November 1962 — VOL. 43 NO. 10 —
Resources for
Living
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This is a prodigal century, probably the most prodigal in
the history of the world. We are using up the earth's resources
at a pace never before known. The surface is being scratched
to provide food for a rapidly increasing population, and modern
industry is literally turning the earth inside out at a rate
that never occurred in the past except in the neighbourhood
of volcanoes.
All this is creating a new environment, an environment which
we are not yet sure will be healthful and habitable for us
and our successors.
Human life is not a simple thing, like stepping from not
being into being. Before our environment could start to support
the likes of us it had to be built up from the simplest microscopic
cells through higher and still higher forms. The process is
still going on, as our environment changes by small degrees
between ice age and ice age.
Since mankind toddled its first steps there have been great
changes in the demands made by men upon the earth's produce.
But in the same time there has been no significant change
in the earth's 24,902 mile circumference, its 145 million
square miles of ocean, its 58 million square miles of land
surface. Our allowance of land suitable for cultivation is
some 10,710 million acres, about 3 ½ acres for each person
living today.
It is obvious that since we live within such limited bounds,
every change we make in our environment, from the building
of cities to the explosion of nuclear forces, has profound
biological significance for us. If we alter things around
us, we must adjust ourselves to new conditions of existence.
Darwin's theory of survival of the fittest does not mean survival
of the best, but only survival of those best fitted to cope
with their circumstances.
Evolution is not only a belief about how we came to be what
we are, but our hope for becoming what we need to be.
Here is the human problem in a sentence: to what extent
shall we conform to patterns imposed by environment and how
far shall we go ill resisting and changing them? Every force
we set in motion, whether by our technology or by our treatment
of soil, animals, birds, insects and bacteria, will affect
the lives of many other creatures.
This problem must be faced with one tremendous factor in
mind: the increasing pressure of world population. Always,
so far back as history carries us, there has been this pressure
of the biological increase of human beings on the sources
and means of production. Some of the pressure was relieved
in past centuries by expansion into new continents; some was
relieved by the development of new food production processes.
There are no new continents today, and world population
has increased from 900 million at the time of the American
Revolution to 3,060 million in 1960.
These mouths are being fed from soil which we are working
intensively. Only recently have we begun to think of the need
to maintain the proper mineral content in this soil. Only
recently have we become active in trying to stem the washing
away of chemical elements necessary to proper nutrition.
While life has been evolving for perhaps 500 million years,
this change in demand has come about in the last two hundred
years, and our awareness of the need for conservation can
be dated no further back than a half century. It would be
strange if some adjustments in our thinking and our behaviour
did not have to be made.
What is our environment?
Professor A. F. Coventry, in an address to the Toronto Field
Naturalists' Club, referred to "this compulsive matrix...which
provides the marvellously fit environment for life, but only
if life conforms to that environment."
As it is used in terms of human life, "environment" is a
comprehensive word. It is the community in which we live;
the neighbouring counties and the distant plains and mountains,
and the actions of men whose influence spreads out to affect
in some way nearly every community living on the earth. Our
destiny is governed by a multitude of events taking place
beyond the observational range of any individual.
Basically, nature is an orderly system of things and events.
A healthy and excellent way of life demands balance between
soil and city; plants, animals and men; air, water and industry.
Men are but a part of the pattern in which the soil—plowing
worm, the mineral—exploiting industry, the chlorophyll—using
plant and the lowly spider's web all have their place. Men,
having so great power to interfere with the ways of nature,
have a corresponding duty to study it so as to make their
interference constructive.
Some of the laws contributing to the balance of nature are
these: adaptation, succession, multiplication, and control.
When these laws are obeyed, nature tends to produce on any
piece of land the greatest amount of life that it can support.
There is a built in system of checks and balances tending
to maintain a stable condition or to lead to a gradual change:
for example, a climax forest or a pond that is being converted
successively into a marsh, a bog, and a swamp.
We have paid too little attention to these facts. As Professor
Coventry said: "We have assumed that we can push nature about
to our heart's content without reference to that subtle interplay
of living things that we call the balance of nature, when
in fact we interfere at our great peril."
The greatest man of letters produced by ancient Rome said
two thousand years ago something that might with truth have
appeared in today's newspaper: "Nature points out her tendencies
by a variety of unambiguous notices, and proclaims her meaning
in the most emphatical language, yet I know not how it is,
we seem strangely blind to her clearest signals, and deaf
to her loudest voice !"
Of this we can be sure: no retaliation of nature is caused
by a perverse desire to frustrate us, and no explosion of
nature is an incoherent episode. We are expected to know the
laws which govern us, and upon our conformance to them depends
the future of the human race.
Most of us want, as one of the principal things in life,
our health, but if we make the earth sick we ourselves shall
reap the diseases arising from pollution, exhaustion of the
soil, wasting water. It is not enough to work out medical
schemes involving hospitals, doctors and drugs, although in
our present state we need them greatly. It is not enough to
invent new ways of "making" food - as did the British scientists
who this year discovered a process of making milk without
a cow. We need, first of all, to make sure that the bases
of our lives - soil and water and air - are pure, and that
they contain the elements necessary to our bodily systems.
Our food sources
So long as the balance of nature remains undisturbed, the
soil is a self—renewable fund. This implies that arable
land is as much a function of the farmer as of the farm.
There are people who would, because they have a cage and
no pool, try to turn a tadpole into a squirrel instead of
a frog, just as there are farmers who, under the pressure
of the market, try to grow grain on land fitted only for trees.
We cannot force land into the pattern we wish to impose upon
it, but must fit the use to the land, its capabilities, and
its limitations. The quality of the soil, its organic and
chemical content, has a great effect on the quality of the
plants that grow in it, and therefore on their food value.
This is why the steering committee of the 1961 "Resources
for Tomorrow" Conference decided on formation of a Resource
Ministers Council for Canada. It will meet several times a
year to consider policies and plans for more effective resource
management and development.
Basic knowledge about plants has advanced at a prodigious
rate, but wisdom in their management has been slow to come.
What the plants do has been known for a long time. The green
leaf pigment, called chlorophyll, is the one link between
the sun and life: the conduit of energy to our bodies. In
the plant's green laboratory the chlorophyll blends the sun's
rays with elements taken from the air, the water and the soil.
When the plant is eaten by an animal, the stored—up force
is used to sustain life. When a plant dies, its roots and
leaves sustain the small organisms which are among the most
important factors in the cycle of life, the bacteria. These
decompose the remains of higher plants and animals into new
chemical combinations to be used as food by new generations
of plants.
Our agricultural plants, our grains and our roots, have
been forced out of their natural habitat where they could
look after themselves in their own way into a new environment,
largely artificial. We owe them the debt of protection and
culture.
Our forests
In every land and in all ages the forests have had profound
influence on the progress and welfare of mankind. The story
of man's advance from a primitive cave—dweller to the
master of a civilized world cannot be told without frequent
reference to his contacts and relationships with forests.
The violation of the laws governing the extent of forest
cover is one of the most tragic examples of human folly in
the face of nature's wisely ordered system. As continuous
waves of immigrants swept over one country after another,
the forest was pushed back by axe and fire. The hoe and the
plough were used where only trees could grow. As a Nicaraguan
proverb has it: "One man in one day with one match can clear
a hundred acres!"
Productive forests are possible only by the sustained and
effective practice of good forestry. This involves progressive
cutting, reseeding either by planting or encouraging seed
trees, protection against insects which bore into the trees,
and grazing animals which destroy the bark and the ground
cover.
Wildlife
It goes without saying that wildlife needs a place in which
to live, and it should follow that human beings must preserve
or provide that place.
As was said in a "Resources for Tomorrow" background paper:
"Regardless of any peregrinations of the gross national product,
Canada will be irreparably poorer if, as a result of economic
pressures, we lose a single species of our native wildlife."
When a forest is cut, a field plowed, or a marsh drained,
wildlife is affected. This is not to say that we must not
cut, plow or drain, but only that these operations should
be modified by, or accompanied by, the actions needed to provide
for the displaced wild creatures.
In the past, all forms of life were subject to automatic
natural controls, but man, stepping in with his artificial
controls, threatens to undermine the whole pyramid of nature's
system. We cannot continue to build an urban environment according
to the dictates of economics, technology and convenience,
while ignoring the natural laws of biochemistry.
The illusion has persisted as part of our folklore that
natural wealth is inexhaustible.
Our national and provincial coats of arms feature the beaver,
sheaves of wheat, maple leaves, trees and buffalo. But, as
was said by Professor Ian McTaggart—Cowan in Wildlife
Review: "The symbol of our generation is the bulldozer."
We need to take care lest we overreach ourselves in our
attempts to impose our will on nature. On a museum wall is
a sign which reads: "The animal you see here is the most dangerous
and destructive creature on earth." Below these words hangs
a mirror.
This comment has not universal application. There are many
people and organizations working to bring back perspective
to the resources picture. They do not wish to retard progress;
they do not wish to rob people of their pleasure. They do
believe that the principles of life on a planet inhabited
by more than a million and a half species of plants and animals,
continually using and reusing the same molecules of soil and
air, should not be tampered with by uninformed tinkering.
Pollution
The purity of our air and water and the foods produced on
our soil and in the sea will determine our number, our health,
our efficiency, and our enjoyment of life.
Although pollution has reached impressive proportions, legislation
competent to eliminate it is creeping forward at a snail's
pace. There is delay in initiating measures of cleanliness
because of lack of clearly defined responsibilities. The various
levels of government are not certain who should do what. As
was said in a paper presented at the "Resources for Tomorrow"
Conference: "Indecision and delay stem in part from differences
in interpretation of the B.N.A. Act and a lack of clear federal
and provincial policies." Meantime, public health is at stake,
recreational values are impaired, industrial uses are limited,
and fisheries suffer.
Our rivers are flowing to the sea, as they always did, but
with this difference: on their journey every drop of water
gives its service again and again to the homes and towns and
cities along their banks. Every user - individual, industrial,
municipal - takes water from the river, uses it, defiles it,
then returns it with it's load of refuse to the river for
the next user to get from it what service he can. Insecticides
are carried from surface and ground water into streams and
lakes, where they kill large numbers of aquatic animals. The
use of bodies of water as dumping grounds for nuclear wastes
leads to concentration of radio—active matter in plankton,
algae, mollusks and fish, which in turn make their way into
human diet.
Because of modern water treatment methods, such as filtration
and the addition of such chemicals as chlorine, water—borne
epidemics are infrequent, though it is possible that epidemics
of non—fatal character are unrecognized as being water—borne.
Offers by the federal and provincial governments to share
the cost of erecting efficient sewage disposal plants often
come to a dead end at the municipal level because apathy of
the public combines with the tax rate to discourage sponsorship
by municipal governments.
Pest controls
Agriculture today may be differentiated from that of an
earlier day by its reliance upon chemical preparations in
the control of insect infestations. In the present state of
nature, with many natural checks and balances removed, it
is necessary that this should be so.
A statement by the Canadian Agricultural Chemicals Association
in August said that since 1947, when the annual sales of pest
control products in Canada amounted to $7 million, the volume
of sales has more than quadrupled. "Twenty years ago", continues
the statement, "25% of all crops were destroyed by insects.
Today, progressive use of chemical aids has cut farmers' crop
losses by one half on a much larger agricultural output."
But it does not do to ignore ecological processes while
being guided by such quantitative criteria as the size of
the crops. At the annual conference of agricultural ministers
and their deputies from the ten provinces, held in Quebec
in July, Dr. J. R. Bell, of the Manitoba Department of Agriculture,
recommended that more applied science is required to decide
the effectiveness and safety to people and animals of insecticides
now used in Canada.
It is remarked in The Bulletin of the Conservation
Council of Ontario: "We know almost nothing of even the direct
effects of many control agents on plants, animals, soils and
soil organisms, and we know still less of the indirect, accumulative
and long—time effects these controls have upon wildlife,
plants, and even upon man."
What of the future?
What about subsequent centuries? This question is a fair
one, and we should not be permitted to dodge it. The earth
we abuse will, in the end, take its revenge; for in exploiting
it today we are diminishing the future of our children.
Few voices are raised nowadays in favour of the complete
"return to nature" which gave Henry David Thoreau notoriety
when he set up housekeeping beside Walden Pond in the middle
of the nineteenth century. He wrote: "I put no manure whatever
on this land, not being the owner, but merely a squatter."
Modern man can never return to the primitive life he so
often professes to idealize. He does not need to. The use
of machinery and chemicals do not conflict with good farm
practice, nor do industry and city life preclude the benefits
of more natural environment.
But such a life, making the best of two worlds, needs to
be planned.
Instead of concentrating upon technological research of
a short—time character to achieve functional ends, we
need answers to these questions: Has constant displacement
by civilization made the grasses, grains and trees more vulnerable
to disease? What is the long—range effect of pesticide
and insecticide spraying? Will the succession of selective
cutting of one—tree species, which is a standard forest
management practice, affect the heredity of the species? These
questions were posed in an article in the Ontario conservation
Bulletin two years ago.
Conservation
The meaning of conservation, say ecologists firmly, is not
preserving everything but working to keep things in balance.
The physical requirements of society must be met from the
resources of the natural world, but met in a way which, while
fulfilling the needs of the present, will assure the maintenance
of reserve for the future. Making the world a better place
in which human beings may live involves making the world a
better place for all living organisms.
"Personal conscience," said one writer, "is the beginning
of conservation." This application of personal conscience
should not await the onslaught of a gigantic crisis in the
resource supply. It should begin in childhood and grow with
maturity and understanding, until conservation becomes a way
of life.
There is, in Canada, a small dedicated band of resource
specialists, and another band of non—specialist nature
lovers. Upon these people falls the task of informing the
public, so that large numbers of people will understand the
urgency of the issues.
The beauty of life
All this is very important, even vital, to our physical
lives, but there is more.
"Life," says a fine Greek adage, "is the gift of nature;
but beautiful living is the gift of wisdom." One way to prevent
life from becoming an empty dream is by becoming a vital part
of all life.
Men of the nineteenth century took up a posture of aggressiveness
toward the forests, prairies and seas. These were obstacles
to be overcome, impediments to progress. Today we are filled
with a vague nostalgia for the very things they destroyed.
To a certain degree, wrote L.H. Herber in Our Synthetic
Environment, this reflects the insecurity and uncertainty
of our times. But it also reflects a deep sense of loss, a
longing for the free, unblemished land that lay before the
eyes of the frontiersman. It springs from the growing need
to restore the normal, balanced, and manageable rhythms of
human life.
Not all of us can study ecology intensively, but we can
all walk under trees older than our nation's history, on a
forest floor rich with the things that sustain life, or fish
along a conifer—shaded stream or bird—watch along
the edge of bushland. A natural area is a living library,
where we can see, hear and taste life in action, and feel
ourselves a part of all creation.
This is the sort of thing the Federation of Ontario Naturalists
has in mind in sponsoring "The Bruce Trail", a continuous
footpath from the Niagara Peninsula to the tip of the Bruce
Peninsula at Tobermory. Along the way would be cool glens,
sparkling waterfalls, intriguing rock formations, rich fossil
remains of an ancient polar sea, and varied plant and animal
life. At the northern end of the trail is "the great North
American rendezvous of plants" - native orchids, rare ferns,
the blue and gold dwarf iris, scarlet—painted cup, many
of them not found elsewhere.
The will to live
Some speakers and writers on conservation are asking whether
man will develop understanding before he destroys himself
by destroying his environment. It is possible to misjudge
the will or instinct to live. Our will to live may be merely
somnolent, awaiting something to urge it into action.
Meantime, we may learn. Man's life is like a boat in a storm,
says Plato. The storm may overwhelm the skilful seaman, but
it is always better to know how to steer. Socrates says man
cannot expect success in life without knowledge of rule and
standard, when he would never presume to hope for success
in his craft under such conditions.
We can admit, like the boatman, that unforeseen things,
eruptions from outside into the pattern of our expectation,
will invariably turn up. But it will not do, because of this
possibility, to omit preparation for what we can foresee.
Published by RBC Financial Group. All editions from the RBC
Letter collection are available on our web site at www.rbc.com/responsibility/letter.
Our e-mail address is: rbcletter@rbc.com.
Publié aussi en francais.
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