Large Fierce Mammal

Ecology (noun) – The branch of biology that deals with the relations of organisms to one another and to their physical surroundings. ~ Source: oxforddictionaries.com

Building on what we talked about in last week’s article in this series, today will be about ecology, growth, and limits. “Ecology”, as you can see, is a wonderfully useful word because it neatly encapsulates the connectedness of living things to each other as well as to the environment in which they live their lives. Within any environment there will be a finite quantity of resources that are consumed by the organisms that exist  there – some that will renew once consumed as well as some that will not. For most organisms, the resources consumed will either be other organisms, the detritus of other organisms, or both. So in the end, for most living things in Nature, there is no delineation between organisms and the resources they consume because, in a balanced ecosystem, every step of the life cycle of one provides resources necessary to that of at least one other, and for higher order organisms, to many others.

For the sake of clarity, let’s pause to establish what is meant by renewable and non-renewable resources, using a very simple black and white model; i.e, do you have enough of it or not, and if not, then how and when will you be able to get more?

A renewable resource is one that will self-perpetuate, and while its exploitation may result in local depletions, migratory consumption schedules that are timed to the cycle of renewal – consuming the same or an equivalent alternate resource from other areas of an organism’s range while the consumed resource regenerates – can normally be relied on to bless the consumer with a predictable source of resupply. Unless, of course, the consuming population becomes large enough to simultaneously deplete all sources of a heretofore renewable resource, something that, in Nature, normally results in population displacement, and even mass die offs up to and including localized extinction of entire species. Localized extinction becomes total extinction when the maximum sustainable population of consumers is reached or exceeded, and the range occupied by the consuming organism equals the size of the ecosystem that was occupied by the depleted renewable resource. At this point, a renewable resource becomes a non-renewable one.

A non-renewable resource is one that either will not regenerate once consumed, or regenerates so slowly in comparison to the lifetime of the organisms that consume it, that for all practical purposes, isn’t ever coming back. Minerals and fossil fuels fit into these categories. Of all organisms on the Earth, only Man has created a survival dependence on non-renewable resources, and by virtue of a compulsion for growth and the consumption to sustain it, has turned, and continues to turn, renewable resources into non-renewable ones with decidedly unsustainable regularity. With those extinguished renewable resources inevitably go entire species of co-consumers.

The Earth is a closed ecosystem. To clarify that, here’s an example from the time honoured pursuit of aquarium keeping:

What is a “balanced aquarium”? – A balanced aquarium in an aquarium that contains a full ecosystem. In a balanced aquarium fish will produce waste. This waste will be decomposed by snails, bottom feeders and bacteria, generally into ammonia. The ammonia is converted by two different strains of bacteria into nitrite then nitrate. Nitrate is then consumed by the plants in the tank. If all of the waste can be converted into nitrate, and all of the nitrate can be consumed by the plant matter in the tank, the tank is in balance.

The balanced aquarium could be taken one step further to have the fish in the tank consume only the plant matter that grows in the tank. This will generally require a large size tank for the number of fish present, because it takes a large number of plants to flourish and also be consumed. ~ Source: wiki.answers. com

So a practice with a history going back to the Sumerians has made this knowledge available to any kid with the ability to read and access to the funds required to establish a balanced aquarium in his or her bed room; and yet here we are.

I have always seen the seeds of destruction in the monthly and annual official announcements of “growth” as an indicator of the “health” of a nation’s economy and the soundness of its government’s economic policies. The percentage of growth quoted is always a positive number, and the the sole criterion deciding degree of success is whether the number is larger, smaller, or equal to last time. This is not at one with the Way of the Wild because it’s based on the absolutely un-Natural premise that growth can, and indeed should, go on forever.

Likewise we have the sister fallacy to the endless growth concept – that “loss” is not defined by a situation in which an organism goes from having enough of a resource to meet its needs to having less, or even none at all. In Nature, this is the only definition, but in the lethally over thought and overcomplicated society of Man where “business as usual” goes on as though Nature doesn’t matter, it simply means that the desired degree of positive growth was not as large as hoped. Any self-employed small business owner/ operator lives by the Natural definition of “loss”, and understands the reality of too much month left at the end of the money.

If you’ve never heard of The Club of Rome, the organization’s website provides this history:

In April 1968, a small international group of professionals from the fields of diplomacy, industry, academia and civil society met at a quiet villa in Rome. Invited by Italian industrialist Aurelio Peccei and Scottish scientist Alexander King, they came together to discuss the dilemma of prevailing short-term thinking in international affairs and, in particular, the concerns regarding unlimited resource consumption in an increasingly interdependent world.

Each participant in the meeting agreed to spend the next year raising the awareness of world leaders and major decision-makers on the crucial global issues of the future. They would offer a new and original approach in doing this, focusing on the long-term consequences of growing global interdependence and applying systems-thinking in order to understand why and how it was happening. The Club of Rome was born.

The originality of their approach soon became clear. In 1972 the campaigning of this growing group of like-minded individuals gained a new worldwide reputation with the first report to the Club of Rome: “The Limits to Growth”, commissioned by the Club from a group of systems scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The Report explored a number of scenarios and stressed the choices open to society to reconcile sustainable progress within environmental constraints.

The international effects of this publication in the fields of politics, economics and science are best described as a ‘Big Bang’: over night, the Club of Rome had demonstrated the contradiction of unlimited and unrestrained growth in material consumption in a world of clearly finite resources and had brought the issue to the top of the global agenda.

I don’t subscribe to the policy of government by think tank or “study”. Far too often, such things exist to serve the agenda of whoever pays for them, or are set up to silence and deplete the powers of opponents to policy by setting them up as “advisors” and then keeping them too busy with minutiae to speak up as they labour in the fallacious belief that they are actually accomplishing something. If they later wise up and down tools, such people can then be conveniently accused of not taking the problem seriously because, after all, they were generously provided with every possible cooperation with which to prove their argument, and are now rudely refusing to finish the job.

Nevertheless, 40 years ago, The Limits to Growth successfully modelled and predicted where human activities have put the Earth of 2012, and clearly pointed out, “… the contradiction of unlimited and unrestrained growth in material consumption in a world of clearly finite resources.” This is absolutely at one with the Way of the Wild.

If you’ve never read it, you can get the essence of The Limits to Growth message by viewing the The Club of Rome video that follows. Please set aside the time to watch it and, as usual, to provide your thoughts by way of comments on this article, and sharing it with wild abandon.