I have to agree with Colin.  Wendell Berry said it best in reference to 'the
agricultural crisis' - as "a crisis of culture".

One of those cultural problems at the root cause of many of our problems I
think relates to what Irving Berlin classified as Hedgehogs and Foxes.  The
Hedgehogs focus on only one thing, and fail to see connection, system
effects, feedbacks, relationships, intangibles, soft quishy stuff like
values or contingent facts relating to particular cases rather than
universal rules.  They role up in a ball when challenged to think in
different ways.  In many ways they are the product of the mechanistic
ontology that dominates corporations, policy, science and much land
management.  Where more than one thing is important they expect trade-off
rather than synergy or win-wins, and are often closed to even that
possibility.  But great analysts, and pursuers of goals.

Foxes know many things, and apply context to their operations.  E.g. the
environment is not just about land management practice, but ethics of
consumption, urbanisation, global geo-politics, etc.  

Just to show this is not an irrelevant rant I think a lot of our
environmental problems are very closely related, with very many win-wins -
not just within the environmental domain, but also between economic, social
and environmental domains.  The challenge is to first find the nexus, and
then look to how we change our cultures to make the 'magic' happen.

One case in point in New Zealand.  We have a number of key issues relating
to 1. indigenous biodiversity (particularly in wider landscapes outside
'reserves', but even a problem within reserves due to poor landscape
ecology, and predation processes from introduced pests),  2. soil
conservation (highly erodable sandstone/mudstone hill country), 3.
degradation of water quality (particularly in last 10-15 years with
intensification and emergence of nitrogen fertilisers), 4. Carbon
sequestration and 5. cultural issues related to natural hazards (floods,
etc.) and social activities (rural recreation, food gathering, etc.).

In large part, many of these problems relate to habitat - particularly the
loss of woody vegetation, wetlands and rank, "untidy" areas of farmland
which is associated with intensification.  From the Epic of Gilgamesh to
Easter Island the story is similar - cut down your forests, create a more
homogeneous landscape, produce more, commoditise trade, accumulate absentee
power, and lose soil, biota, water quality, followed by social and economic
collapse.  Why intensification?  Cultural attitudes, and global geo-politics
perhaps, the lack of a consumption ethic, the search for the cheap
hamburger, the preference for Annie Prouxl's 'cheaper' (in a
non-internalised economic sense) factory "pork unit" factory to more
expensive (and less controllable) free range, etc., etc.  

Put back your habitat heterogeneity and you get better social, environmental
(soil, water, biota, air) and - I would argue - economic gains (in terms of
local people's share, and in internalised, green accounting terms,
especially where hill country allows for matching habitat to mesosite for
multiple-functional gains).  Most are blind to the win-win possibilities
within land use.  In NZ, the major conservation debate is between some
single-function production ethic, or single-function reserves.  No room for
people becoming native to a place - yet.  Place is run by hedgehogs, for
hedgehogs. 

Whatever the path to achieving an appropriate end, I'd argue we have to
think within a systems ontology (Leopold's point in 'Think like a
Mountain').  Levin & Lewontins' challenge in The Dialectical Biologist is a
propos.  They asked the questioned - what causes TB?  You can't just leave
the answer at the bacillus.  Not all who have the germ get the disease.  You
have to bring in the wider system where certain issues work together to
manifest the disease (like an "emergent" property of a disfunctional system)
- e.g. poor sanitation, stress, over-crowding, poor housing, lack of
education, economic policies that push people to the edge,  - AND -
values/ethics, power and politics.  

 Ciao

Chris P

-----Original Message-----
From: Discussion forum for environmental ethics.
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Colin Trier
Sent: Tuesday, 12 July 2005 4:36 a.m.
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: The 'most' important problem

Surely, understanding and successfully modifying the underlying values
within our society to the extent that they are leading us to pursue an
unsustainable economic model is a priority. Overturning the accepted wisdom
that environment is a subset of economics rather than economics being a
subset of the environment would be an achievement. Furthermore, extending an
understanding of the simple ecological truth that we have to collectively
modify our behaviour as a species so that we operate within the constraints
of our ecological life support system, without degrading its quality for
future generations is fundamental.

A colleague of mine has also raised the interesting question " Would it be
correct to say that what economic analysis does not - and can not - take
account of is irreversibility?"

Dr Colin Trier
Centre for Sustainable Futures Fellow (ESD CETL) Programme Manager for
Environmental Science University of Plymouth
Tel: 01752 233033