[PEN-L:2437] Re: The V-word

[Terrence Mc Donough <TERRENCE.MCDONOUGH@xxxxxx>]

Blairs last post was an accomplished and eloquent rant if rant it
was.  It raises three substantive issues: is the human economy
properly understood as a subsystem of the natural ecology; does the
human economy "compete" with the natural ecology and can the
precautionary principle I proposed be understood primarily as an
argument concerning externalities.

To the 1st and 2nd points: it is clearly true that humans are a natural part
of nature.  As such anything that humans do is in this sense a
natural phenomenon.  Thus whatever we do to the environment is the
result of the internal dynamics of nature and whatever the outcome of
these actions nature is preserved.  Such a view of nature is
inevitable if we abandon romantic views of nature as being somehow
apart from human activity (these views being historically bourgeois
in origin).  However, by its very nature (sic) this view must fail to
provide guidance about how we should direct or limit our intervention
in the natural system.  This is because from this perspective the
human system cannot compete with the natural system any more  than
the activities of raccoons, etc.  While the truth of these propositions on
their own level of analysis seems indisputable, it seems to me
equally indisputable that they are irrelevant to a discussion of what
is to be done.

Escape from this impasse is offered by the developing critique of
reductionism within the physical sciences.  This critique argues that
while all physical phenomena are consistent with the fundamental laws
of matter and energy, complex phenomena can emerge whose development
and dynamics must be explained by a separate set of determining
principles which by analogy emerge with the phenomena themselves.
Thus the principles of the evolution of life must be consistent with
quantum mechanics but cannot be reduced to quantum phenomena.  Thus
while human society emerges from the eco system, its laws of
development and dynamics are emergent and therefor
 different  from the internal dynamics of  the ecosystem.  The
development of the impact of both raccoons and minnows on the
ecosystem can be understood in biological  terms.  The impact of
human society on the ecosystem is qualitatively different because its
dynamics are differently determined.  Simply put, Marxian social
science is needed to understand human society and its impact on the
ecosystem.  No such separate emergent dynamic principles are involved
in the understanding of any other species' impact.

Since the two systems differ in this way, it becomes possible for
them to compete with each other as human society and its impact
cannot be assimilated to the internal dynamics of the ecosystem,
however much they mutually determine one another.  If the usage of
resources by the emergent system and the character of its byproducts
is insignificant, this human society would pose little problem for the
reproduction of the larger system.  This has not been the case for
several hundred years, and the sheer quantity of human biomass
quarantees that this issue will not go away any time soon.  I can't
remember exact figures but it has been calculated that about 50% of
the energy usage of the planet is directed to the reproduction of the
human economy.  When the human economy has reached this size relative
to the ecosystem, the actual existence of competition, and the
continuing potential for competition even if radical measures to
prevent the economy from expanding are successfully undertaken, seems
undeniable.

The third issue is whether this analysis can be categorized as one
based in the neoclassical concept of externalities.   I don't think
so even though I am arguing that human societies have effects on the
environment to some extent  external to there own reproductive dynamic.
Neoclassical externalities have to do with the generation of
disutilities for third parties.  If we see the ecosystem as something
apart from the human economy with its own demands on the resources of
the planet the question is separated from the impact of some human
economic activities on other humans and the possibility of
internalizing costs to the environment becomes meaningless.

Questions of the value of nature must be posed as considering the
preservation of the system as a whole rather than comparing the
marginal value of bits of it.  Whatever criteria are used (utility,
use value, spiritual, aesthetic) it can be agreed that the remaining  ecosystem
and its component parts have much  more value than any conceivable
alternative human use of the resources and consequently the
preservation of the ecosystem at its current level of diversity
becomes a bedrock principle  which is not in practice subject to
debates about the relative value of the environment.

Terry McDonough