"Re-wilding" - newsnight tonight

[toilet digger]

the flow country. simples.

 

[mrcharly]

So Gaia mated with Uranus and Pontus, or do Gaia believers only take part of the myth as convenient for them? Or, do we mean a different Goddess of the same name which can happen? One could see the whole oxygen using biosphere as an aberration. Nasty corrosive stuff oxygen, perhaps she might wipe it all off and go back to having a nice clean ball of rock.

I could worry enough about the sky falling on my head, the earth swallowing me up or the sea overwhelming me if I wanted to thanks without some quasi-religious nonsense.

I think you are confusing 'gaia' the religious deity with the gaia hypothesis.

This is the Gaia hypothesis:

"The Gaia hypothesis, also known as Gaia theory or Gaia principle, proposes that organisms interact with their inorganic surroundings on Earth to form a self-regulating, complex system that contributes to maintaining the conditions for life on the planet."

Nothing religious about that.

 

[boatman]

I am not confused and if the term Gaia is used simply to describe interactions that were patently obvious to those who created the science of ecology, for one thing, then I have no issue with the term. But, there are still those who imply or state something more as though we are dealing with a sentient being almost. Perhaps Lovelock has rejected this, possibly because it was damaging his scientific credentials, but the echoes remain.

 

[mrcharly]

I think lovelock could lay claim to being a founder of the science of ecology.

He writes of gaia as being an organism that self regulates. Not as a sentient being.

 

[boatman]

I think lovelock could lay claim to being a founder of the science of ecology.

He writes of gaia as being an organism that self regulates. Not as a sentient being.

According to Wiki the term was coined in 1866. In the SF novel The Earth Abides the hero is an ecologist and the book was written in 1949 so the term had to be in relatively common usage so, no, Lovelock didn't found it.

He writes so now, not the case when I heard him being interviewed in the seventies, OK semi-sentient Earth according to him then.

 

[Stringmaker]

I didn't see the programme.

Just as an aside, if Monbiot was speaking, did his new book get a mention?

Being a cynical old goat I'd like to see if the BBC was giving him a free plug or not.

 

[General Strike]

It would be a great idea if we weren't already over populated and unable to feed ourselves. I love the thought of substantial areas of wild land - but I love being able to eat more. Its one of those ideas that needs to be balanced against all the other pressures - food security, fuel use to import food, biodiversity, leisure, housing and all the rest. Good idea in isolation - but things are connected.

As you say, it is one of those ideas which needs to be considered in balance with other factors. However at the moment it isn't considered at all. Take for example the subsidies which farmers receive for 'keeping fallow land in a fit state for agriculture'. Basically this means that in order to get the cash, they have to ensure that the land (which they aren't using anyway!) is prevented from developing any significant habitat value (or for that matter, recovering agricultural value).

Now, in the UK specifically we don't have the significant issues with grazing patterns which arid grassland areas have (desertification when there's too many grazers, and worse desertification when too few), but over-grazing areas of land and then, even though you don't want to use it anymore, uprooting everything that doesn't look like grass, keeping hedgerows cut back (though not laying them properly, because it's too labour-intensive), draining it, etc, is a nonsensical way to manage the land; it keeps habitat value low and does little or nothing to advance the recovery of fertility.

Overpopulation doesn't really cover it either; at least it is an oversimplification. When natural gas supplies run out, we'll have a problem. But until then we can use the Haber process to create nitrates out of thin air, and produce all the food we need. We could do a lot more by focusing on avoiding waste, and by that I don't really mean the amount that private individuals throw away, but rather the waste currently created by our supply chains. The patterns of ownership of the food supply have a lot more to do with the famines that you see in the developing world than the carrying capacity of the planet - much as the Irish were dying of starvation even as boatloads of food sailed for England, we encounter famines (of staple foods) in the developing world, while cash crops are raised successfully for export. Saudi Arabia, for example, is busy buying up tracts of the best farmland in Ethiopia. I can't see that panning out well for Ethiopians.

Incidentally, I think that the patterns of ownership probably have a lot more to do with the degradation of farmland generally - nomadic people and migratory animals moved on and this permitted land to recover. Once you start building fences, you create the conditions for the degradation of land.

 

[Macaroon]

There's a lot of sense in your post *47, General Strike...............

 

[Stringmaker]

I don't think it is only the Saudis buying up African farmland; various European countries have been doing it too:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/global-development/2012/apr/27/international-land-deals-database-africa

It has got to the point where you simply buy the land of a poorer country when you have ruined/used/built on/overpopulated your own.

 

[General Strike]

I don't think it is only the Saudis buying up African farmland; various European countries have been doing it too:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/global-development/2012/apr/27/international-land-deals-database-africa

It has got to the point where you simply buy the land of a poorer country when you have ruined/used/built on/overpopulated your own.

That's a fair one; I remembered the Saudi/Ethiopian example specifically which I why I mentioned it. I suppose that at least they are buying the land this time around rather than the approach taken throughout much of human history....

 

[toilet digger]

As you say, it is one of those ideas which needs to be considered in balance with other factors. However at the moment it isn't considered at all. Take for example the subsidies which farmers receive for 'keeping fallow land in a fit state for agriculture'. Basically this means that in order to get the cash, they have to ensure that the land (which they aren't using anyway!) is prevented from developing any significant habitat value (or for that matter, recovering agricultural value).

Now, in the UK specifically we don't have the significant issues with grazing patterns which arid grassland areas have (desertification when there's too many grazers, and worse desertification when too few), but over-grazing areas of land and then, even though you don't want to use it anymore, uprooting everything that doesn't look like grass, keeping hedgerows cut back (though not laying them properly, because it's too labour-intensive), draining it, etc, is a nonsensical way to manage the land; it keeps habitat value low and does little or nothing to advance the recovery of fertility.

Overpopulation doesn't really cover it either; at least it is an oversimplification. When natural gas supplies run out, we'll have a problem. But until then we can use the Haber process to create nitrates out of thin air, and produce all the food we need. We could do a lot more by focusing on avoiding waste, and by that I don't really mean the amount that private individuals throw away, but rather the waste currently created by our supply chains. The patterns of ownership of the food supply have a lot more to do with the famines that you see in the developing world than the carrying capacity of the planet - much as the Irish were dying of starvation even as boatloads of food sailed for England, we encounter famines (of staple foods) in the developing world, while cash crops are raised successfully for export. Saudi Arabia, for example, is busy buying up tracts of the best farmland in Ethiopia. I can't see that panning out well for Ethiopians.

Incidentally, I think that the patterns of ownership probably have a lot more to do with the degradation of farmland generally - nomadic people and migratory animals moved on and this permitted land to recover. Once you start building fences, you create the conditions for the degradation of land.

spot on. been reading a lot of chapman and atherdon lately and I think rewilding is a very viable prospect if done thoughtfully.