On Wednesday, September 13, 2000 11:40 PM Damien Broderick
d.broderick@english.unimelb.edu.au wrote:
> >Maybe I am alone in this, but I don't see anything wrong with extinction
> >in principle. For every species that becomes extinct, a new one pops
into
> >existence to take its place, and probably does a better job of it.
>
> I'd like to write a lengthy, pungent response to this, but don't really
> have time just now. Sketchily:
>
> As it stands, this is nuts. It might be true that `For every species that
> becomes extinct' one already extant spreads to fill the slot, but I doubt
> it, and anyway I'm not that enthusiastic about slashing diversity. During
> Pangea, there was a vast dieback, as local island biogeographies became
> crowded into a single world-island ecology. Vast amounts of biological
> information were lost. We have recreated this circumstance, to a large
> degree, with global shipping and air transport. Chris Lavers makes the
> argument compellingly in a new book with the crowd-titillating title WHY
> ELEPHANTS HAVE BIG EARS. The successful hyperanimals (rabbits, say) do not
> add much in the way of useful diversity except, perhaps, at some
microlevel
> of nearly-neutral intragenomic drift. This sort of
> extinction-by-competition is usually aversive these days, I should think.
> And not what one associates with a term such as `extropian'.
I would rather say it's not rational to destroy such diversity and life
itself. No need to appeal to "Extropian."
Also, commenting on the text Damien quotes (I don't have time now to find
the original author), new species are not "popping" into existence all over
the space of taxa. I don't see, e.g., a new species of bird which has
popped into existence to replace the dodo or the moa or the carrier pigeon.
Nor is one waiting in the wings -- at least, in anything shorter than
geological terms -- to replace the California condor. (No pun intended.:)
Add to this, that some amount of diversity is healthy for each species,
including humans and probably including posthumans. Without knowing what
amount ahead of time, I'd harazrd a guess less is not better. Nor if less
is more optimal is it good to just randomly exterminate certain life forms.
That would be like to picking on type of bacteria (I hesitate to use
"species" in this context:) in your gut at random and killing it off and
repeating. Surely, you might kill a few types that are harmful or do not
effect the overall balance, but what happens if you kill off some of the
good ones? (This doesn't even bring up the long term consequences. Maybe
by not having a mix, your good gut bacteria would deteriorate. Maybe
something which you thought was bad is really not so and has a positive
benefit elsewhere. Most bees sting, but they also pollinate flowers...)
That said, there probably is a little exagerration from the prodiversity
camp. Efforts also need to be directed toward understanding ecosystems
rather than just mindlessly enshrining them.
Someone else remarked about how a lot of land in the Northeast has gone
wild. This is true in many areas of New England. Yet, the ecosystems that
existed before the land was tamed are, in most cases, not returning -- at
least, not in toto. The carrier pigeon is gone and there are hardly any
wolves south of Canada or East of the Mississippi.
This is not to say I recommend government intervention at any level here.
Cheers!
Daniel Ust
http://uweb.superlink.net/neptune/
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