- Joined
- May 9, 2016
http://markstoll.net/.../Commoner%3B_Closing_Circle...
The Closing Circle
Barry Commoner (1971)
Nature, Man, and Technology
I'm a biochemist/zoologist. this is the stuff i was indoctrinated with and what I've been preaching and practicing all my life. We are a part of nature and can't tame nature to appease our egos.
When this book was published 50 years ago, I was wearing an army field jacket and blue beret with the buttons "why be normal", "question authority" and a picture of a whale with the text "save the humans" and since I graduated college in 1978 with a Marine Biology degree, I have been trying to tell people that the planet will kill us off long before we can kill all the other life on the planet.
The collapse of our climate is proceeding exactly as predicted all the way down to the pandemic. An ecosystem's stability is directly proportional to it's diversity. The planet does not tolerate monoculture, especially not high intensity farming of the top predator on cemented over wetlands.
We are either going to green ourselves, reconcile our technology to the natural world and start restoring some biodiversity this decade or the planet will do it for us over the course of the rest of the century. Barry Commoner offered solutions. We need to act on them.
Barry Commoner's Four Laws Of Ecology
1. Everything is connected to everything else. There is one ecosphere for all living organisms and what affects one, affects all.
2. Everything must go somewhere. There is no "waste" in nature and there is no "away" to which things can be thrown.
3. Nature knows best. Humankind has fashioned technology to improve upon nature, but such change in a natural system is, says Commoner, "likely to be detrimental to that system"
4. There is no such thing as a free lunch. Exploitation of nature will inevitably involve the conversion of resources from useful to useless forms.
The Closing Circle
Barry Commoner (1971)
Nature, Man, and Technology
I'm a biochemist/zoologist. this is the stuff i was indoctrinated with and what I've been preaching and practicing all my life. We are a part of nature and can't tame nature to appease our egos.
When this book was published 50 years ago, I was wearing an army field jacket and blue beret with the buttons "why be normal", "question authority" and a picture of a whale with the text "save the humans" and since I graduated college in 1978 with a Marine Biology degree, I have been trying to tell people that the planet will kill us off long before we can kill all the other life on the planet.
The collapse of our climate is proceeding exactly as predicted all the way down to the pandemic. An ecosystem's stability is directly proportional to it's diversity. The planet does not tolerate monoculture, especially not high intensity farming of the top predator on cemented over wetlands.
We are either going to green ourselves, reconcile our technology to the natural world and start restoring some biodiversity this decade or the planet will do it for us over the course of the rest of the century. Barry Commoner offered solutions. We need to act on them.
Barry Commoner's Four Laws Of Ecology
1. Everything is connected to everything else. There is one ecosphere for all living organisms and what affects one, affects all.
2. Everything must go somewhere. There is no "waste" in nature and there is no "away" to which things can be thrown.
3. Nature knows best. Humankind has fashioned technology to improve upon nature, but such change in a natural system is, says Commoner, "likely to be detrimental to that system"
4. There is no such thing as a free lunch. Exploitation of nature will inevitably involve the conversion of resources from useful to useless forms.