[Editor's
Note: The contents of this article have been used produce a column in
Kauai's Garden Island News that is titled "Island Breath" scheduled to
appear every other Sunday in the newspaper. The final published version
may vary from this text as TGI retains the right to correct and edit the material. Moreover, the copyright to the published version is held by TGI owner Kauai
Publishing. Some material in TGI columns may have appeared on www.islandbreath.org already]
Island Breath: Life in a Petri Dish
by Juan Wilson on 8 April 2007 REV 080905 2.0
special to the Garden Island News © 2007 by Kauai Publishing
Most of us are familiar with experiments involving petri dishes and the
growth of microbes, often bacteria, in them. For over a century
scientists have used circular glass petri dishes as growing
environments for a variety of biological experiments. Usually many
dishes are used to test a microbe's success to variations of
environmental conditions. The finite and isolated petri dish allows
quantitative comparisons between the environment differences of each
dish.
One general truth about microbes in a petri dish is that they will grow
in number as long as the conditions are favorable. Those conditions
include light, temperature, oxygen and the extent of the petri dish
itself.
Microbes will continue to multiply even if they are running out of
space. They will multiply even if they are poisoning their environment
with waste products. They will grow until their population crashes
against the limits of their dish. Then they die.
Humans now face a similar situation. Our numbers and activity have
turned the world into an experiment on human behavior. The question is,
are we smarter than microbes?
During our history as "civilized" human beings we have depended on the
growth of population and the growing use of natural resources for our
success. For much of our history there was always another continent of
resources to move to and utilize.
As it stands "growth" measured by the Gross National Product (GNP) is
really the measure of the consumption of nonrenewable resources.
Sustaining such growth even "smartly" requires a further spread of our
unsustainable behavior in areas still un-destroyed by human activity.
In fact, it is only a reduction of current levels of consumption that
could attain sustainability.
Observations indicate that current human population and the limits of
our planet's resources are not in balance. To save ourselves, we have
to change our need for growth as the measure of our success. This means
changing our lives, and, to most of us, that means discomfort. We seem
a patsy for any proposition that keeps us comfy... like the idea of
"Smart Growth". "Smart Growth" argues that limited growth is
sustainable. It is used as a case to extend the current way we do
business.
But "Smart Growth" is a red herring, a smarmy promise that makes us
feel politically correct on our current road to oblivion. "Smart
Growth" advocates argue that if we keep screwing up, but more slowly,
things will be just fine. But, at best, if the promise "Smart Growth"
were fulfilled, we would only delay the exhaustion of resources for
another generation.
To sustain humanity beyond our children and grandchildren, we must
abandon our measure of success based on population and economic growth.
EQUILIBRIUM – AN ALTERNATIVE TO GROWTH
Because we are now surpassing the limits of Earth's natural systems, we
are very much in the same boat as the bacteria in a petri dish. Once
the overcrowded organisms deplete the nutrients in the dish, they face
a catastrophic crash of population, even extinction. To avoid that fate
we must reach a balanced equilibrium between human needs and what
remains of the rest of the world.
Obviously, it would be greatly in our interest to formulate an economy
that does not require growth of our population and increased
consumption of finite nonrenewable resources.
In a recent conversation with my son John, something he said clicked in
ny head. During our talk he said that the measure of growth needs to
merely be adjusted. The "Old Growth" model was the measure of the
consumption of natural resources in their conversion to manufactured
products. The "New Growth" model would be the measure of the increase
in the amount and variety of living things by our activities.
This was not just his idea, but somehow our discussion clarified the
issue to me. It reminded me of an experiment that Charles Darwin
conducted on the formation of topsoil. In the early 19th century it was
not known how organic topsoil was formed. Many thought it was the work
of God at the time of the Earth's creation.
Darwin had suspicions of another means of formation – earthworm poop.
Others argued that earthworms were not capable of the creation of so
much organic material in the soil. In order to settle that issue Darwin
cordoned off a measured section of an English meadow, dug up all the
topsoil and then counted every worm in it.
What he demonstrated was that the lowly worm was present in sufficient
numbers to create and maintain all the topsoil in the meadow. Darwin
showed that with some hard and careful work one can measure aspects of
life and determine their value and source.
What struck me was the possibility that with the right effort, wealth
could be measured by the activities which enrich life, rather than
devour it. Then the compensation for work could be reevaluated with the
quality and quantity of all life in mind. This would be a new economic
model.
MODELS OF KAUAI
As mentioned in our first article, the theme for this column is the
idea of "Ho'okahi Kauai"; the isolation, solitude and oneness of Kauai.
We here on Kauai are living on a petri dish of sorts. It small and
isolated enough to allow for a useful input-output model of life on our
rock. Such a model would be a useful step to sustaining life here.
There was a time 35 years ago, when I and another architectural
student, Diane Lewis, made a proposal to Juliet Rice Wichman to
literally do just that. At that time Juliet was just finishing her work
on the Natural History Museum in Lihue. We had worked for her making
some models and tried to convince her of the virtue of building a large
working model of the island to monitor its conditions and be used as a
planning tool. It would have filled a room of the museum.
We described to her that back in 1970 we had seen an amazing model of
the entire city of New York that was housed in one of the 1964 World's
Fair exhibit halls. The model was vast and included every building in
the city. Scaled architectural models of major building projects could
be placed on the model to evaluate the impact on the city skyline. When
I saw the model for the first time, the yet to be built World Trade
Center towers were on the model.
In any event, Juliet Rice Wichman didn't buy into our proposal for a
model of Kauai. She was probably right, too. It might have made a nice
display in the museum and provide educational opportunities, but it was
not very practical for the deep and flexible analysis of planning on
our island.
A GOD'S EYE VIEW
Today computers can make a better model for managing resources. The
real work horses in this area of computing are Geographical Information
Systems. GIS allows for the overlay and relation all sorts of
information gathered about our island.
There is much already available: The state provides files of every
road, every stream, every watershed, every dam, archeological site and
more. This can be overlaid with property boundaries, zoning maps, land
use maps, aerial photography, census data, infrared maps (indicating
plant health and type), etc. With experience and skill, measurements
can be made of such things as the percentage of unhealthy papaya trees
within 500 feet of our major highway compared to papaya trees farther
away.
GIS is the
tool of choice for timber managers, city planners, petroleum
geologists, environmentalists and the military. GIS can be a God's Eye
View of our island and the world at large.
This tool may be the very thing we need to help model an economy based
on something other than growth. A "steady state" economy that could
only be achieved with careful measurement of the results of our
activity. Delicate adjustments would then be possible to keep things in
balance.
There are vital issues of which we need a better grasp. How many acres
of agland will Kauai need in the future to feed its own population and
help support the dense population of Oahu? Can we afford to convert
more agland to suburban residential use? GIS can help quantify and
answer such questions.
If you have high speed internet service, I highly recommend downloading
the program Google Earth to get a sense of the GIS overview.
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