The Modern Cave Man

Last year, while working on an exploration project in Sudbury Ontario I was asked if I was an environmentalist. I have always cared about what we are doing to the planet and have tried to reduce my impact on the environment, but I would not consider my self an environmentalist. It seems to me that the term "environmentalist" is used to describe people with extreme often impractical views on protecting the environment and I am not one of these.

It is obvious to me that if our society keeps going as it is we are in trouble from many fronts: climate change, clean water shortage, poor air quality, fuel/energy shortage, food shortage, the list goes on, there is also a list of other possible global catastrophes that are realistically out of our control: Meteorite impact, super volcano, and a few others that I can't think of right now.

I think the problem is that we think in the short term and that we are immune to factors that effect other organisms because we are so much smarter right? Bacteria in a petri-dish will keep growing exponentially while there is an abundant supply of nutrients until... oh crap! all our food has run out then the population takes a massive dive and if any survive it is back to square one with out any easy food. Bacteria don't don't have the ability to sit and ponder the future, it is all about NOW for them. Lucky for us we are so much smarter right? Well I think the is well established that we are more intelligent, but It seems like we are driven by the same fundamental forces that drive those single celled organisms.

I have recently read a book on this theme, perhaps the second book I have finished... ever, I am not much of a reader. Anyway, the book was A Short History of Progress, by Ronald Wright very interesting! He gives some great examples that we should be learning from, human history tell the same story over and over again. A society develops from hunter gatherers to farmers to a city state, or country over hundreds or thousands of years, at first progress is fine, you replace a pointed stick with a plough and you can feed a larger family or trade food for other goods, but it gets out of hand and can only be sustained by using resources at ever increasing rates. at some point this exponential growth hits a limit and then the society collapses within just a few generations. Archaeologists are digging up these stories all over the world and the ending is always the same.

The point I was hoping to get to is that I think we are looking at the environment in the wrong way, we think of it as small parts. People get very up set if a small section of woodland is flattened for a shopping mall, or if a species of toad disappears from some mud hole some where. I hate to see farm land being built on. We are still We are still basically cave men (Homo neanderthalensis if you want to be politically correct about it), only concerned with our own back yard and what impacts our tribal territory. We live in a global reality, where almost everything we do has a global impact.

Hmmm, time for a coffee.... grown in South America, transported to British Columbia, by a truck burning fuel from the middle east, roasted and ground, packaged in a bag made who knows where and shipped to Newfoundland by a truck burning fuel from the middle east. Just add boiling water, heated with Hydroelectric power generated in central newfoundland by flooding a valley.

Nice coffee, and I take mine without sugar.

So as a cave man in a global society we are not "programed" to think, or care about the big picture. We some times care about an environmental issue out of our tribal territory, but only because we empathize with the people that is is effecting, not because we have a global perspective.

Our Troglodyte ancestors, unlike us lived very much in their natural environment, I am sure they were a pretty destructive bunch, but there destruction was limited and had no major global impact until the discovery of fire (which I believe can be traced in antarctic ice cores). They were probably aware of their impact on the environment and in turn how that would impact them, living in that environment. We, modern Cave men, live our lives isolated from the natural environment. for example I am sitting writing this in my warm bright office about 3 feet from the open tundra of Northern Canada. The Air outside is about -40C with a windchill of about -50C, the only light is the northern lights. Dressed as I am I would be dead in a very short time out there.

It looks like I am not going to answer this one now, so I shall do some pondering and post the sequal at a later date.

(And by the way, Recent studied has shown that Homo neanderthalensis made no contribution to modern human DNA, so is not strictly our ancestor. Perhaps the world would be a different place if we did all have a bit of Neandertha DNA)