Polar Cities Reprised, Tsunami, tsunami, tsunami...

A few years ago, February 22, 2008 to be specific, I posted an article on my now good friend, Danny Bloom (journalist, philosopher, scholar and activist). The article focused on his premise that climate chaos will ensue in the next few centuries and he posited that in the long-term future—several centuries and many generations from now—our planet might look quite different.

In the vein of Lovelock’s “Revenge of Gaia” and Shane Joseph’s “After the Flood”, both based on predictions of an unprecedented rise in water level due to global heating, Bloom believes in being prepared for what may come. He founded the Polar Cities Research Institute, intended to create modular polar cities designed to house post-climate chaos affected communities.

Treacherous Ice Storms in Kentucky—What is Gaia Saying to Us?

Keeping with the theme of climate—and climate change—this time last year (January-end, 2008) I was in Louisville, Kentucky, unknowingly braving the devastating effects of an unseasonal tornado. Commanding a 100 mph wind, it tore up concrete and roofs off houses, uprooted trees and flung huge signs hurtling into cars. The tornado set down twice, once just metres from my friend’s house and knocked out the power in large sections of Louisville for days. How did I not know, you ask. It was night time and I’d never experienced a tornado before…And I was in Kentucky—not Kansas (LOL!). I remember huddling in the dark cold of my friend’s house for hours in the dead of night (while she worked the graveyard shift at the airport), writing to the flickering light of a candle, with a blanket wrapped around me to keep warm, and listening to the raging wind.

Flash forward to this past week (January, 2009), as Kentucky faces its worst-ever natural disaster: over 600,000 Kentuckians are without power (200,000 without water) following major ice storms that struck a large section of the Midwestern United States across nine states, including Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Missouri, Indiana, and Virginia.

Last week (January 25th and 26th) about two inches of ice covered trees, power lines and the ground. It snapped branches, uprooted whole trees, and spread debris and ice sheets across roads. Power was cut in over 1.3 million residents and businesses. The storm moved into the Northeast, dropping snow from Ohio to Main and ice in Kentucky, West Virginia, Pennsylvania and Maryland.

Kentucky was the hardest hit in what is being called the worst power outage in that state’s history, and only months after Hurricane Ike ravaged the state. Governor Steve Beshear ordered the largest call-up of National Guard forces in Kentucky state history as over half a million homes and businesses remain in the dark, including close to 200,000 in Louisville. Said Beshear, “Because of the severe winter weather condition, this will be a much more difficult and dangerous restoration task than what we faced following Hurricane Ike.”

"Louisville residents on Sunday — without power for yet a sixth day in a row — described a city struggling to adapt to a new status quo. Fuel shortages and restrictions were common at the busiest gas stations. Along many city streets, entire rows of cars were frozen in place, trapped under fallen tree trunks and branches," reports James Snyder of the Times.

I have a few dear friends in Louisville and I hope they’re okay. I haven’t heard from some of them in a while, so I’m just praying that they are warm and safe. This too shall pass…

Power may not be restored until mid-February in the hardest hit areas of Kentucky and Arkansas. Meantime, people are trying to keep warm and many have fled to hotels (which are giving people a break in cost) or shelters. The ice storm has already caused over 40 deaths related to traffic hazards (e.g., slippery roads, faulty traffic signals, etc.), hypothermia, and carbon-monoxide poisoning. As the power outage continues and supplies run out, Kentuckians who can travel are being urged to go south out-of-state to warmer climates until power, water and associated services can be restored.

But, just as with the treacherous fog in Vancouver last week, Kentuckian photographers stepped into the chaos of the ice-damage to marvel at Nature’s cruel beauty…and take pictures.

Well, you knew I had to bring up my thoughts on climate change, didn’t you?

I posted several articles already that touch on this subject. I touched upon the chaotic nature and interrelatedness of climate and weather in my post on chaos theory. In two blog posts, “Climate Change & the Nobel Peace Prize” and “Blog Action Day—Truth”, I devote lengthy discussion to the dedicated work of Al Gore, his film, “the Inconvenient Truth” and generate lively discussion on the topic (check out the comments pages!). In “Tornadoes Connected to Global Waming?” I described my own personal experience with the historic unseasonal tornadoes in the US earlier this year and how some believe this is related to climate change and is a sign of more to come. In “Polar Cities” I describe Dan Bloom’s concept for surviving the aftermath of global warming and explore the need for paradigm changes. Then in “The Complexity of Nature” I discuss how perspective plays a role in our perception of both our future and that of our planet.

In my series on Climate Change, I quoted Clive Thompson of Wired Magazine in a compelling article on “How the Next Victim of Climate Change Will Be Our Minds”. Thompson described the psychological phenomenon of solastalgia, coined by Glenn Albrecht (professor at the School of Environmental and Life Sciences at the University of Newcastle) as “The homesickness you feel when you’re still at home,” to suggest the impact of climate change on our mental health.

I left off with a discussion—actually a series of questions—related to “scale” and whether or not we should intervene, when everything that we are and do is PART of the global network already. Is it simply that we are being hubristic once again by seeing things from a strictly anthropomorphic view? Perhaps, it isn’t our place to succeed, but rather to secede to something more suited to what is yet to come… I’d like to think that it may be neither, rather that these global events will hasten our own evolution into a higher form—But, as with the last time I brought this up, I am getting ahead of myself…I promise to address this in a later post. I PROMISE.

Meantime, my burning question is this: What is Gaia saying to us? ...Or is the proper question: What are we saying to OURSELVES?

Because, aren't WE GAIA?...

Intensity of Hurricane Ike Linked to Global Warming?

By the early morning hours of September 4, Hurricane Ike was a Category 4 hurricane, hitting its peak with 145 mph (233 km/h) winds and a pressure of 935 mbar (27.61 inHg) over the open Atlantic Ocean. That made it the most intense storm so far in the 2008 Atlantic hurricane season. At one point the diameter of Ike's tropical storm and hurricane force winds were 450 and 190 miles (720 and 305 km), respectively. The world watched in horrible anticipation as Ike was tracked toward landfall on the Gulf Coast.

After its devastation on Haiti, Ike slammed into Galveston, Texas at 2 am Saturday, Sept. 13 at 110 mph, and moved inland across the Galveston-Houston area The angry storm shredded buildings, flooded streets; it knocked out power for millions of people and damaged water and sewer services, leaving almost 30,000 people in emergency shelters, says Bloomberg.

Biomimicry: Nature as model, measure and mentor

Several years ago, I picked up a book called Biomimicry: Innovation Inspired by Nature by Janine Benyus. Biomimicry was a term I’d not heard of before and I was intrigued. Benyus invented the term to describe a new discipline that studies nature’s best ideas and then imitates these designs and processes to solve human problems. A nature writer and champion of nature-inspired innovation, Benyus defines the quest of biomimicry as “the conscious emulation of life’s genius. Innovation inspired by nature.” Examples include:

energy efficient buildings inspired by the passive cooling of termite mounds
• non-toxic fabric finishes inspired by water-repellant lotus plants
• durable and resistant materials based on spider silk
• biomimetic robot designs based on animal and insect anatomy

Climate Change: Part Four—“Smoke and Mirrors”

In an article in Salon.com, Elizabeth Svoboda endorses an outlandish global warming geotechnical “fix” proposed by UC-Irvine physicist, Gregory Benford: "Global warming demands more than do-gooder actions. It demands "geoengineering" -- like blocking the sun's rays with stratospheric dirt."

“Benford thinks Al Gore's a good guy and all, but he also thinks the star of "An Inconvenient Truth" is a little delusional,” says Svoboda. “Driving a hybrid car, switching your bulbs to compact fluorescents and springing for recycled paper products are all well-meaning strategies in the fight against global warming. But as UC-Irvine physicist Benford sees it, there's a catch. Those do-gooder actions are not going to be effective enough to turn the temperature tide, and even incremental political changes like reducing greenhouse gas emissions and mining alternative fuel sources are not forward-thinking enough.”

"I never believed we were going to be able to thwart global warming through carbon restriction," Benford says. "Carbon restriction requires nations to subvert short- and midterm goals for a long-term goal they've read about online, and that's just not going to work."

Svoboda goes on to describe Benford’s “pie in the sky” (pardon my awful pun) plan: “As an alternative, Benford has cooked up a plan that amounts to a manmade Mount Pinatubo eruption. He has proposed shooting trillions of tiny particles of earth into the stratosphere, where they will remain suspended to help blot out incoming solar rays. Dirt is cheap, chemically unreactive and easily crushable, he argues, making it a simple matter to test this strategy on a small scale over the Arctic before total global deployment. This plan might seem a little too sci-fi to take seriously -- fittingly, Benford moonlights as a Nebula-winning novelist -- but he's far from the only scientist to lobby for a so-called geoengineering fix.”

“Researchers all over the world have begun advocating large-scale climate control strategies that sound like something "The Simpsons'" Mr. Burns might endorse, including erecting sun-blocking mirrors in deep space, spraying tiny droplets of sulfur or ocean water into the atmosphere to deflect sunbeams, and seeding the oceans with iron to spur the growth of CO2-sucking phytoplankton. When a panel of scientists addressed the ethical implications of geoengineering at the annual American Association for the Advancement of Science conference in February in Boston, it was a clear sign of how far this seemingly out-there field has advanced toward legitimacy.”

“While no proposed geoengineering fixes have yet been tested on a global scale, all of them have the irresistible lure of immediacy. Once deposited, CO2 can linger in the atmosphere for more than 100 years, meaning it will take decades or centuries for emissions-reduction policies to cool the planet significantly. Geoengineering, on the other hand, could potentially send global temperatures back to preindustrial levels within only a few years, bringing the Arctic melt to a screeching halt and keeping extreme weather patterns and rising sea levels associated with warming in check.”

“Hubristic to the nth degree?” asks Svoboda cheekily. “Riskier than a tightrope ballet? Absolutely. Even geoengineering's proponents concede that,” she adds. The effects of such large scale intervention could be apocalyptic and wind up being far worse than the initial problem. As an ecologist, still learning about the complexities of our environment, I find this sort of hubristic and myopic (I might add) “quick fix” frightening. It smarts of compartmentalization and isolationist thinking. We can’t possibly come up with all the possible consequences to such an intervention. To entertain the hubristic notion that there exists an "easy fix" to a phenomenon that only chaos theory even comes close to describing--and promoting this without being part of a major societal paradigm shift--is not only foolhardy but dangerous. For instance, according to Alan Robock, an environmental scientist at Rutgers University, aerosol clouds blocking out the sun could also produce regional climate change and reduce the Asian monsoon rains. “That would threaten water and food supply for billions of people,” says Robock. Inordinate shade could devastate crops. Spraying too much sulphur into the atmosphere could produce enough acid rain to decimate forests around the world, never mind poisoning lakes and rivers. The list of potential Frankensteinian specters is endless. It’s a harrowing magic show with devastating possibilities.

"The history of intervening in complex systems to correct them is not good," says Ken Caldeira, an ecologist at Stanford University, who has cautiously endorsed future geoengineering research. "You always think you know how the system's going to respond, but we should assume that if we start doing this, there are going to be some ugly surprises."

Let’s not forget the frying pan and the fire. What disquiets me about these sorts of “easy” fixes is that they release us from the hard work and the personal responsibility in the phenomenon that we all have contributed to. Faced with a wall of work, we turn to the technology and the experts who tell us that this new thing will fix it all and we can go on as before. That is the whole point: we can’t and shouldn’t go on as before. We need to change.

We live in a fast-paced world where technology is God and quick fixes are so ingrained in our North American culture that it is stunting our ability to be imaginative in ways that involve the strengths of our very humanity. We are far too ready to give up on ourselves and the hard work necessary to turn everything around for life on the planet.

We lack faith in ourselves. We’d rather sit back and believe in magic.

Pete Geddes, executive vice president of the Foundation for Research on Economics and the Environment, all too readily rights us off: “I know of no realistic person who thinks carbon dioxide emissions are going to do anything but grow.” Geddes, like so many others, is fully prepared to concede that any well-intentioned emissions-control measure or other eco-healthy initiative will ultimately fail. Many of us clearly idolize technology at the expense of humanity.

It’s about time we started to believe in ourselves. In our goodness. In our integrity. In our ability to work hard for something that is important and vital to us: our beloved planet Earth and our children who will make a home on it. It’s all we’ve got. Let’s not screw it up with “Smoke and Mirrors”.

Nina Munteanu is an ecologist and internationally published author of novels, short stories and essays. She coaches writers and teaches writing at George Brown College and the University of Toronto. For more about Nina’s coaching & workshops visit www.ninamunteanu.me. Visit www.ninamunteanu.ca for more about her writing.

Somerset Bob—Friday Feature

His Tag line reads: where the true and the real are often confused.

He calls himself Somerset Bob. "Because throughout my professional life, I’ve often found myself explaining to people that I’m ‘the other’ Bob Kingsley," he says rather apologetically. "It’s about time that changed. I don’t want to be the other any more. I want to be my own man. I need a new ‘handle’.” … Well, I think he’s found it. And, along with it, a worthwhile cause…
On January of this year, Bob Kingsley wrote this mission statement on his blog, ‘Somerset’ Bob’s Place:

”I’m not a scientist, but since June 2007 I’ve been gathering evidence for climate change from various diverse sources and speculating as to the possible future outcomes indicated by that research. As the months have passed I’ve become increasingly concerned that we’re heading for a sudden, catastrophic climatic event. By “sudden”, I mean just that: not a gradual change over centuries or decades — something to which we might, if we’re lucky, be able to adapt — but an event that will overwhelm us over a matter of a few years or even a single year or season. I’m searching for any evidence that underpins that view and narrows the time-frame so we might know when to expect the change. I’m not preaching about what we as individuals should be doing, I’m warning about what I’m increasingly convinced will be the consequences for us all, no matter how much or how little we each do to minimise our individual energy/carbon footprints. This is not to say we needn’t bother doing anything — far from it. By “thinking globally and acting locally”, as the saying goes, we may be able to delay the catastrophe, which will be a good thing — for people of my generation at least, if not for the next — but as I gather and analyse the information that’s out there, I’m becoming persuaded that despite our best individual efforts, it will ultimately overtake us.” Words reflected grimly by the British maverick scientist, James Lovelock (but that’s a later post of mine).
Bob has posted many stellar articles on climate change. Here are some of them:

Defeat Global Warming? Just Think About It (results of a US university’s study)
The UK Floods (summer flood hits the UK)
Climate Change: Sunspots? Or Us? (BBC News item)
UK Floods: The Crisis Deepens (floods invade southern counties in Britain)
Climate Change: Competing Theories (Gulf Stream and the Jet Stream and Superstorm theory)
Gore Gored by British Judge (facts vs. facts…)
North Polar Meltdown (Al Gore and the NOAA report)
More Climate Change Indicators (latest BBC reports)
Superstorm Authors Vindicated (about the Gulf Stream and superstorm theory)
The Maya and the Arctic Meltdown (Mayan calendar and the end of the world in 2012)
Antarctic Ice Loss Confirmed (latest research)
Sudden Climate Shifts Predicted (journal findings)
Polar Meltdowns: More Evidence Emerges (about the Antarctic’s Larsen B ice shelf breakage)
Being Economical with the Truth (is there really human-induced climate change?)
Antarctic’s PIG Threatening Sea Levels (glacial shrinkage and global sea level rise)
There Goes the Sun (China’s coldest winter in 100 years)
When More Means Less (more about the Arctic winter sea ice debate)


You might know Bob as “Bob Kingsley” through his work as a radio presenter and voice-over artist. You might even think he’s the other Bob Kingsley, but here in cyberspace they call him ‘Somerset’ Bob, and these days he likes to be thought of as a voice-over man and writer. You can hear his sexy voice right here and read some of his writing here.
Here’s Bob’s potted history: Bob has been associated with the UK radio business in one way or another all his adult life, including working as a radio show presenter at various commercial stations in his younger days, but best known as a voice-over artist for nearly 30 years. You’ll find some demo MP3s posted under the Work category of his blog.
But, says Bob, “I really set up [his blog] to give myself an outlet for my lifelong wish to be a writer. Now I’m no longer constantly dashing hither and yon pursuing work in a mad, youthful frenzy, I want to spend more time honing my skills in this noble art, flexing my creative muscles. I’m hoping to write a novel–look for posts about that in the Writing category. I’m also creating what will eventually be an online archive of all my earlier attempts at creative writing. Even if they’re only ever read by a handful of others, I’ll be pleased. They’ve been filed away on my computer or hidden away in desk drawers for years–putting them up on the web is just another way of storing them, except now anyone will be able to read them if they wish. I always wanted people to read my stuff. Isn’t that what any writer wants?”
Yup. So true, Bob!

Nina Munteanu is an ecologist and internationally published author of novels, short stories and essays. She coaches writers and teaches writing at George Brown College and the University of Toronto. For more about Nina’s coaching & workshops visit www.ninamunteanu.me. Visit www.ninamunteanu.ca for more about her writing.

Climate Change--Part 2: Solastalgia

Solastalgia: the sadness caused by environmental change or loss.

Solastalgia: the distress caused by the lived experience of the transformation of one’s home and sense of belonging and is experienced through the feeling of desolation about its change.

“Australia is suffering through its worst dry spell in a millennium. The outback has turned into a dust bowl, crops are dying off at fantastic rates, cities are rationing water, coral reefs are dying, and the agricultural base is evaporating,” wrote Clive Thompson of Wired Magazine last December in a compelling article on “How the Next Victim of Climate Change Will Be Our Minds”.


Glenn Albrecht (professor at the School of Environmental and Life Sciences at the University of Newcastle) described his fellow Australians’ reactions:

“They’re getting sad.”

Australians described a deep sense of loss as they watched the landscape around them change and deteriorate: familiar plants not taking; gardens not growing; birds disappearing… Albrecht believes this to be a new type of sadness, a feeling of displacement. “They’re suffering symptoms eerily similar to those of indigenous populations who were forcibly removed from their traditional homelands,” said Thompson.

Albrecht gave this syndrome an evocative name: solastalgia. It encompasses the roots of solacium (solace) and nostos (return home) with algia (pain)—yet another paradox that aptly conjures the word nostalgia. In essence, says Thompson, it’s “pining for a lost environment.”

“The homesickness you feel when you’re still at home,” says Albrecht.

“It’s fascinating…to think about the impact of global warming,” says Thompson. “Everyone’s worrying about resource management and the spooky, unpredictable changes in the ecosystem. We fret over which areas will get flooded as sea levels rise. We estimate the odds of wars over clean water, and we tally up the species—polar bears, whales, wading birds—that’ll go extinct.” But, Thompson warns that we should also be concerned about the huge toll climate change will inflict on our mental health.

During his research, Albrecht noticed that the more quickly environmental change occurred, the more intense the solastalgia. For instance, in the Australian outback, where open-pit mining has created moonscapes seemingly overnight, the suicide rate in the region skyrocketed. In New Orleans, a Harvard study revealed that survivors of Hurricane Katrina reported suffering a “serious mental illness” at about double the rate of the city’s residents three years earlier. Although trauma and personal loss played a large role, one should not discount the powerful effect of physical environmental loss as well.

All this reminded me of the nightmare I suffered last month and the nagging thoughts of climate change that have lingered with me since then…nay, since my earlier experience of that unseasonal tornado in Louisville, Kentucky. Albrecht has given what I feel a name: Solastalgia.

Where I live I don’t personally experience strong environmental change (with the exception of the odd weather mishap like ice storms and atypical snow for this Mediterranean climate). In fact, we are having a wonderful spring season here, with the cherry trees and the crocuses in my garden already blooming and tulips not far behind. But, while I don’t see the devastation and change around me, I feel it. Acutely. Since childhood, I remember having this feeling, this emotional link to my beloved planet and a growing sadness for what we are doing to it (the reason I pursued a science degree and became an environmental consultant). I still remember being sternly lectured by a high school teacher about my “misdirected” efforts to enlighten my school about global pollution. “You’re putting up posters about taking care of the planet when you should be focusing on your neighbourhood,” he chided me. It was then that the penny dropped for me: not everyone thought about their planet like I did.

But, surely, we are all part of Gaia. Let me rephrase: surely, we ARE Gaia…the woman walking her child to school…the young grocery boy taking your bags to the car… the blooming cherry trees growing along the side of the road…the birds singing on the power lines...the clouds scudding overhead or the rain spattering our faces… We ARE the planet, the living, breathing planet Earth. And the malaise of our planet is our own malaise. Humanity’s malaise.

Most of us reading this post live in a fast-paced stressful world, where many of us find ourselves coping day-to-day to “survive” the copious demands on our time, energy, brains and feelings. How can anyone in that frame of mind be expected to willingly take on the burden of thinking about the entire planet?!? Are we trapped in a shockwave of fretful living without even realizing it? “In a world of cheap airfares, laptops, and the Internet, we proudly regard mobility as a sign of how advanced we are,” Thompson quips sarcastically, “Hey, we’re nomadic hipster capitalists!...Only losers get attached to their hometowns.” Only losers care about their environment...

I am reminded of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis, the 1927 classic dystopia about the social crisis of a world where the selfish “dreams of a few had turned to the curses of many” (Fritz Lang, Metropolis). There is a scene in this evocative film where creative men of antiquity decide to build a monument to the greatness of humanity, high enough to reach the stars and reminiscent of humanity’s hubristic construction of the Tower of Babel. It is a world dominated by technology and the greed of few; where the bulk of the people are dehumanized workers, who more resemble machines in their jerky rhythmic movements and laconic faces than the oppressed humans they are. It is a world whose “heart” (the intermediary) is missing between its “brain” (those who conceive and run the city) and its “hands” (those who labor to make it a reality).

And I am reminded of Sodom and Gomorrah, destroyed by “brimstone and fire from the Lord out of Heaven.” The rabbinic tradition, described in the Mishnah, teaches that the sin of Sodom was related to property: Sodomites believed that “what is mine is mine and what is yours is yours,” which was interpreted as lack of compassion. Classical Jewish texts describe the sins of Sodom as cruelty and lack of hospitality to the stranger.

In the Bible, God said: Now, this was the sin of Sodom: She and her daughters were arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy. They were haughty and did detestable things before me. Therefore I did away with them as you have seen—Ezekiel 16: 49-50.

Some Kabbalistic mystics (e.g., Menachem Tsioni; others) described the Tower of Babel as a functional flying craft, empowered by powerful magic and/or technology and originally intended for holy purposes but later misused to gain control over the world. An escape ship, perhaps? A kind of arc? We have no flying tower. We just have Gaia. Our home. And what are we doing to our home?

Laments Thompson, “In a world that’s quickly heating up and drying up, you can’t go home again—even if you never leave.”

Nina Munteanu is an ecologist and internationally published author of novels, short stories and essays. She coaches writers and teaches writing at George Brown College and the University of Toronto. For more about Nina’s coaching & workshops visit www.ninamunteanu.me. Visit www.ninamunteanu.ca for more about her writing.

Climate Change--Part 1: Human Health—Friday Feature

This is the first in a new series I’ll be posting that deals directly with climate change, a topic of great controversy among scientists still and one meriting discussion among us here. Okay, I lie: I posted several articles already that touch on this subject. I touched upon the chaotic nature and interrelatedness of climate and weather in my post on chaos theory. In two blog posts, “Climate Change & the Nobel Peace Prize” and “Blog Action Day—Truth”, I devote lengthy discussion to the dedicated work of Al Gore, his film, “the Inconvenient Truth” and generate lively discussion on the topic (check out the comments pages!). In “Tornadoes Connected to Global Waming?” I described my own personal experience with the historic unseasonal tornadoes in the US earlier this year and how some believe this is related to climate change and is a sign of more to come. In “Polar Cities” I describe Dan Bloom’s concept for surviving the aftermath of global warming and explore the need for paradigm changes. Then in “The Complexity of Nature” I discuss how perspective plays a role in our perception of both our future and that of our planet.

Creative Destruction—Yet Another Paradox?

Creative destruction … sounds like a paradox, doesn’t it? Nature—and God— is full of contradiction and paradox. There is so much that we do not understand (at least on the surface)… and apparent contradiction proves that to me. As my character, Serge, (in my upcoming book, Splintered Universe) says, “… somewhere between the infinities of [worlds] you would experience paradox: black holes, quasars; intuition, déjà vu, clairvoyance… order in chaos…darkness at the heart of all beauty… beauty in the heart of all darkness…a mathematician with faith …the strength of surrender…dying to live…loving your enemy…” Paradox lies undeniably at the heart of the clash of two realms.

I understand something of paradox. As an ecologist, I deal with it all the time.

Destruction in creation and creation in destruction is inexorably ingrained in the life-cycles of everything on this planet, indeed in this universe. A forest fire can destroy life but in so doing creates a more vibrant, healthier forest. In my earlier post, the Speed of Life—Part Two: End of the World? I discuss the image of the Ouroboros (the mythical snake swallowing its own tail to sustain itself) in the Greek prophecy of the Suntelia Aion, the calamitous “End of an Age”. If that isn’t a paradox, I don’t know what is.

In my book, Darwin’s Paradox, Julie applies her father’s ecological precept to describe her observations on the rise and fall of a civilization, an ecosystem and an entire world. The precept was based on C.S. Holling’s 1987 ecological model of creative destruction:

Fire was a constant hazard in the heath. Yet, fire served the heath by discouraging invasive shrubs and halting succession. The grazing deer populations completed the job of keeping the heath from reverting to woodland. So, fire had its place as creative destroyer in the natural cycle of ecosystem behavior. Stable chaos, according to her father. It was a harsh and rude environment, Julie concluded. Like thieves in the night, bell heather, gorse and purple loosestrife snatched everything for themselves, leaving nothing for the others. Like many things in nature, the heath plants, though beautiful and fragrant, were ruthlessly greedy. . .

We humans are greedy. Look at our economic models of “sustainable development” (yet another paradox). Creative destruction was first introduced as a term in 1942 by the economist, Joseph Schumpeter. He used it to describe the process of industrial transformation that accompanies radical innovation. According to Schumpeter’s view of capitalism, innovative entry by entrepreneurs sustained long-term economic growth, even as it destroyed the value of established companies that enjoyed some degree of monopoly power. An example is Xerox, who has seen its profits fall and its dominance vanish as rivals launched improved designs or cut manufacturing costs, drawing customers away.

In his classic paper, entitled: “Simplifying the complex: the paradigms of ecological function and structure” (1987) C.S. Holling applied Schumpeter’s term to ecology. Holling’s model of ecosystem behaviour recognized ecosystems as non-linear, self-organizing and continually adapting through cycles of change from expansion and prosperity to creative destruction and reorganization.

Holling presented several paradigms that ecologists use to describe the causes and behaviour (and management) of ecosystems, including an equilibrium-centred view (based on the constancy of behaviour over time), which Simon Forge described as “driving using the rear-view mirror”—trying to judge the road ahead by what went on behind. Holling advocated a “nature evolving” view, which describes ecosystems as undergoing sharp, discontinuous changes that are internally organized and balanced (I like his mobius loop to describe the closed oroborus-like cycle of creation and destruction in nature). Holling described four phases of natural ecosystem succession within his “nature evolving” paradigm. It starts out with the exploitation phase, in which new opportunities are realized through rapid colonization and competition. Natural forces of conservation (e.g., nurturing, consolidation) lead to vulnerable systems (e.g., old growth forests), as stabilizing factors lose strength and the system evolves from having few interrelationships to having many. The result is often an abrupt change that both destroys systems and creates opportunity (creative destruction) through fire, storms, pests, senescence. Mobilization of bound, stored “capital” (e.g., carbon, nutrients and energy) through physicochemical and biological processes like decomposition and mineralization completes the dynamic cycle of functional ecosystems.

What this means for the ecosystem manager is that efforts to detect responses to changes, including human interventions like restoration activities, are confounded. Traditional (equilibrium-centred) ecosystem management may be misdirected, resulting in pathological “surprises” of ecosystem response and a spiralling vigilance and cost in control measures. Examples of traditional equilibrium-centred management of forests, fish and other organisms of terrestrial and aquatic environments with devastating consequences include:

• Suppression of spruce budworm populations in eastern Canada using insecticides partially protected the forest but left it vulnerable to an outbreak covering an area and of an intensity never experience before;
• Forest fire suppression reduced the probability of fire in the national parks of the United States but the consequence has been the accumulation of fuel to produce fires of an extent and cost never experienced before;
• Semi-arid savanna ecosystems have been turned into productive cattle grazing systems in the Sahel zone of Africa, southern and east Africa, and other parts of the world. However, changes in grass composition have promoted an irreversible switch to woody vegetation and the systems have become highly susceptible to collapse, often triggered by drought; and,
• Protection and enhancement of salmon spawning on the west coast of North America may have led to some success regarding enhance stocks (e.g., hatchery-grown fish), and at best the fishing industry is left precariously dependent on a few enhanced stocks which are vulnerable to collapse.

In each of these examples, the policy succeeded in its immediate objective. But in each case the system evolved into something with different properties and each “solution” led to a larger problem. In short, the biophysical environment had evolved into one that was more fragile, more dependent on vigilance and error-free management. Something Holling called “Nature Engineered.”
In his classic 1987 paper, Holling suggests that ecosystems be viewed—and managed—as “Resilient Nature”, where the experience of instability maintains the structure and general patterns of ecosystem behaviour; in other words, that Nature ‘learns’ and accommodates with time. In the final analysis, it is a matter of scale.
So, how does this relate to current environmental issues we are facing? Global warming, for instance?.. I’ll give you my two dollars worth in my next post...

Recommended Reading:
Holling, C.S. 1987. Simplifying the complex: the paradigms of ecological function and structure. Eur. J. Oper. Rel. 30: 139-146.
Holling, C.S. 1973. Resilience and stability of ecological systems. Annual Rev. Ecol. Syst. 4: 1-23.
Holling, C.S. 1977. Myths of ecology and energy. In: Proceedings Symposium on Future Strategies for Energy Development, Oak Ridge, Tenn., 20-21 October, 1976. Oxford University Press, New York, N.Y.

Nina Munteanu is an ecologist and internationally published author of novels, short stories and essays. She coaches writers and teaches writing at George Brown College and the University of Toronto. For more about Nina’s coaching & workshops visit www.ninamunteanu.me. Visit www.ninamunteanu.ca for more about her writing.