Darwin on Global Warming

Darwin wrote, “if too many of these parasites grow on the same tree, it perishes and dies.” In context, he was writing about mistletoe growing on apple trees. It was part of his explanation of the struggle for existence in The Origin of Species, Chapter 3.

In the next paragraph he wrote, “Every being … must suffer destruction during some period of its life…, otherwise, on the principle of geometric increase, its numbers would quickly become so inordinately great that no country could support the product.” A few pages later he wrote about what checks the increase.

One thing that checks increase is competition for food among the member of a species and with other species. More significant than that, however, is that we are prey to other species seeking food. Darwin wrote, “very frequently it is not the obtaining food, but serving as prey to other animals” that limits the population of a species. As we struggle for food with members of our own species and with members of others, we are prey to creatures larger than us, and smaller.

Among the most powerful checks on increase is climate, which acts indirectly on population by “favouring other species.” When climate warms, our food supply will shrink. As competition for food among us builds, other species will prosper. In the paragraph after he wrote about climate, Darwin wrote about epidemics that occur “when a species, owing to highly favourable circumstances, increases inordinately in a small tract.” Imagine this Darwinian future: As we struggle with each other for food on the small tract that is earth, small creatures will devour us.

We are like mistletoe overloading a tree. We hope the tree will survive if we switch to fluorescent bulbs and build enough solar panels and windmills. A “sustainable future,” we call it.

It is a ridiculous hope, of course, if Darwin is right. I think he is.

Even if human caused increases in carbon do not adversely change the climate, we are overloading the tree. Our food needs are too great. Too many of us are attached to the same tree, crowding a small green tract, and we continue to increase.

View Near Warren Mountain

For a few days last week clouds filled the desert sky. It does not happen often. I make photographs when it happens. Sun is the norm.

Would you cover this landscape with solar collectors to generate electricity?

Many people would. Green people.

The wind is often strong here. It breaks the branches of mighty Joshua trees.

Would you cover this land with windmills to generate electricity?

Many people would. Green people.

Beware of the greens. Like the browns and grays who came before, to them all the earth is mere resource, and they mistakenly believe life is a resource management problem.

Love the wild. As long as it lives.

Darwin on Climate Change

In Origin of the Species, Chapter 3, Darwin wrote: “A struggle for existence inevitably follows from the high rate at which all organic beings tend to increase.” The expression, “struggle for existence,” means death. He explains that if a specie did not suffer high rates of death, soon the planet would be overwhelmed with that specie.

Darwin wrote, “The causes that check the natural tendency of each species to increase in number are most obscure.” Among the “obscure causes” he identified is climate change. He wrote, “Climate plays an important part in determining the average numbers of a species, and periodical seasons of extreme cold or drought, I believe to be the most effective of all checks.” The expression, “check,” means killer.

Climate change will check the number of many species, including humanity. Consider the future, in Darwin’s words: “… in so far as climate chiefly acts in reducing food, it brings on the most severe struggle between the individuals, whether of the same or of distinct species, which subsist on the same kind of food. Even when climate, for instance extreme cold, acts directly, it will be the least vigorous, or those which have got least food through the advancing winter, which will suffer most.”

High rates of death are part of natural selection, but what might happen if humanity elects to intervene through human selection? If we could stop or slow the climate change or if we could protect the “least vigorous” from destruction, would the result be better? Is it really possible for humanity to avoid the pattern of death upon which natural selection depends? Is it not inevitable that humanity will be checked by the “obscure causes?”

The modern mind does not believe in obscure causes.