Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site dciem.UUCP Path: utzoo!dciem!mmt From: mmt@dciem.UUCP (Martin Taylor) Newsgroups: net.politics.theory Subject: Re: Freedom and property, round 2 Message-ID: <1742@dciem.UUCP> Date: Wed, 4-Dec-85 17:27:16 EST Article-I.D.: dciem.1742 Posted: Wed Dec 4 17:27:16 1985 Date-Received: Wed, 4-Dec-85 20:29:07 EST References: <1137@mtuxo.UUCP> <280@l5.uucp> <1739@dciem.UUCP> <300@l5.uucp> Reply-To: mmt@dciem.UUCP (Martin Taylor) Organization: D.C.I.E.M., Toronto, Canada Lines: 82 Summary: >The original question propsed that the farmland that Running Dog tilled was >unused. Are you serious in claiming that it is the conversion of land >to farmland that is likely to destroy us all? Do you have any idea of the >life expectancy of pre-agrarian societies? If the people in Brazil want to >knock down the Amazonian forests to improve their lives, I'm all for it. >-- >Laura Creighton "Unused" is a relative term. It depends on who is doing the defining. Running Dog's land was not unused by hunters or the prey of hunters, or by other animals. And, yes, I am serious in suggesting "that it is the conversion of land to farmland that is likely to destroy us all." Let me explain. Obviously, farming provides the opportunity for more and better food, and allows the community to include people whose activities are not food acquisition. It permits all the developments of civilization, and without it, life is indeed "nasty, brutish, and short." So far, so good. If that were all there was to it, then clearly there could be no complaints. But that isn't all there is to it. The increase in food supply permits an increase in population. The increased population demands an increase in the farmed area, ... , until suddenly there is no more land to be farmed. OK, technology allows improved yields, so the population continues to increase, but against an increasingly inelastic frontier. Furthermore, this agricultural technology is energy-intensive, and can be fuelled (at present) only by burning fossil fuel, which dumps enormous quantities of CO2 into the air (if all the readily available coal and oil is burned, as it probably will be in 2-300 years, the CO2 in the air will be increased tenfold). When there is a reduction in energy supplies, there is pressure on resources, which leads to fights over the possession of those resources. Also, agriculture will become less productive because (i) plants grown in high CO2 tend to be more luxuriant but less nutritious than normal plants (at CO2 levels up to twice the pre-industrial levels), and (ii) there will be less energy to provide fertilizers and to move the machinery, and all the other energy uses that go into modern agriculture. If, (what a big IF), we can substantially reduce our population without all-out war within the lifetime of most of those now living, we may yet survive. But if we continue to burn fossil fuel, there will be less land (ocean transgression) and much of that land will be less productive, and what the productive land produces will be less valuable as nutrition. The pressure on land resources will mount even further, and you know what? They stopped making land a while back! Now for a completely different line of argument. Agriculture depends on viable plants. Most high-yield agriculture is based on cloned strains, so that the entire crop is vulnerable to the same stresses. Too much destruction of the wild habitat to make farmland means the loss of the genetic variability in the ancestral stock. Rescue operations that are now being done to save wild seeds cannot work in the long term, because even in deep freeze the seeds both lose their viability and tend to produce distorted plants if kept too long. Similarly with animal species. Loss of habitat causes the extinction of huge numbers of species. It is estimated that the extinctions of this century parallel in extent the great extinctions of the geological record. Does this not worry you? Do Libertarian principles over-ride these considerations? These extinctions are almost entirely caused by conversion of wild habitat to farmland. And we may kill ourselves thereby, when we lose our beautifully engineered crops to some mutated virus and we no longer have any resistant strains to work with. As for Brazil, destruction of the Amazonian forests is not a matter for them alone. Those forests make a substantial part of our oxygen, and absorb a substantial amount of CO2. Even without all the rest of it, it is conceivable (but unlikely) that Brazil's policies BY THEMSELVES could kill many of us, simply by conversion of the forest to (relatively unproductive) farmland. Even in Libertaria, do they have that right? Does my neighbour have the right to commit suicide by blowing himself up with a bomb that destroys my house? I can't sue him afterwards, and we won't be able to get Brazil to restore the rain forest, either, if it does turn out to be an ecological disaster. -- Martin Taylor {allegra,linus,ihnp4,floyd,ubc-vision}!utzoo!dciem!mmt {uw-beaver,qucis,watmath}!utcsri!dciem!mmt