But it provides jobs, Jim! So that others can come along and say it's wasteful. Sorry guys, Off topic. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Jim McKenney" <jimmckenney@jimmckenney.com> To: "'Pacific Bulb Society'" <pbs@lists.ibiblio.org> Sent: Monday, January 10, 2011 12:23 PM Subject: Re: [pbs] OT - Invasive Snakes > These discussions about invasive species perplex me. > > > > If the basic assumption is that invasive species must be eliminated, then > that has some unfortunate consequences. Let's do a reductio ad absurdum > here: since the resources to eliminate all invasive species are not likely > to exist (we won't bother to kill pythons in Alaska), let's agree to > confine > our elimination efforts to only the most invasive species and the ones > which > have had the greatest adverse effects on indigenous plants and animals. > > > > OK, so we look around and try to determine which species that is. > Hmmm.let's > see, would that be starlings? Pigeons? Kudzu? Oops, .it's pretty obvious > that the species which has worked hardest to attain that distinction is > Homo > sapiens, a species not native to the Americas. And of the invasive > tendencies of this species, among the most disruptive have been those > which > result from agricultural activity (billions of acres bereft of their > biological patrimony and the substitution of several non-native plant and > animal species), road building (which has produced a slaughterhouse for > those native animals which survive the road building itself), and the > recycling of stage one destructive activities like farming into stage two > destructive activities such as housing developments..well, the list could > go > on and on. > > > > Obviously the ethical thing to do is to eliminate ourselves from the New > World and allow North, Central and South America to return to the > paradises > they presumably were before "we" got here and wrecked it. > > > > But that's no fun, and since so many of our cultural myths promote us into > the role of God's representatives here on earth, we'll exempt ourselves in > deference to the wishes of the Deity and get on with trying to maintain a > Disneyland-like similitude of the American Ur-landscape. Hmm.too bad about > the megafauna, passenger pigeons, Carolina parakeet and those others. > We'll > have to do some virtual versions to fill the void. And what's more > important, the ivory billed woodpecker's need for vast lowland forest > tracts > or our need for toilet paper and newsprint? Come on, it's a no brainer. > And > as for that old farm field you're going to restore as a "natural" > landscape, > old timers seem to be divided over whether it was originally a bog or an > upland hardwood forest. Let's make it a prairie instead, and add a few > patriotic buffalo to keep the crowds happy. > > > > And soon we'll be 9 billion strong. We must be right because there are so > many of us. > > > > If Malthus could see what's happening now, I wonder if he would be glad > that > he lived and died in the world as he knew it. He predicted our date with > destiny, and we seem to be doing everything in our power to test his > hypothesis and bring it on. . > > > > _______________________________________________ > pbs mailing list > pbs@lists.ibiblio.org > http://pacificbulbsociety.org/list.php > http://pacificbulbsociety.org/pbswiki/