Renewable Revolution

Quote from: JRM on January 28, 2017, 07:01:46 pm

From the article Eddie put up:

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Since 2006, some 1.2 million acres in Nebraska and the Dakotas that had never been tilled have been converted to corn and soybean production. This is even worse than converting conservation acreage into tilled farmland—since much of the conservation land had once been tilled. When virgin prairie is converted to farmland, along with losing the biodiversity on that land, a significant amount of carbon that was stored as organic matter in the soil is released into the atmosphere—contributing to greenhouse gas emissions.

This is the kind of **** which really ticks me off.  We can't measure this in any sort of energy terms, frankly. As important as EROEI may be (and it's important), the destruction of large amounts of an intact, pre-Columbian ecosystem can't be measured in such terms. Humans are NOT the only species that matters in such equations.  We may not find intact prairie ecosystems as inspiring as an intact stand of old growth forest, but if we get down closer to the ground and open our hearts, minds and eyes to such majesty we may wonder why.

“There are some who can live without wild things, and some who cannot," said Aldo Leopold in Sand County Almanac.  In that context, he meant this in a spiritual (of the psyche, the soul, our "inner life") sense more than a biological one.  And about this I agree with him.  Some could care less about wild nature. Others care a great deal.  But on a purely biological basis, all of us simply cannot live without wild nature, and turning the whole world into a "resource base" for the human economy can only result in unthinkable disasters, spiritual and biological -- for humans and for all of life on Earth.

Those who do not love wild nature are as good as dead, if you ask me. They are machines with ticker tape in their minds and television sets for eyeballs.  And dollar bills where hearts should be.  They are the scourge of the earth.

Enough destruction already!

 

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Human inequity is directly proportional to the amount of human iniquity. - A. G. Gelbert