co-alesced with the ancient notion of a divine or-der-s-that nature was perfect. This union of ideas yielded the false view of nature as a single pristine state-undisturbed and without man;There is no such nature. Ecological systemshave values other than "peak performance."The relationship between human beings and these natural systems is much more complexand more organic than the machine metaphor allows us to see. When we see ourselves as part

of this dynamism of nature, we will have a more


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accurate metaphor and view of the world.

TURNER: Exactly my point. We're going to have tostrive for all of these goals simultaneously.

POLLAN: I'm a bit alarmed that each of you is will-ing to interfere and make these decisions for na-

ture. What is the measure of our actions? Whatis too much, too little?

FOREMAN: It's something we're going to be learningfor the next thousand years. It's important todistinguish between native diversity-the lifethat has historical ties to a piece of land-and natural diversity-the life that will move ontoa piece of land. Generally, those species thatcome in are "weed" species. We're finding outnow, for example, that in the ancient forests of the Pacific Northwest, the marbled murreletand the red-backed vole and the flying squirrelare losing habitat to the species adapted todisturbed ecosystems. For example, the white-tailed deer, in the North at least, is a weed spe-cies that has expanded its range as humansdisrupt the environment, replacing caribou and moose.

LOVELOCK: I'm fascinated to hear Dave Foremanuse the word weed! It's a dreadful word, isn't it?

TURNER: Isn't a weed a weed precisely because it'sgood at spreading itself around, and wouldn't it be unnatural to stop it from doing so? Whyshould we privilege the genetically less robust?Maybe weeds have a lot going for them.

BOTKIN: Maybe we should clarify what a weed is. Aweed is to plants as dirt is to soil. A weed is a plant out of place. So a redwood tree in the des-ert is a weed. European weeds spread very well.They came over on the hosts of European ships,with cattle and hay. The most troublesomeweeds arrive in the early stages of forest suc-cession. If not weeded, for example, Japanesehoneysuckle can overwhelm a sturdy hardwood stand in eastern North America.

FOREMAN: Spotted knapweed in Montana, tumble-weed in the Southwest, kudzu in the South-

east-ali are weeds. But look at why they exist.I spent eight years locating the large roadlessareas in the United States, and I found only 368areas of more than 100,000 acres apiece in theWest and 50,000 in the East. In other words, 92 percent of the lower forty-eight states has beendeveloped. So we could try to reclaim some of the 92 percent. For example, the 10 millionacres in Maine that I mentioned are owned by afew paper companies. The government could buy that land today for the price of a couple of Stealth bombers.

YARO: Dave, consider that the lfl-rnillion-acre for-est in Maine is one of the last places in the

Northeast where we have a resource-based economy. People work in the forest cuttingtrees and work in the mills turning the trees into paper-all of which relates to the people who pick up the New York Times in the morning. Weshouldn't throw out the people and the econ-

omy to "save" the forest. Save both. A good ex-ample of this problem occurred in Cades Covein the Smokies. The National Park Servicecame in sixty years ago to "preserve the Smok-ies" and threw out the local Appalachian peo-

ple. To please the tourists, they have now hired costumed actors posing as Appalachians. Wecan introduce human use that isn't in conflictwith preserving an intact ecosystem.

POLLAN: A preserve that includes Homo sapiens?

YARO: Yes. Last year I made trips to two similar landscapes-the Alps and Mount Rainier. In

the Alps, I found beautiful landscapes that in-cluded villages, farms, factories, agriculture,and eventually wilderness. There was no na-tional park and no artificial boundary betweenthe natural and humanized areas. Then, MountRainier. There's a line on the map. On one sideof it, we've kicked out the local people. It's wellkept inside the park but dull in comparison to itsSwiss counterpart. Once you cross the line, allhell breaks loose. It's as though two alien cul-tures met at the national-park boundary. Out-side of it are ticky-tacky signs, ski areas, and fastfood. Now why can't we move the line of the

park out but allow for certain human activitythat reinforces what's there?

POLLAN: Let's return to Tabernacle Pines. Thereare houses bordering it. Forestry experts tell methat if I leave the drying, rotting logs, I can expect a major fire that would threaten the town,especially the property on the border.

BOTKIN: Tell them to go to Hartford and get fireinsurance.

YARO: Insurance is a native industry in Connecti-cut, and we should respect it!

LOVELOCK: Without forest fires, you wouldn't havelong-term oxygen regulation in the atmosphere.So if we stop all fires, we may harm ourselves inthe long run.

POLLAN: Will you come with me and explain thatto the fellow whose house is in danger?

LOVELOCK: Hard cases make bad law, don't they?Still, it's the only way, and sornebody's going to be hurt.

FOREMAN: Why does nature always have to makethe adjustment instead of people?

TURNER: Nature versus people again. I simply don't buy it. I want to register a protest about this and

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the 92 to 8 percent distinction. It is artificial.The Indians-the people who came across theBering Land Bridge-changed the ecology of

North America totally. And before that, the iceages drastically altered these lands.

POLLAN: Is there a distinction between the changeswrought by humanity and the changes wrought by the ice ages?

BOTKIN: Yes. Essentially, the differences are therate of change and man's introduction of novelactions. Trees migrate, but over thousands of years. In Michigan, Paul Bunyan's country, 19million acres of white pine were logged in lessthan a hundred years. Plowing is a novel action,and we should avoid too much of it. Manychemicals are totally novel, so we should avoid them as well. Again, we shouldn't treat natureas if it's a machine-take it apart, rebuild it,

and substitute new parts. The rule should be:Change nature at nature's rates and in nature'sways.

YARO: Our problem stems from a wilderness ethicthat puts lines on maps and fences on theground and says, "Keep your hands off." Thisethic finds its complement in our land ethic,which says, "Take the money and run." Thismust end. We must manage our continent.

LOVELOCK: And that problem is made worse byagribusiness. We have plowed up so much morethan we need. England is spending billions just

to store its surplus grain. At one time, butter from my part of Britain was actually burned inGerman power stations.

POLLAN: Dave, are you sanguine when you hear allthis optimistic talk about reconciling the inter-ests of man and nature?

FOREMAN: No, I'm not. In studying evolution, welearn that the worst thing a species can be is toosuccessful. That's the stage we're in. But we areliving in a fool's paradise. We've ended a giddydrunk, and a nasty hangover awaits us. It might be AIDS, it might be something else. I want tomake sure that we don't take everything withus. Believing this is the only thing that gives mylife meaning.

Our problem is a spiritual crisis. The Puritans brought with them a theology that saw the wil-derness of North America as a haunt of Satan,with savages as his disciples and wild animals ashis demons-all of which had to be cleared, de-feated, tamed, or killed. Opening up the dark forests became a spiritual mission: to flush evilout of hiding. If we are going to survive in North America, we have to go back, meta- phorically, to that pilgrim shore again. Let'sseek to learn from the land this time. I do be-lieve that people are tied into nature. I don't

4 4 H A RP ER 'S M A GA Z IN E I AP RI L 1 9 9 0

want to separate humans from nature, But wemust discover our proper place in that dynamic.Consider that Phoenix, Arizona, has one of thehighest per capita water uses in the United States! People in Denver, Colorado, all havelawns requiring eleven inches of rain a week,

just like English lords.POLLAN: Are we threatening ourselves, the planet,

or both?

FOREMAN: All of it. Ecologist Paul Ehrlich saysthatkilling off species is analogous to taking rivetsout of an airplane: Just one rivet, we can get by; but at some point, the airplane is no longer safe.

LOVELOCK: Paul Ehrlich propagates this notion of afragile Earth. It's not Earth that's fragile; it's w ewho are fragile. Nature has withstood catastro- phes far worse than what we've delivered. Nothing we do will destroy nature. But we caneasily destroy ourselves.

Dave, we probably will experience a suddendrop in population, and comparatively soon. Itwon't happen here, of course, but in the tropicalregions, where the sustaining forests are moregravely threatened. The humid, tropical forestregions house about a billion people. Oncewe've cleared 70 percent of the forests-whichwe are well on the wayto doing-the remainder won't be able to sustain the region's climate.Without the rain, the trees will die. We may seethis as early as 2000. And when that happens, a billion people will be facing death and starva-

tion. We will have a refugee problem and a po-litical crisis as bad as a thermonuclear war.

FOREMAN: The naturalist Aida Leopold said thereare those who can live without wild things and those who cannot. I am one of those who can-not. I'm a product of the Pleistocene epoch, theage of large mammals. I am a large mammal. Ilik e large mammals. I do not want to live in aworld without jaguars and great blue whales and redwoods and rain forests, because this is mygeological era, this is my family, this is my con-text. I only have meaning in situ, in the age Ilive in, the late Pleistocene. I do not want to bethe cause of a transition into a new era.

Designing Nature

POLLAN: Because of mv brilliant disposition of theissue of Tabernacle Pines-suffice it to say I .took your advice-I waselected mayor of neigh- boring Oakdale. Recently, an old woman died and left a square mile of land on the edge of town to Oakdale. Her will stipulates that we usethis land "for the benefit of Oakdaleans." The parcel has a moderate-size farm surrounded bysecond-growth oak forest. There's a bluff over-


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looking the farm and the famous Treaty Oak,where the Indians firstmade friends with thesettlers. The bluff iswhere fivegenerations of Oakdaleans have cometo court; it has its ownhistory. Now I am em- powered to decide whathappens to this land. Iran on a solid environ-mental ticket, and yet Ialsoface a 15 percent un-employment rate amongthe working class; pres-sure is building to devel-op on this land. What doI do?

TURNER: Allow limited de-velopment, but balancethat by planting, witlUnthe town limits, indig-enous species, thus ex-tending their range.Erase the boundary be-tween the urbanized areaand nature. You mightalsoofferproperty-taxex-emptions for the number ofspeciesbeing preserved

on your land. Lose spe-cies and you'dpaya high-er tax.

YARO: He's assuming, Mr. Mayor, that you don'twant to get reelected!

BOTKIN: I'd start with the Treaty Oak. That is his-tory, so I'd leave it. I'd also take an acorn from itand plant it beside the old oak, so that there is areplacement. We always assume that trees, likenature, are permanent, and, of course, they'renot. I would leave the farm alone and urge youto risk a push for conservation.

FOREMAN: I would tum it into an environmentaleducation site for the town school system, basi-cally maintain it as a natural area with trails,centers, environmental education. You could make the farm the headquarters, and you could employ some people that way.

YARO: Realize, right off, that this is a sacred land-scape. How many Oakdaleans were conceived in the backseats of Mustangs parked on that bluff? There are primal memories here. This place is a shrine. It will be very easy to muck things up if we aren't careful. Youmust keep thefarm, because that's the vista seen from the bluff. You've got to manage it. To generate

some money and jobs, Iwould consider limited development on thesouth end, built in a tightduster tucked into thewoods. It should look and feel like Oakdaleinstead of sprawl. Then,adopt new regulationsthat require similar land-conserving patterns of development throughoutthe Oakdale region.

BOTKIN: If you want toconserve it, I would avoid the pitfall thatCentral Park smartlyavoided: letting people

develop a little around the edges. Youmight trytrading the southern land for additional northernland, especially the land upriver. Then you canmake a statement about protecting the forest and the flood plain upriver.

LOVELOCK: If this werein Europe, one mightconsider "in-filling." Inother words, all develop-

ment wouldhappen w ith-in the town; the town's population density would

be increased in order to spare the wilderness.

POLLAN: But I have to go to a town council meet-ing tomorrow night and I have to defend mydecision. .

OAKDALE

(URBAN AREA)

YARO: Then you might want to keep your car en-gine running.

POLLAN: Exactly. So what do I say to the unemployed carpenter who will ask me how this deci-sion will help get him a job?

FOREMAN: I don't really care what you say to him.Because I am going to organize people-bird-watchers, hikers, environmentalists, others-in such a way that you will fear them far morethan an unemployed carpenter.

BOTKIN: Dave, don't give up completely on the carpenter and his sense of values. For example, thelast uncut stand of virgin oak and hickory wood-lands in New Jersey-the Hutcheson MemorialForest-was purchased and saved with fundsfrom the carpenters' union, and it was named for a former president of the union. You canappeal to higher values, and the carpenters,

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among others, will respond.

POLLAN:Well, I have decided that you guys haveyour heads in the clouds. I am going to developthe entire square mile by selling five-acre plots.You've tried to stop me, but everything-peti-tions, lawsuits, protests-has failed. The politi-cal process is over. It's America. It's democracy.Do you go home now?

FOREMAN:I n e v e r go home.

POLLAN:What do you do?

FOREMAN:Conservationists have a fully equipped toolshed and use the proper tool for the proper

job at the proper time.

" B y 2000, WARMESTATELY OLD T

THEM VULNERA!

HIKERS WILL FIN

AM

FOREMAN:Let's talk.

LOVELOCK:See, if I really felt strongly about thisissue, I would be obliged to act-even at therisk of losing credibility.

POLLAN:Is there a limit to what you'd do?

FOREMAN:There are certain issuesI feel so stronglyabout that I will plant my spear in the ground and stand there, regardless. For example, duringthe demonstrations in Oregon to save old-growth forests, I was run down and pushed for ahundred yards by a truck full of loggers. Theywere trying to kill me and I knew it, but Icouldn't get out of the way because I had made a

commitment that I was goingto stand there. My larger commitment is that I'm goingto be nonviolent toward liv-

ing things. I am willing to diefor what I believe in. I am notwilling to k ill for what I be-lieve in-although if I werean Indian in Amazonian Peruand my land was being invad-ed by oil companies, I mightuse my blowgun or my bow

and arrow. But this is a real problem I contin-ually run into with the yippie type who believesin revolution for the hell of it. I'm a very reluc-tant radical.

URES WILL CAUSE

CKANDMAKEAND BLIGHTS.

INCREASINGLY

YARO:Are hatchets in your toolshed?

FOREMAN:Lots of things are in there!

POLLAN:And after politics are exhausted?

FOREMAN:Oh, you might start by pulling up survey

stakes. And you might want to engage in some paper monkey-wrenching, to slow things down.

YARO:Paper can be one of the most effective tools.You know, this society can't do things veryquickly, but it is brilliant at slowing thingsdown.

POLLAN:Suppose Dave called you the night beforethe bulldozers showed up. He's planning to pour something in the gas tanks. Will you help him?

TURNER:People do what they are best equipped todo. I'm not a politician. My inclination would be to use art, theater, poetry, and song. The

power of a good song, like the coal miners' strikesongs, is terrific.

BOTKIN:I agree with Fred. What I bring to the en-vironmental arena is my reputation as an objec-tive scientist who can evaluate the land. To pour something in a gas tank-

FOREMAN:-grinding compound-

BOTKIN:-would destroy my credibility. We allmust play different roles.

LOVELOCK:Dave, it just so happens that my mainline of work is as an inventor. I can think of a

lot of things I could do to those bulldozers.

46 HARPER'S MAGAZI NE I APRIL 1990

YARD:Sometimes, though, we have to lose a place

in order to galvanize public attention. Some-times the most effective way of preventing fu-ture damage is to let the damage occur. And record it, publicize it. The Glen Canyon Dam isone of the most horrible things to occur on thiscontinent. It's what's known as a cash-register dam-built for no good reason except to fi-nance even more pork-barrel programs. Now itis a symbol and has inspired a conservationmovement across the country.

Speaking for Wolf

POLLAN:Because of my brilliant management of this problem, I have moved on to higher office.I am President of the United States. I am a r e a lenvironmental president, and I want to dosomething dramatic. What actions-both po-litical and symbolic-would you advise me totake in order to motivate the nation?

TURNER:As I mentioned earlier, I would reformthe tax system to penalize species loss and en-courage ecological diversity. And, since theU.S. Forest Service has done such a rotten jobwith the land, it would be better to sell it to pri-

vate owners with the kind of tax structure that


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would encourage them, pridefully and profit-ably, to care for the land. State control of theeconomic system failed in Eastern Europe. Whyshould state control of the ecosystem work any better than private ownership here?

BOTKIN: As long as we thought nature was "onestate," we didn't need to monitor it. Now thatwe know that nature is always changing, wemust track its conditions. We need global-research institutes-one research center per continent-to study the atmosphere and thedynamics of Earth. I would revise the national park system so that the parks were connected insuch a way that natural migrations might occur.As a symbolic action, I would honor the treatywith the Sioux, return the Black Hills to themto run buffalo and manage the ecology. Youcould get a lot of press for this; you'd be the nextTeddy Roosevelt.

FOREMAN: Let's recognize that 1992 is the SOOthanniversary of the European economic discov-ery of America and then seek a new covenantwith the land. As President, you should invitethe leaders of native peoples to the WhiteHouse to apologize for what we've done and toseek their advice on how to live on Turtle Is-land. I, too, would return the Dakota prairie tothe Sioux. Use 1992 as a symbolic time tolaunch these initiatives.

To manage the human population, offer ev-ery woman in the world free access to family

planning, abortion, and sterilization-at homeand abroad. Don't impose it, just offer it. Final-ly, announce national goals to cut by 50 percentAmerica's consumption of paper, wood, miner-als, energy, and water by the year 2000.

YARO: I would start by having you roll out of bed one morning at Pennsylvania Avenue and walk to Union Station and hop on the Metroliner toPhiladelphia-one of America's first planned cities. There you would announce a 2S-cents-a-gallon increase in the oil-import duty for each of the next ten years. This will bring U.S. oil prices in line with the rest of the world. With

the revenue you can retire a big chunk of thenational debt and announce a national programto rebuild the metropolitan transportationsystems.

LOVELOCK: We are in a similar position to that of Europe in 1938. In those days one knew that awar was looming, but nobody had the slightestidea what to do about it. One group was saying,Fight Nazism; another was saying, Disarm.There were a few sensible people who prepared for the war. Well, we are in for the equivalent of a war in the next five or ten years, and it would be sensible to prepare people's minds for that.

The destruction of the tropical rain forests

and the greenhouse effect are so serious-they're not just the doom stories of scientists-that the consequences will be upon us withinfive to ten years. They will come in the form of surprises: storms of vastly greater severity thananything we've ever experienced before, disrup-

tions in the ozone layer, events for which noamount of expensive computer simulation could possibly prepare us. As is the essence of surprises, we can't know what they will be. Wehave an enemy out there, and it will play somedirty tricks and hit us with some new weapons.

POLLAN: Do we have to wait for a Pearl Harbor be-fore we can act?

LOVELOCK: That gets to my suggestion. As Presi-dent, you should go to Pearl Harbor and givea nationwide televised speech to prepare the people.

BOTKIN: Jim is right. Our projections on globalwarming suggest that by the year 2000, we will begin to see rapid changes over vast areas. In parts of the North, we expect to see stately old trees beginning to die back. The warmer tem- perature will make many trees vulnerable to in-sect attacks and different blights. Hikers willincreasingly find themselves among dead trees.Loggers will have to choose between harvest-ing the dead timber and glutting the lumber and paper industries. And the diebacks willaffect water supply and erosion rates. It's reallyoverwhelming.

So your policies to curb global warmingshould be yoked to symbolic actions in order tomotivate people. For example, I might have the president create an environmental trail begin-ning at the front door of the White House, go-ing out of President's Park, down to the Mall,into Rock Creek Park, on to the AppalachianTrail, all the way to the Blue Ridge Mountains.I've checked this out. It can be done.

TURNER: I am bothered by the model of war. I amnot a scientist, but I gather that there is muchscientific data to the effect that the changeswrought by human beings in the ecosphere arestill within the range of changes that have beengoing on anyway. Isn't the climate of the world on a kind of random wave into which thesechanges fit comfortably? I think the war model, by which we try to get everybody anxious, leadsto despair and to a point where people act out of guilt and fear. The motivations of guilt and fear are as damaging to one's capacity for creativityas they are to sex: If you're in an acute state of guilt and fear, you will not be very good at sex or at coming up with good ideas.

I would look for ways to use hope, expecta-tion, adventure, and curiosity as motivators. Iwant to see the destruction of the rain forests

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and the ozone layer and the greenhouse effect asoccasions for international cooperation. We areat the beginning of the greatest period of humanhistory. To motivate us in a positive way, I havetwo suggestions.

First, let us recognize that nature is a process

of reproduction, of inaccurate self-copying-aseries of "flaws" that account for evolution. And that human reproductions of nature are not sub-stitutes for authentic nature but ar e authenticnature. Humankind's efforts are a continuationand extension of that reproduction, evolution,and improvement. Since only about 5 percentof the genetic material of any species is ex- pressed, the other 95 percent is an archive of evolutionary history. Thus we may be able to re -construct lost species. We should do so, and weshould think of these efforts as positive accom- plishments. We are promoting nature becausewe are nature. We are the leading edge, the sen-sitive tip, the cambium of nature. And we arecharged with its promotion.

Second, this world, this universe, is a chaot-ic, self-organizing, dissipative system that never repeats itself. If we believe that we must main-tain nature at a particular point of arcadian or pastoral perfection, then we are doomed. Wemust see ourselves as part of a universe whosedivine drama has only begun. So let us recover our ritual sense of evolution. I would establish aPresidential Prairie and create two festival daysin the year. The first would be seed-collectingday for the president, his family, kids, the GirlScouts-all of us-to go to old graveyards, rail-road rights-of-way, and the like and collect theseeds to be planted in the prairie. Since prairieshave to be burned, the second festival would bein the spring, and there would be a great burn-ing. It would be a ritual performance, and TVwould be there. You would see it. It would be photogenic. It would be great footage. It would be a beautiful thing.

LOVELOCK: Fred, I just want to return to my war-time language. I remember 1938 very clearly,and it wasnot a time of despair at all. The threat

of war stirs a feeling of adventure. If you had lived in London then, you would have found itwas a very pleasant place. The threat of war didn't cause misery or a lack of creativity. Artand writing flourished in those heady times. Far more paralyzing than the threat of war is thefoolish suburban contentment in which many people now languish.

YARO: Since this is the decade of turning ICBMsinto plowshares, I propose two post-Cold War initiatives for the president. Make "Americathe Beautiful" the nation's anthem. Instead of contemplating the "rockets' red glare," let'sreflect on "thine alabaster cities" and "purple

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mountain majesties." Then let's reclaim thatsong's images and vistas by bringing home the300,000 soldiers from Europe and dedicatingthe resulting savings to repairing our lands and cities.

BOTKIN: And let's tum our coastal military bases

into maritime research centers and convert our land bases into environmental stations.

LOVELOCK: As we make these changes, weshouldn't neglect technological advances. ShellOil in Europe, for example, has a scheme for burning coal in pure oxygen that eliminates pol-lution. I am not one of those environmentalistswho saywe should go back to the land and bumcandles to light our homes. It's like passengerson a ship deciding they loathe ironware tech-nology and jumping off the ship to swim the restof the way.

POLLAN: Dave, are you asconfident about our abi4i-ty to solve our problems?

FOREMAN: I guess I disagree with everybody. Weare foolish to believe that all our problems aresolvable, especially by technology or sociology.The technological fix often creates twice asmany problems as it solves. We need fewer solu-tions and more humility. Our environmental problems originate in the hubris of imaginingourselves as the central nervous system or the brain of nature. We're not the brain, we are acancer on nature.

The Oneida Indians tell an old story aboutthe tribe discovering a new, perfect place. After they moved, they found that the area had manywolves. They considered slaughtering thewolves but then thought, What kind of peoplewould we become if we killed them? Theystayed, but, to deal with this problem in the fu-ture, they appointed one man to attend thecouncil meetings and "speak for wolf" We mustovercome our hubris and learn to speak for wolf

TURNER: There may be limits to technology, butI've seen blackened and polluted sections' of England made rich with life. Technology is not

necessarily bad, and neither are we. I deeply ob- ject to the metaphor of humankind as a cancer.My parable, Dave, is that early on, when lifefirst appeared, the crystals and chemical organ-ismsmust have thought, What is this thing thatkeeps reproducing itself? It keeps on changing.It's messing up the atmosphere. It keeps trans-forming itself. It's full of hubris, life. For what islife but a cancer upon the purity of the inorgan-ic? If we are a cancer, if life is a cancer, then Iam for it. The nervous system is a glorious can-cer that has evolved, and I stand with it. I amthat cancer.

I-

FOREMAN: And I am the antibody.

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Pollan,Michael OnlyMansPresenceCanSaveNature