Last weekend was a special treat for me, a visit by my daughter Sara. She lives in Fort Collins, Colorado, where she manages a Conservation Genetics Laboratory for the Department of the Interior (DOI), primarily focused on wildlife. One of her current projects is participation in a task force developing a long-term strategy for the management of the bison herds on federal land. Today they amount to perhaps twenty thousand animals, including two thousand at Yellowstone. Her concern is largely related to protecting and improving the genetic diversity of the bison.
Separately, a number of Native American tribes have initiated a different program, based on their desire to re-integrate wild bison into their cultures. In response to their requests for federal assistance, a workshop was held in Washington, D. C. where they were able to meet with representatives of the National Park Service, the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the Fish and Wildlife Commission, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and DOI, among others. Sara attended as a representative of her project.
She was greatly impressed by the sincerity of these people and their desire to return to a lifestyle with bison roaming wild and being harvested occasionally as part of the tribal traditions. A typical example is a group in Montana with about forty-five square miles of prairie, big enough to support a herd of perhaps 2,000 bison, that would provide buffalo meat for meals in their school. They need help developing food processing infrastructure to satisfy FDA requirements.
During her visit we attended a Great Books lecture on “Nostromo”, Joseph Conrad’s masterpiece about exploitation of natural resources (in this case silver) and the native population of a mythical South American country, and the ultimate corruption of the exploiters. The coincidence of these two concepts initiated a discussion about the general subject of social/industrial development and the lessons we should have learned from our experience with it.
Two centuries ago the population of the United States was a little less than ten million persons, mostly concentrated along the eastern seaboard. The assets of the young nation included almost unlimited habitable land for homesteaders; massive deposits of minerals, especially coal and iron ore; low-cost labor – slaves, indentured servants, and immigrants from Europe; and the rapidly evolving technology of the industrial revolution. Today we enjoy the material benefits of these assets, as well as the numerous negative consequences that have come with them.
Anyone living in western Pennsylvania is acutely aware of the damage our “progress” has done to the natural environment; examples of air and water pollution and industrial blight are everywhere. Could our economy have prospered here without mining coal and subjecting miners to brutally unsafe working conditions and subsistence wages? What would we do differently if we had a second chance?
Two hundred years ago the average family considered itself prosperous if it owned a one-hundred-acre family farm. Today family farms are so rare that they are the frequent subject of newspaper feature articles. Massive industrialized agricultural complexes have rendered them non-competitive. Small farms growing a variety of fruits, vegetables, and grain have been replaced by monoculture – mile after mile of corn or wheat or soybeans. Progress implies improvement; are our lower prices at the grocery store worth the demise of the family farmer?
The descendants of the exploited workers enjoy material benefits far superior to those of the wealthy class who exploited them – indoor plumbing, central heating and air conditioning, automobiles, larger homes, etc. – but are still envious of their wealthier neighbors. Mass production techniques have allowed us to produce consumer products at a fraction of the comparable hand-crafted item, at the expense of the loss of the dignity of labor and the craftsman’s pride in his/her work.
Sunday we went to Harmony for the annual “WeihnachtsMarkt” (German Christmas Market), a marvelous collection of artisans, food vendors, and musical entertainment focused on preparation for the holidays and on Harmony’s German heritage. Among the artisans was a pair of ladies proudly demonstrating their work quilting a patchwork quilt. I’m sure the cost of their labors, at minimum wage, would be well over a thousand dollars; a mass-produced quilt sells for less than a hundred dollars. Benefit to the consumer at the expense of the worker’s pride.
Many of today’s issues are merely the continuation of this basic dilemma – what are we willing to give up in order to continue to enjoy the comforts of life today? Should we be building energy independence based on the extraction of natural gas by hydraulic fracturing? Should we be constructing a six-billion-dollar plant to convert ethane (natural gas) into polyethylene (plastic)? Significant benefits to consumers, potential risk to the environment.
I am struck by the contrast between the Native Americans with whom Sara met, who would like to return to a simpler life style, and the millions of (mostly Latin American) aliens who are eager to share our material comforts by abandoning their simpler life styles. Our society has certainly done a lot of things for which we are regretful – destruction of the natural environment, displacement of the Native Americans, exploitation of slaves and immigrants – to achieve the combination of creature comforts we currently enjoy. Have we learned a lesson, or do we think the end justifies the means?
I continue to believe that the root cause of most of our problems is the population explosion. In 1804 the population of the world was one billion persons; it has doubled three times since then, reaching eight billion this year. In 1798 Thomas Malthus voiced concern that the exponential growth of population would soon exceed the linear growth of food production. Technological agricultural advances proved he was wrong (at least as far as “soon” is concerned). He was, however, correct regarding the exponential growth of population, and many of our natural resources are now candidates for becoming inadequate the next time it doubles.