I thought I might add another thought relating to this apparent controvercy
concerning whether the environment (or ecosystems) change. JF has suggested
that either ecosystems do not actually change - or that the change is within
some pattern that relates to a "climax". I think there are shades of the
"balance of nature" myth in his thinking, but that is beside the point.
IF the environment does not change in reality - then an environmental ethic
that condemns change seems to have soem support. The implications for
humans as a species are major. We breath, we eat, we excrete. Human
ethical boundaries are too constrained if "no change" occurs in any sense.
Every act we do is wrong because we cause an "unnatural" change.
On the other hand, if we take John's view that all this flux and dynamism
over geological scales is not *actually* change in some conceptual way
(change only being significant if a new higher order phyla emerges - so
species extinctions are not *significant*, nor the wiping out of one
ecosystem because we judge it has "moved" somewhere, etc.), then how are we
to judge the apparently not *actual* change when humans convert forest to
pasture on the same scale that climate did it elsewhere? It seems to me
that under this view, there are no meaningful boundaries to our actions -
because even an asteriod hit which doesn't cause a major taxonomic change
comes under the Foster definition of "no change".
Thankfully the reality is there is change, and therefore a context for an
environmental ethic that neither a belief in either 1. no change or 2. no
substantive change unless a major evolutionary event, can provide.
Chris P
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