Posted in discussion on May 3, 2010|
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The discussion on the occasion of the Henk van den Belt “Frankenstein’ article was particulary interesting because the question was raised whether mankind had a large impact on nature or not. Whether man is perhaps too much convinced of his ability to monitor and regulate his environment, life and other species. You could also put it this way; are we too arrogant about the merits of science that has enabled us to control the planet?
I think at first it is important to be critical and sceptical towards man’s achievements. At the same time we must not become too relativistic about what human beings have achieved. It’s easy to be sceptical towards man’s achievement while at the same time most of us in industrialised countries do not have to worry about our health, a house to live in or food to consume. If it wasn’t for the achievements of medical science over the last centuries most of us would not make it to 35 years of age. So we have achieved a lot and it hasn’t been without major consequences. Positive ones in terms of healthcare due to increased knowledge about medics.
What I just wrote may look like a cliché but I think it is important to underscore this again since I was reminded by that because of one of the remarks in class last Friday, stating that the influence of man on the climate is not as big as we think. I disagree with that. I think the remark was made in the context of the controversy in the climate debate last winter. Due to errors and irregularities in the IPCC climate report people find arguments to question climate change and some even state that the climate bubble bursted. I think it’s too soon to draw that conclusion yet. Temperature records show that there is global warming and the question is rather whether mankind mainly contributed to that or that we are witnessing a natural phenomena. If we did contribute to it; is it a bad thing or not? Climate has always changed and it seems to do so now in terms of getting warmer. (Check the Dutch meteorological KNMI site for the hard data; the warmest years since 1900 (true; this is in climate terms a very short period) were all in the last two decades. http://www.knmi.nl/klimatologie/lijsten/jaar_xtr.html)
So the problem with the climate I think is that we witness phenomena which we do not fully understand yet. Besides global warming we do have a major impact on our environment in lots of other cases. We deforested Europe in two millennia. We bring species from one place to another with in some cases devastating consequences. Most famous, the case of the Victoria lake in Africa in which the Lates Niloticus was introduced with the idea that it would benefit local fishermen communities. The fish killed almost all other species in the lake and therefore biodiversity in the lake decreased dramatically. Dutch biologist Thijs Goldschmidt wrote an excellent book about this. (http://www.dbnl.org/tekst/gold002darw01_01/index.php) Only in Dutch!) That’s just a couple of cases.
Therefore I think we should not underestimate the impact of human activities. Positive and negative. If we become too modest and relativistic we call upon ourselves the danger of not feeling responsible anymore and I do agree with Marta that humans are the only species conscious enough to take responsibility for ourselves, our environment and other species. Responsibility and consciousness eventually means making choices about directions we should go. Especially when it concerns new technologies ( those used in bio-art for example). That’s the point where our responsibilities become political!
Arthur
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