Refer to the Dr. Seuss classic, The Lorax.
Bruce.
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Bruce J. Senn Phone: (518) 388-6664
Senior System Manager FAX: (518) 388-6458
Union College E-mail: [log in to unmask]
Schenectady, NY 12308 WWW: http://www1.union.edu/~sennb
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-----Original Message-----
From: HP-3000 Systems Discussion [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On
Behalf Of Roy Brown
Sent: Monday, September 19, 2005 12:58 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: OT: No need to worry about global warming anymore
In message <[log in to unmask]>, Wirt Atmar
<[log in to unmask]> writes
<snip>
>I've heard Diamond give this talk a couple of times before -- and the
>transcript is definitely worth reading if you have the time -- but the
>following part was new to me, and I liked it enough to repeat it here.
>
>The subject of the snippet is Easter Island. Easter Island was once a
densely
>forested island with sufficient productivity that it could support a
fairly
>large human population -- that is until the last tree was cut down by
the
>Easter Islanders. Soon after that, the human population died.
>
>The only question is: where do Shawn's comments fit in the following
list?
>
>========================================
> My students at the University of California asked me a question whose
>significance I hadn't appreciated yet. Why on earth did these [Easter
>Island] people do such dumb things, chop down trees, too many trees.
>Why didn't they realise that they were getting into trouble? What do
>you think the Easter Islander who chopped down the last tree said as he
>doing it? And my students suggested various answers. One answer was,
>maybe that islander said: 'Never fear, technology will solve our
>problems by finding a substitute for wood'. Or maybe he said: 'Keep
>big government of the federal chiefs off my back, this is my private
>property and I can do what I want with it'. Or perhaps he said:
>'Your fears are exaggerated; your ecological models are untested; we
>need more research; a ban on logging would be premature'. Or the week
>before last - remember, I'm from the United States where we have a
>large evangelical portion of our population. So the week before last
>someone suggested to me maybe the person who chopped down the last tree
>said: 'Never fear, have faith, God will provide for us'.
>========================================
To me, it seems crystal clear what happened to the last tree. (And
without the need for the gratuitous denigration of persons of faith that
you reproduce above).
The guy who cut it down had a hole in his house he needed to patch, or
his old dugout was leaking, and he needed to build a new one. Or he had
Kon-Tiki to put together, and he was still a few poles short. Whatever.
He may have felt slightly guilty or regretful cutting down the last
tree. Or, more likely, he thought, shoot, I need wood, and this is the
last of it - if I don't take it, there won't be any more. Maybe he
thought that even if he didn't take it, his neighbour would anyway, so
what's the point?
(And he was right - his neighbour on the other side had left the tree
only that morning, while taking the last three but one, and hesitating
to take the very last tree as well. But to no avail. And he drew the
line at *defending* the last tree, especially as he had manifestly just
had more than his share.)
A variant on the Prisoner's dilemma.
Not that we have learned since, of course. How many animals have been
hunted to extinction, and how many fish have been fished right out,
recently? And what slopes are at constant danger of avalanches, in areas
where the trees (now all gone) one acted as more than effective
snowbreaks?
--
Roy Brown 'Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be
Kelmscott Ltd useful, or believe to be beautiful' William Morris
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