The Myth of the Sustainable Lifestyle

On Fri, 14 Sep 2007 10:26:00 -0700, Bruce Jensen
wrote:

On Sep 14, 9:54 am, Darryl wrote:
On Aug 31, 8:07 pm, Mike Vandeman wrote:

The Myth of the Sustainable Lifestyle
Michael J. Vandeman, Ph.D.
July 14, 2001
consoled, upon their loss, by the creation of new ones.)

Thus, logging (and any other killing of reproducing organisms)
can never be "sustainable": one can never guarantee that it won't
destroy a piece of that finite set, the world's store of genetic
biodiversity. Repeated often enough, it could, and probably would,
reduce the genetic diversity of the logged species, or even drive it
to extinction. If you continually destroy members of a finite set,
however large, it will eventually be empty. The probability of
destroying a unique gene may be low, but the consequences can be very
serious, so the killing of reproducing organisms must not be taken
lightly.

Argumentum Ad Absurdum. If you define sustainability as "no harm",
then redefine harm to ridiculous unobtainable levels, then of course
sustainability isn't possible.

This argument would only be relevant if trees had NO natural enemies.
Since they do, then logging simply becomes one more natural enemy.
All species have defenses against natural enemies encoded within their
DNA, and external pressures that reduce diversity will simply increase
the pressure for the species to produce MORE diversity.

The very concept of a "unique gene" is laughable, on many levels.

Darryl - As in the rantings of most madmen, a kernel of truth is
distorted and inflated beyond all recognition and reason when Mike
opens his mouth or puts fingers to keyboard. Mike gives the
impression of sustaining a serious emotional problem, and on top of
that he is among those who are incapable of understanding that they
could *ever* be wrong once they have convinced themselves of their own
superior understanding. We have quite a few of those in government
these days, if you'd like to search out other examples.

It is best to just ignore him. It is best all the way around, not the
least of which for Mike himself who, if continually prodded, will
continue to speak to his own detriment and further engage in character
self-assassination. Consider your silence an act of charitable pity.

On your own comments, while organisms do have DNA encoding against
natural enemies, these codes are developed for stresses with which
they have evolved over at least many tens of thousands, and probably
more, years. Logging on a massive scale has not evolved on that
timeframe alongside the trees - its timeframe has been a temporal drop-
in-the-bucket. To assume that any group of long-lived organisms can
genetically/evolutionarily respond to a threat of this magnitude, and
develop some kind of genetic defense against it (titanium-clad bark?)
is probably a poor assumption. Without protection, it is conceivable
that such trees as redwoods, sequioas and many others could vanish
long before their genes were even able to evolve through a single
additional generation, let alone mutate randomly to provide any sort
of meaningful defense.

Right. That's what I just said: human-induced damage happens too fast
for any species except bacteria & viruses to evolve any defenses.

Bruce Jensen
--
I am working on creating wildlife habitat that is off-limits to
humans ("pure habitat"). Want to help? (I spent the previous 8
years fighting auto dependence and road construction.)

Please don't put a cell phone next to any part of your body that you are fond of!

http://home.pacbell.net/mjvande