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Offlineeve69
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We live in the new age of Noah - Times Editorial
    #7791723 - 12/23/07 07:55 AM (16 years, 1 month ago)

We are in the times where we must preserve pairs of endangered animals. No?

In the Age of Noah
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
Jakarta, Indonesia

A couple of weeks ago, The Times’s Jim Yardley reported from China that the world’s last known female Yangtze giant soft-shell turtle was living in one Chinese zoo, while the planet’s only undisputed, known giant soft-shell male turtle was living in another — and together this aging pair were the last hope of saving a species believed to be the largest freshwater turtles in the world.

It struck me as I read that story that our generation has entered a phase that no previous generation has ever experienced: the Noah phase. With more and more species threatened with extinction by The Flood that is today’s global economic juggernaut, we may be the first generation in human history that literally has to act like Noah — to save the last pairs of a wide range of species.

Or as God commanded Noah in Genesis: “And of every living thing of all flesh, you shall bring two of every sort into the ark, to keep them alive with you; they shall be male and female.”

Unlike Noah, though, we’re also the ones causing The Flood, as more and more forests, fisheries, rivers and fertile soils are gobbled up for development. “The loss of global biological diversity is advancing at an unprecedented pace,” Sigmar Gabriel, Germany’s environment minister, recently told the BBC. “Up to 150 species are becoming extinct every day. ... The web of life that sustains our global society is getting weaker and weaker.”

The world is rightly focused on climate change. But if we don’t have a strategy for reducing global carbon emissions and preserving biodiversity, we could end up in a very bad place, like in a crazy rush into corn ethanol, and palm oil for biodiesel, without enough regard for their impact on the natural world.

“If we don’t plan well, we could find ourselves with a healthy climate on a dead planet,” said Glenn Prickett, senior vice president of Conservation International.

I met one of our generation’s Noahs here in Indonesia: Dr. Jatna Supriatna, a conservation biologist who runs Conservation International’s Indonesia programs. One of his main projects is saving the nearly extinct Javan gibbon, a beautiful primate endemic to the Indonesian island of Java. The Javan gibbon population, decimated by deforestation, is down to an estimated 400, spread out around 20 tropical forest areas in West Java.

Mr. Supriatna helps run the Javan gibbon rehabilitation center, a collection of cages embedded in the mountains of Gunung Gede Pangrango National Park, near Jakarta, where male and female gibbons — which are known for their lengthy courtships, not one-night stands — get to know each other over months. First, they live in forest cages side by side, then together and then, if everything works, they produce a couple of babies.

But the process is so slow, and the species so endangered, we may soon be down to the last few pairs — a great loss. Watching a gibbon swing from tree limbs, ropes and bars is like watching a small ape win the Olympic gold medal in gymnastics.

The only way to head off species loss in Indonesia, the country with the most diverse combination of plants, animals and marine life in the world, is the old truism, “It takes a village.” So much of his work here, said Mr. Supriatna, is trying to build coalitions by melding businesses that have an interest in preserving the forest — the geothermal energy investor, for example, who needs trees to maintain the watershed for his power plant — with local governments, which have an interest in preventing illegal logging, with local villagers who need forests to prevent soil erosion and provide fresh water.

Environmentalists here constantly have to work against corrupt local officials, who get bought off by logging interests, and villagers who don’t understand how important the forests are to their daily lives. One of his recent projects, said Mr. Supriatna, was to pipe fresh water from the forest watershed to a nearby village so people there understood the connection. Lately, he has taken his work to the imams who run the local Muslim schools.

“We teach them that the source of the water comes from the mountain and the park,” he said. “And if the park is gone, they will not have the clean water they need for prayer rituals. If you influence the imam, he will influence all the kids.”

For so many years, Indonesians, like many of us, have been taught that life is a trade-off: healthy people with lots of jobs or healthy forests with lots of gibbons — you can’t have both. But the truth is you have to have both. If you don’t, you’ll eventually end up with neither, and then it will be too late even for Noah.

(This is my last column until April. I will be on leave, writing a book on energy and the environment. Happy holidays!)


http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/23/opinion/23friedman.html?th=&emc=th&pagewanted=print


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InvisibleIcelander
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Re: We live in the new age of Noah - Times Editorial [Re: eve69]
    #7792169 - 12/23/07 11:14 AM (16 years, 1 month ago)

Nothing can be "saved"


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"Don't believe everything you think". -Anom.

" All that lives was born to die"-Anom.

With much wisdom comes much sorrow,
The more knowledge, the more grief.
Ecclesiastes circa 350 BC


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Offlineeve69
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Re: We live in the new age of Noah - Times Editorial [Re: Icelander]
    #7792649 - 12/23/07 01:48 PM (16 years, 1 month ago)

What do you mean exactly?


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OfflineFreezestate
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Re: We live in the new age of Noah - Times Editorial [Re: eve69]
    #7794720 - 12/24/07 03:17 AM (16 years, 1 month ago)

Quite interesting, and quite a good point... So, what are the implications of this? That is to say, why precisely does it matter that we have as many species as possible on this planet? Obviously, if these animals are failing at life as it is then they obviously serve no other purpose than to aid our human curiosity. No strain of giant turtle is going to cure cancer, I hate to break it to you.

Just playing the devil's advocate for the sake of furthering this conversation, don't worry.


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"You must be the change you wish to see in the world." -Ghandi


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Offlineeve69
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Re: We live in the new age of Noah - Times Editorial [Re: Freezestate]
    #7794750 - 12/24/07 04:16 AM (16 years, 1 month ago)

Preservation of biodiversity is a worthy presumption about the intricacies of life. It presages the acceptance of humans as being a part of things rather than alienated and at some distance.

If humans cannot assume to be part of preservation of biodiversity then we will merely presume to be part of the survival of the fittest, in which case we will live in a lonely vacuum of merely self serving glutony, none of which will lead to higher or more aesthetic perogatives.

I posit that if we cannot prevail in preservation of biodiversity then we will follow the decimation ourselves. We are not greater in any respect than dengue fever virus.


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Offlinefireworks_godS
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Re: We live in the new age of Noah - Times Editorial [Re: Icelander]
    #7794833 - 12/24/07 06:44 AM (16 years, 1 month ago)

Quote:

Icelander said:
Nothing can be "saved"




That's not what my computer programs say. :lol:

Not only are we talking about the preservation of data here, but also its presence in our environment in relation to our biological data. We need monkeys and stuff. :smile:


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:redpanda:
If I should die this very moment
I wouldn't fear
For I've never known completeness
Like being here
Wrapped in the warmth of you
Loving every breath of you

:heartpump: :bunnyhug: :yinyang:

:yinyang: :levitate: :earth: :levitate: :yinyang:


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OfflineFreezestate
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Re: We live in the new age of Noah - Times Editorial [Re: eve69]
    #7795562 - 12/24/07 12:46 PM (16 years, 1 month ago)

Isn't survival of the fittest a law of nature? Doesn't every single other organism do everything it can to ensure it's own species' survival and nothing else? Just because we as human beings have the capacity for thought deviating from these basic guidelines does not imply that we have an obligation to change our own nature as animals to act as a preserving force for a whole world undergoing change. The loss of weak species is a natural process on the greater timeline.

Some people have argued that balance is a more fitting law of nature citing rainforests as perfect examples of biodiversity working in harmony with itself with human (often western) intervention being a force that throws things our of whack. However, once this interaction has been made there is often little room for change since it changes the nature of the respective environment in ways we cannot perceive sometimes. In other words, it's pretty much a one way street, and any species which cannot hold up to the change no longer has a place in the world and does nothing to maintain any sort balance. Diversity for the sake of diversity is pointless.

Yes, I understand that some endangered or near-extinct species have recovered over time, but to what end? On what grounds exactly can you make the conclusion that we will die off simply because we don't have the means or willingness to sustain a weak species? What higher prerogatives or aesthetic inclinations do we have that makes us any different?


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Offlineeve69
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Re: We live in the new age of Noah - Times Editorial [Re: Freezestate]
    #7796033 - 12/24/07 04:02 PM (16 years, 1 month ago)

Quote:

What higher prerogatives or aesthetic inclinations do we have that makes us any different?




Perhaps you have not enjoyed diversity. Sorry.


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Offlinefireworks_godS
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Re: We live in the new age of Noah - Times Editorial [Re: Freezestate]
    #7797179 - 12/25/07 12:45 AM (16 years, 1 month ago)

Quote:

Freezestate said:
Isn't survival of the fittest a law of nature? Doesn't every single other organism do everything it can to ensure it's own species' survival and nothing else? Just because we as human beings have the capacity for thought deviating from these basic guidelines does not imply that we have an obligation to change our own nature as animals to act as a preserving force for a whole world undergoing change. The loss of weak species is a natural process on the greater timeline.




When we devastate a natural environment to the point that a little cute, unassuming creature who is less capable of adaptation, such as the red panda, begins to approach a point at which they will never exist again, it only makes sense that we need to consider our impact and that which we can do to promote the existence of other living beings.

The fact is that human beings are adaptive in ways that are exponentially beyond the capabilities of any animal on this planet, and human beings have this tendency, based mostly in fear for our survival, to transform our environment to adapt to us. Clearly the presence of any animal has an impact on its environment, as an environment is an interactive network of variables, yet we are capable of eliminating life itself if we felt like doing so.

The fact is, human beings are responsible for the destruction of the environments of animals that cannot adapt to our changes. Why must we go to war with these animals? To have more human beings? To have furry hats?

Let's not enertain ourselves with any false notions here... human beings have been at war with other animals. War for resources, war for survival.... The question is, do we continue our genocide to the point that all of that biological information and subsequent existence and presence of these animals will no longer exist, ever?

Sure, the loss of a weak species might be a natural process on a greater timeline, yet why should we purposefully force species to go extinct? If we damage an environment to which a species cannot sustain itself on its own, that environment will become further damaged by that animal's extinction. An environment is a complex web of interaction. Everything has a consequence, and when it is nothing on this planet but human beings, cows, and genetically-modified corn and wheat, the bacterial kingdom will eventually devastate us all, and life will have to start over from single-celled organisms again. :lol:

That's a worse case scenario, dependent upon to which extent we human beings go in purposefully destroying other life.Why shouldn't we promote the existence of all of the living beings around us, who pose no real threat to our existence?


--------------------
:redpanda:
If I should die this very moment
I wouldn't fear
For I've never known completeness
Like being here
Wrapped in the warmth of you
Loving every breath of you

:heartpump: :bunnyhug: :yinyang:

:yinyang: :levitate: :earth: :levitate: :yinyang:


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Offlineeve69
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Re: We live in the new age of Noah - Times Editorial [Re: fireworks_god]
    #7798881 - 12/25/07 05:14 PM (16 years, 1 month ago)

My particular thought is this. In a world without diversity we will be claustrophobic. It would be good to preserve all that we can to maintain the sense of wildness which preserves the quality of depth to living. If the city is a jungle, and the once wild was like the city, then today's world is getting more and more like some redneckcentric bumfuck town.


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