An ad campaign for AT&T depicts a future in which people can send a fax from the beach, attend college by means of video phone, and store their medical histories on a credit-card-type device. Accompanying this utopian vision is the catch phrase “You will,” implying that all this will soon be a part of our daily lives. This guarantee is meant to be comforting, but there is something sinister about it. Don’t we have any choice in the matter?

David Ehrenfeld thinks we might. He has a very different view of the ideal future, based on his belief that blind faith in technological know-how is dangerous folly. In his most recent book, Beginning Again: People and Nature in the New Millennium (Oxford University Press), Ehrenfeld suggests that if we recognize the limits of technology and natural resources, we may yet be able to build a sustainable life for ourselves. The key is to stop trying to conquer nature and learn instead to imitate it. But first we must put away the AT&T-style belief that there are unlimited possibilities, and that we will always find a solution — if not today, then tomorrow.

Ehrenfeld is a professor of biology at Rutgers University and founding editor of the journal Conservation Biology. He is also a regular columnist for Orion magazine, and the author of several books, including The Arrogance of Humanism (Oxford University Press). Derrick Jensen’s interview with Ehrenfeld is excerpted from Listening to the Land: Conversations about Nature, Culture, and Eros. © 1995 Derrick Jensen. The interview appears here by permission of Sierra Club Books, (800) 935-1056.

In the introduction to his latest book, Ehrenfeld calls upon society to “jettison our false assumptions of power and control.” His conversation with Jensen begins on the same note.

— Andrew Snee

 

Ehrenfeld: We have transferred to science and technology the kinds of mystical attributes people used to assign to supernatural forces such as God or the gods. And no one is anxious to give up belief in a deity, even if it happens to be a false god.

Our new false god is the idea that we can order the future. It’s a secular messianic view of a world in which there will be no death, no sickness, no stupidity — a world we will have totally ordered by the force of our own intellects and technology.

Part of the problem is that this view keeps getting reinforced by minor technological miracles. We can do amazing things. I probably would be dead if it weren’t for antibiotics; maybe you would be, too. We have CAT scans. We have magnetic-resonance imaging, which with very little invasive energy lets us see what’s going on inside the body. We have computers that can perform inane operations at enormous speed, and not-so-inane tasks very quickly. We have things that buzz and whir and flash when we press buttons. So the myth keeps getting reinforced.

But the assumption is then made — an assumption lacking the slightest shred of evidence in its favor — that, because we can perform these minor miracles, we can perform major miracles. We assume that we can order our own destiny, make sense of our entire world, and control nature, all of which we manifestly have not done and cannot do.

The computer is the best example. We’ve heard so much about the information revolution, artificial intelligence, the future of massive supercomputers, and so forth that we forget that computers can only do the things we give them to do, very fast. There’s not the slightest evidence that we can make the leap from doing things fast to really understanding what’s going to happen next on the basis of information we supply now. Nor do we know how to obtain desired results in manipulating our environment, which includes nature and ourselves.

Another area of strong belief is genetic engineering and molecular biology. We can move genes from one organism to another, often between organisms that are grossly dissimilar, simply because the genetic code is read in a similar way by the cellular mechanisms of different kinds of creatures. But, because we can move genes around, does that mean we know how they will act in an alien genetic environment? Can we make superorganisms? Do we have the faintest clue as to how a set of genes might help regulate such behaviors as altruism or aggressiveness? Or intelligence, in any of its many definitions? The answer is no. And is there any indication that any of this will be discovered? No, there isn’t.

I used to have a picture of the superpig that was produced at Beltsville. Scientists put genes for growth hormones from cows into it, I believe. In the picture, the pig was propped against a fence. It was winter. You could see what looked like wire, and an arch over a gate, all very bleak. There was a man — a scientist, presumably — in an overcoat, standing next to this pitiful-looking creature that had swollen joints and couldn’t walk. The pig was larger than it should have been, which was an accomplishment of a sort. But the picture was so much like a scene out of hell that I penciled onto it Arbeit Macht Frei, which were the words written over the gate at Auschwitz: “Work will make you free.”

Jensen: You’re suggesting limits to knowledge. A friend of mine who went to an artificial-intelligence conference said its theme was that we don’t quite know how the brain works yet.

Ehrenfeld: They always say yet. But the assumption that, given the present evidence of neurological function, organization, and capability, we will be able to understand the brain in its totality has absolutely no support. A more scientifically plausible view, I think, is that we will probably never be able to understand the brain entirely.

Even though scientific knowledge has increased vastly in the past, all the evidence we have indicates that we will never understand the human mind, we will never understand ecosystems, we will never totally understand the physiological functioning of any reasonably complex organism, we will never be able to totally manage environments, and certainly we will never be able to predict the future.

There are some things we can’t fool with, and if they have been fooled with we have to give up the idea we can fix them. There are some scars even plastic surgeons can’t fix.

Jensen: What’s the harm in trying?

Ehrenfeld: The harm is that we waste time when we could be learning to cope with the horrendous problems that now face humanity; we dehumanize ourselves, because any kind of life based on a lie ultimately dehumanizes; we do physical damage to the world around us; it costs a great deal of money we no longer have; and it’s nasty. It makes an unpleasant, ugly environment.

We’re not handling our affairs nearly as well as we could be if we used the sort of judgment one learns by being a mature and responsible human being with fidelity to a place and to a group of people. But the powerful institutions drive away exactly these people, the ones who are the most creative, the most concerned, the most qualified to help us out of the many crises we’re in.

Jensen: What’s wrong with minor miracles like antibiotics? Or, as you mention in The Arrogance of Humanism, the possibility of fusion power?

Ehrenfeld: What we really have to look at is the bottom line, and we’ve stopped looking at it. The bottom line with fusion is: what will happen if we have available to us a virtually inexhaustible source of energy?

We have to ask, How have we used energy in the past? The answer is, Irresponsibly. Do we really want more neon signs? More battery-powered snowmobiles destroying the environment of the north?

Having fusion power would be like having an unlimited supply of candy; very few people have the willpower to resist such things. Candy, too, is a source of energy. Since we don’t have any way physiologically to get rid of excess energy we take in, we store it as fat, which isn’t good for us. The same is true with energy on a societal scale: if we have too much, we’re going to get societally fat — and sick.

Also, energy destroys privacy. Do we really want to be able to go see anyone anytime we feel like it, without any thought as to the cost of the fuel? The cost of fuel, although an annoyance, is a very useful thing.

There used to be a limit to how much you could run around seeing people and fragmenting your life. The limit was the distance you could walk conveniently. If you want to see how this functions, read Jane Austen’s best book, Emma. In it she describes the functioning of what I would consider a healthy community, and it isn’t until you finish the book that you realize that, except for one fairly brief scene, all the action takes place within walking distance of the central character’s house. It’s striking when you see what kind of life this creates.

There are very few mechanisms keeping us responsible. But ultimately there are limits that prevent us from doing anything we feel like doing, and prevent us from damaging ourselves. We can see these easily in our personal lives. For instance, the limits for children are the parents. Anyone who’s had a one- or two-year-old knows that they have no sense about dealing with the world. Doing away with limits on human society is like doing away with parents for a child.

Jensen: Limits — the very word is blasphemy. We always hear that our economy has to grow, our population will grow.

Ehrenfeld: People are dimly beginning to perceive — although it probably won’t be in time for most of us — that growth is horrendous. But whether people perceive it or not, growth can’t go on forever.

A. A. Bartlett wrote a paper called “Forgotten Fundamentals of the Energy Crisis,” which he published in the American Journal of Physics ten or fifteen years ago, and in which he showed mathematically that with typical exponential growth we just can’t keep growing for very long. He assumed, for example, that the entire volume of the earth was petroleum and that 100 percent of it was accessible. How long would it last? As I remember, four or five hundred years, at a 7 or 8 percent annual increase in the rate of use. When a few billion barrels of oil are discovered somewhere in the Arctic or offshore, it sounds wonderful, but we’re only talking about a supply for a few weeks or months, maybe a year.

There are limits. Failure to recognize them is the main proof that we are not capable of controlling our own destiny.

The bottom line with fusion is: what will happen if we have available to us a virtually inexhaustible source of energy? . . . Do we really want more neon signs? More battery-powered snowmobiles destroying the environment of the north?

Jensen: Are you saying it is impossible for us to cope with a complex system?

Ehrenfeld: No, there are many ways we can do that. One is to stand back and protect it and let it alone. But you have to be willing to accept certain things. You have to be willing to accept, for example, that every three or four hundred years you’re going to get a monstrous fire in Yellowstone. You have to stop worrying about that. It isn’t bad; it’s just the way that system functions. It grows back if you leave it alone. You have to be willing to accept the fact that changes in atmospheric-gas composition and in climate — global warming, for example — may make things happen you wish wouldn’t.

But you can’t always leave complex systems alone. George Marsh, in his book Man and Nature, pointed out that when we have really altered the balance of nature by removing weights on one side of the scale, we have to, if we want to restore the balance, interfere on the other side. At the same time, we have to understand the limits of what we can and can’t fix, and this should determine our actions.

For example, we can’t replace old-growth forests. We suspect that old-growth forest is ecologically necessary for soil maintenance, species maintenance, and so on. And we know without any studies that it’s necessary aesthetically; it’s necessary to attract tourists, because nothing is duller than wandering around in an eighty-year-old planted forest. Anyone who has seen the slash-pine plantations of Florida and Georgia knows you wouldn’t go there as a tourist. So we know we need old-growth forest for various reasons, and we suspect we need it for others. We also know we can’t make it.

There are some things we can’t fool with, and if they have been fooled with we have to give up the idea we can fix them. There are some scars even plastic surgeons can’t fix.

Jensen: In the Northwest we hear from timber companies, “We may have made mistakes in the past, but we’ve learned our lesson. We’ll do better next time.” We hear the same thing with every oil spill and every leakage of toxic waste.

Ehrenfeld: There is no next time for devastated watersheds and oiled beaches.

In addition, you can’t learn something that is unlearnable. We finish with one massive threat to the earth only to find ourselves confronted with the next one, which often is worse. We got rid of the idea of running the north-flowing rivers in Siberia south for the sake of irrigation, but now we hear Hydro-Quebec is going to destroy the entire environment around Hudson Bay with virtually no thought to either environmental concerns or preserving the way of life of the Cree Indians. I don’t see any signs of learning.

I have seen individuals who have learned, even some who’ve had quasi-religious conversions. But many people don’t learn, and there are always new people coming along, so that the lessons have to be learned all over again.

The idea that “now we know how to do it better” is wrong. When it comes to timber management, we don’t really know what to do in most cases. We know in Oregon, where we’ve clear-cut, that after three plantings the trees aren’t growing back. We do have some insight — maybe we should include mycorrhizal fungi when we plant a new little tree — but there are always lessons unlearned, and there are always lessons learned incorrectly, even with the best of intentions. I’m not saying we aren’t trying, or that we shouldn’t try to do things in an intelligent way, or that we should give up on education. But we have to drop the assumption that, even though we’ve never yet been able to run the show completely, we’ll be able to learn enough to do it tomorrow.

Jensen: Do you feel hope?

Ehrenfeld: I believe that if God is sustaining the world, which I think is the case, it is unlikely that all life will come to an end through our actions.

Also — though you’d never guess it from reading The Arrogance of Humanism or even Beginning Again — I am an optimist. Many of the changes in the future will be absolutely unexpected, and maybe not everyone will like what comes, but I think civilization can last.

Because we don’t understand the way the world works, we also don’t understand all of the sources and origins of goodness. Unexpectedly, good things happen. I think the Clarence Thomas hearings were an example of something very exciting happening. Thanks to Anita Hill, the whole country suddenly woke up to the reality of sexual harassment. The majority are resisting it, but it’s out there in front of everyone.

Good things happen in the environment, too. Twenty-five years ago, the only person talking about the importance of water was Ian McHarg of Pennsylvania. Now everyone’s talking about it. Wetlands are protected by legislation. In twenty years we’re going to see a much greater understanding of the importance of ecological systems, an understanding that doesn’t depend just on charismatic megavertebrates such as the endangered rhinoceros or tiger, or on beautiful endangered creatures like gazelles or antelopes, but that encompasses the whole system. Soon, the public is going to understand the importance of conserving certain kinds of worms.

Jensen: You’ve said that it may take an unpredictable event to help humanity give up the belief that we can rationally, scientifically create order in the world. An example you often use is from J. R. R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy.

Ehrenfeld: Tolkien’s trilogy is a beautiful and brilliant parable about the relationship between God and people. The wise wizard Gandalf warns Frodo, the book’s hero, not to interfere too much with initial arrangements that are wisely made, and not to depart from his fundamental ethical principles because you don’t know what the end is going to be.

Thus, out of compassion, Frodo allows the vile Gollum to follow him on the journey to destroy the evil Ring of Power. When — at the final moment — Frodo finds himself unable to cast the ring into the Crack of Doom, Gollum bites the ring from Frodo’s hand, falls into the abyss, and is destroyed along with the ring.

Gandalf didn’t foresee this specific ending, but he did know that it would be wrong to behave unjustly and unethically toward Gollum. He also knew that the proper course of behavior is more likely to result in good, even if this good comes out of something that is evil. That’s a very powerful lesson, and one we should all keep in mind.