Up is Down

 

Sometimes we come to changes of perspective automatically.  Ideas percolate through us and let us see things in a different way.  As simple a thing as coming around the corner of a building, glancing in a different direction, noticing a scene or person or situtation we hadn't noticed before, or absorbing it as having anything to do with us - yet now we see it.

And in the flash of a second our thoughts build a relationship between ourselves ... and whatever it was, out there.

A lot of us build these mental maps of how we relate to the world, and sometimes we instinctively lock into some of them as "Well, that's the way it is, isn't it!"   Some comfortable dance pose of where we are in the world and live with whatever.   Frames of reference that are really important .. in physical space, in social involvement spaces, in work and in community.

I had one of these mini-epiphanies last week and wanted to share it with you.

The Twentieth Century has seen an explosion in human population, putting such drastic demands upon the populations of animals and plants that we eat to sustain and thrive ourselves, that we've changed the living potential of an incredible number of species.   Not only are we eating species that weren't even 'on the menu' 50 or a hundred years ago, but those populations no longer live natural life cycles.  We harvest them before maturity, eating individuals that represent comparative 'teenagers' rather than matured or long-lived members.

Animal that could reach large size, and reproduce competitively to produce larger offspring are homogenized in the process.  Not only are food stocks smaller and 'over fished', but the animals we do get are smaller in size and stature, compounding the problem.

On balance, we've improved farming and domesticated animal husbandry.  Through fertilizers, land management, even genetic modifications and cross breeding that improve disease resistance and so on, we've stretched existing food stocks to be more productive.   Albeit, that we've locked many species into evolutionary sidetracks, as far as humanity is concerned, we've gained in some ways.

But now you have to take that state-of-things, and throw something else into the mix.

One of the things humans aren't very skilled at is how to live as a co-evolutionary companion with other life forms.  Dynamic evolution is an integrated process.   What one species tries, all the others have to come to terms with.  Killer honey bees have a gestation period for their queens that is two to three days shorter than the non-agressive varieties.  That single simple advantage means that aggressive-gened queens kill their competitor queens sooner.  And the calmer species are driven to extinction.

But for people, we revere individuals more than 'types' of people.  Things we do have impacts that only generations yet unborn will have to cope with, while we the living think we haven't changed the world in any way.  We have a 'lock' on the genes we were born with and don't concern ourselves with impacts on other creatures let alone the future generations that will depend on a healthy pluralism of interdependent co-supportive species.

We are at the 'top' of planet Earth's food chain.  We rule the roost and define how things will be.   Maybe yes.  Maybe no.  

David Suzuki, on a Canada/Discovery Channel TV program recently, covered problems in an ailing population of Beluga Whales in Canadian/U.S.waters circa 1997-2000. Calves died early or were still borne. Adults are dieing at alarming rates.  What scientists found during autopsies were high concentrations of an insecticide called Myrex.

Simple problem really.  Just stop using Myrex (a cyclodeine compound, an "improved" variant of DDT).  Not so simple.

The compound was banned from production and use in the 1970's .. 25 years ago.   The problem is, 'designer' insecticides are more robust than spontaneous molecular experiments by nature.  Nature tries things slowly, in small local trials and quantities.  What fails, gets washed away in the ocean of alternatives that succeed and blend in.  What succeeds, gains footholds, and becomes more prominent by continued integrations.  Human techniques throw massive quantities of substances into the world and reaps no in-between.  Successes are extraordinary.  Problems tend to become disasters.

Myrex leeched or was dunmped into the St. Lawrence and Great Lakes waters .. out of sight out of mind 25 years ago.  Only it never disintegrates or decomposes, it stays to poison the tissue of life that ingests it.  The Belugas, hundred and thousand of miles from the toxic dumping grounds were taking the poison and concentrating it in mother's milk.  Downstream from where Myrex was cast out of the human food chain and food-dependent chain years earlier, it remains to brutalize our world today.  Down stream.  Passing into the 'life giving' waters in the heart of a major global continent. Saturating fish and birds and eels. Moving relentlessly with the flowing waters, rushing to fill one of the planet's major oceans, down at sea level. Where the Beluga's and other animals feed on the spawn of eels and other life coming down the St. Lawrence's part in the global weather cycle.

Months of gestation of these magnificent creatures. Struggling with the birth process.   Then poisoning their own children .. with no option and no choice of how to try and survive any other way.

Only some strange whales, you might say.  Not important to humanity's survival.    Maybe yes.  Maybe no.

Henry Lickers lives along the St. Lawrence River and chairs the Chief's Committee on the Environment for Canada's Assembly of First Nations.  Communities around the Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence River have witnessed a degradation of both water quality and traditional economies based on fishing, trapping and agriculture. "PCBs, mercury, myrex, dioxins, dibenzylfurans -- a whole host of alphabet soup of contaminants have been introduced into our water systems to such an extent that even the fishes that once sustained our people, to about 75% of our protein source, can no longer be consumed," Mr Lickers reported in 1997.

And now that chemical soup has penetrated the world's oceans where our major food reserves are.

We are at the 'top' of planet Earth's food chain.  We rule the roost and define how things will be.   Maybe yes.  Maybe no.    We are not actually at the 'top' of the food chain .. we are 'down' stream consumers.

"Rule the roost"?  Not exactly either. The integrated dynamics of a complex gaian planet life-system do the 'ruling'.  "Define how things will be"?  Definitely.  We reap exactly what we sow.  Whether we want to or not.

                                                                              April 18, 2000

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Reference:

Indigenous Peoples Test the Waters by  Neale MacMillan
http://www.idrc.ca/books/reports/V211/indig.html

IDRC Reports is published weekly on-line by the International Development Research Centre.
Its aim is to keep an international readership informed about the work IDRC supports in
developing countries as well as other development issues of interest.

To IDRC Homepage             To IDRC Reports Page

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  | November 21, 1997

 

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