Re: Politics by another means... (from R. Kaesler)

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Date: Thu, 03 Aug 1995 09:10:45 -0500 (CDT)
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From: kaesler@KUHUB.CC.UKANS.EDU (Roger L. Kaesler)
Subject: Re: Politics by another means... (from N. Monks)
To: paleonet-owner@nhm.ac.uk
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Dear Colleagues:

Neale Monks questioned whether understanding climate change in the past
actually helps us deal with today's environmental problems.  It is a valid
question.  Knowledge of climate change is certainly good for helping to put
things into perspective, at least climate change in the past few million
years.

An even tougher connection, however, is the one a lot of our colleagues
have tried to make:  that you have to understand, e.g., the
Frasnian-Famennian extinctions in order really to understand what is
happening in the rain forests today or that we should not worry too much
because tropical ecosystems seem to bounce back in only ten million years
or so.  I have never met a biologist worth his salt who does not think the
study of the history of life is of great (dare I say "vital") importance.
On the other hand, I know quite a few who are mystified by the connection
some paleontologists try to make regarding the importance of studying
ancient extinctions to grasp the modern depletion of biodiversity.

We all know about the limitations imposed by the geological record on our
understanding of ancient extinctions:  one impact, several impacts, no
impact, volcanism, global this-ing or global that-ing, and plate tectonics,
some or all of which have led to long-term, gradual extinction or perhaps
short-term, rapid extinction.  The current spike in the depletion of
biodiversity, however, can be ascribed to the activities of one species,
_Homo sapiens_ , over a period of a few decades, a level of precision that
paleontologists can never hope to achieve.

I do not mean to suggest that the study of past extinction events is
unimportant.  Their significance in the history of life cannot be
overstated.  On the other hand, we need to be very careful in implying that
our studies will somehow solve the rain-forest problem.  We must avoid
having our biologist colleagues accuse us of trying to climb onto the
bandwagon.  Instead, we must make sure that studying the history of life to
give perspective to the modern world is, itself, put into the proper
perspective.  The message of paleontology regarding extinction may be one
that no one wants to hear because it deals with the quantity of life rather
than the quality of life.  The net effect of the big extinction events of
the past was to clear space so things could change.  We are one of the
products of that change, so it pretty hard to argue that even the loss of
more than 90 percent of the species at the end of the Permian was a bad
thing.  Quite properly, however, no one wants to settle for such
devastation as that in the modern world because of the reduction in the
quality of our lives that such loss would engender.

Before I conclude my iconoclasm, I would like to add that I do not think
the approach of many ecologists to the modern-day depletion of biodiversity
is much help.  With a few notable exceptions, the plan seems to be to go to
the tropics, get at least one of each kind of critter into a bottle of
formalin, wash up, come home, and try, probably in vain, to find a
taxonomist who can give names to the collected organisms.  I know of one
study that hoped to invest some $2 million per year for a few years to
study the ecosystems at several places in a South American rain forest.  $2
million a year would buy a lot of rain forest and fence.  We need to
understand the rain forest ecosystem a lot better than we do, but if the
idea is to stop the depletion of biodiversity then mere study of the
ecosystem, however interesting and important it may be for other reasons,
will not solve the problem.

Best wishes,

Roger L. Kaesler

--
Roger L. Kaesler
Paleontological Institute
The University of Kansas
121 Lindley Hall
Lawrence, Kansas 66045-2911
(913) 864-3338 = telephone
(913) 864-5276 = FAX