NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #27/NN_1992_27.iso/spool/sci/environm/12770

Text File | 1992-11-17 | 3.3 KB | 65 lines

Newsgroups: sci.environment
Path: sparky!uunet!charon.amdahl.com!pacbell.com!sgiblab!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!uwm.edu!daffy!uwvax!meteor!tobis
From: [e-mail] (Michael Tobis)
Subject: Habitat and economy (was: Ecocentric Criterion)
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Organization: University of Wisconsin, Meteorology and Space Science
References: <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]>
Date: Mon, 16 Nov 92 23:00:44 GMT
Lines: 54

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Alan McGowen) writes:
>
>>It is
>>clear to me that much of what we are doing is catastrophic, and in this
>>I presumably disagree with John. But I do not see where you get these
>>numbers without an assumption that impact per individual human is nearly
>>fixed. Do you have some basis other than intuition?.
>
>I do, namely that even if all habitat conversion ceased today -- and
>this could not happen even with a population of 2 billion at current
>Japanese, US and European levels of affluence -- the existing converted
>area is too large for the extinction crisis to end immediately.

I'd appreciate if you could expand on this at your leisure, as I see
many questions arising from the relationship between human comfort and
adequate wildlife habitat. For instance:

Firstly, I take it from this that you think the impact of the 4 billion
at subsistence levels is less than the impact of the 1 billion in affluent
nations. Is this why you think that 2 billion affluent people would demand
yet more land? I am not convinced of this. Do you have evidence?

Secondly, you seem to agree with me that loss of habitat is the predominant
problem. Is this true? Can you provide better evidence than I can?

Thirdly, why are you so certain that affluence is so tightly tied to
land demands? I suspect that many of the most damaging uses are of small
economic value, the burning of the Amazon being an obvious example.

Fourthly, if currently available wilderness ceased but efforts were made to
trade scatterred and fragmented wilderness areas for large contiguous
areas, would that suffice to stabilize the sitation if habitat loss were
the only significant factor? (Clearly this depends on the particular
ecological and economic uses of the land. What I'm asking for here is
evidence that large scale reconversion of economic use to wilderness is
necessary, as opposed to tradeoffs resulting in larger contiguous wild areas
without major changes in total land usage.)

Fifth and most important, can you suggest any ways to weigh the economic
costs and ecological benefits of abandoning particular uses of land so
as to most effectively restore stable habitat? In this context I'd like
to point out that even though increasing human population almost certainly has
a detrimental effect on habitat, it is less clear that decerasing population
will automatically result in increasing wildlife habitat. I'd like to get
away from intuitive value judgements and into finding a way to identify those
land use conversions which would have a large positive impact on biodiversity
while having a small negative impact on short-term economic value.

Finally, what other major anthropogenic impacts are there besides habitat loss
that may need to be considered? (In my opinion, rapid climate change is one.
Are there others?)

mt