Adaptability and Historical Ecology

I read an interesting article in The Walrus.  The article focused on environmental degradation and especially on loss of biodiversity, but had some ideas at its core that I believe have wider applicability.

As in the article, the field or historical ecology examines the biological richness of the past and provides two key findings:

first, the harder we look, the more biologically rich the past seems in comparison to today; and second, human impacts on the natural world were more severe and widespread earlier in our history as a species than anyone had guessed.

The article makes the point that the earth may now have reached the point of carrying only 10% of the ecological health and diversity of life that it once did.

This is important, but going further, the article explores why this terrible loss is difficult to see and can be so easily tolerated.  Citing a 1995 child development and psychology study, the article explains how people may establish during childhood the norm against which they compare pollution and environmental degradation for the rest of their lives.  Thus whatever state the earth is in when you are a child determines what you consider normal and acceptable.  Any damage from before a person’s birth is, in a sense, invisible to that person.

So this makes us a little like the frog that’s slowly boiled to death, unaware as the heat slowly increases.  For us, the temperature gets a little warmer each generation, but we never realize quite how hot things are getting.  We adapt.

Adaptability is powerful and, by at least some definitions, a necessary condition for life.

Adaptability allows humanity to live in diverse climates, survive on diverse foods, and handle rapidly changing culture and technology.  But maybe adaptability can go to far.

Maybe there’s a point where, instead of adapting to change, we should combat it.

I think this relates quite directly to my last post.  I argue that adaptability allows us to tolerate things that should not be tolerated.  Adaptability is a valuable tool, but one that can be easily misused.

As well, perhaps those with power, with money, are better insulated from the world?  Are more adaptable?  These are decision makers.

Somehow, we need to be able to see the bigger picture.  We must look both back, into history, and inwards, into our own sense of what we're willing to accept as normal.