Los Angeles Against the Mountains

                The third chapter of McPhee’s “The Control of Nature” continues to play out similar themes as seen in the earlier two chapters. This time however, the conflict is not between something as dynamic and unpredictable as the great Mississippi or an erupting volcano, but something that is usually thought of as steadfast: mountains. McPhee quickly makes the point that the mountain ranges bordering the city of Los Angeles are anything but steadfast and sturdy, but are responsible for massive “debris flow” and other natural disasters. Not only that, but the mountains which one Spanish scientist exclaimed would soon completely slide away, are actually growing taller despite the constant loss of mass to debris flows.

                More than the divergence of the Mississippi, and even more than the volcano erupting at Heimaey, the debris flows caused by the mountains are responsible for considerable loss in human life. Both claimed/have claimed minimal lives. The story that opens this chapter however shows a family of four nearly drowning in their own home. McPhee drives home that, when matched to the rather slow deviation of the Mississippi, and the relatively slow and steady advancement of the lava flows in Iceland, the debris flows happen instantaneously. The debris flow carries with it everything from dirt to boulders, even automobiles and nearly everything that is unfortunate enough to be caught in the path of the flow. The end result, of course, is a loss in life, and also an extreme loss of money paying for repairs.

                Despite the scale of the debris flows, their size, speed, and frequency, compared to the conflicts in other chapters, McPhee points out a surprising amount of similarities between the other two chapters. A prominent theme, especially in the beginning, is people’s insistence to live in places where it may not be in their best interests to do so, and often forget or remain ignorant to the dangers that they may face. McPhee tells the story of Wade Wells from the United States Forest Service, who was curious how many people living at the site of a debris flow remembered the last major one, which had occurred less than a decade prior and 20 miles away. With the exception of two people, no one did. Debris flows in the hills of Los Angeles are a serious issue, and yet the people living in a place that had just been hit by one had no knowledge of a similar event happening only nine years prior.

                Although the “war with nature” rhetoric is less present, it is still there. The government built reservoirs waiting to fill up with boulders and other debris, or the privately built barricades constructed by residents who are just a little bit more worried about debris flows than their neighbors can be compared to an army “digging in” when going under siege. People like living there, and it seems that no amount of flooding or fires is going to make people think otherwise. This sentiment is put more straightforwardly by one of Aimee Miller’s neighbors: “there isn’t a prettier, more secluded canyon in Southern California, when it isn’t on fire or being washed away. Each time we have a disaster, only one or two families move out…people live here, come hell or high water.”.

                One more thing that is worth mentioning is the uniquely stark divide between technosphere and biosphere shown in this chapter. We’ve talked often in class about the two are becoming harder and harder to distinguish from eachother. McPhee shows us that this is not always the case. Moving up into the canyons and through the “marine layer” you very suddenly find that you are no longer in town. Hang gliders fly off the cliffs and land somewhere in town. A hiker suffering from hypothermia walks off the trails and into a phone booth to call for help. The overly steep hills of the mountains give way to the smog producing city almost immediately, and without warning.

                “Los Angeles Against the Mountains” continues McPhee’s themes of humans being rather stubborn when it comes to nature. Whether it be controlling rivers, volcanic eruptions, or debris flows, people seem to be very bent on exerting that control. There are casualties on our side, but it seems to not make a difference. However, there continues to be that sort of inevitability. Rivers will continue to change course, volcanoes will continue to erupt, and the mountains bordering Los Angeles will continue hurling boulders and other debris at the upper class neighborhoods just below them. But that doesn’t seem to stop us. 

Debris flows

Some more video related to The Control of Nature, this time of debris flows:

This video does not show any flows, but gives you a look at several of the places mentioned in the final chapter, including the Genofiles' home, Verdugo Hills Cemetery, and Sierra Madre Dam. It also gives you a sense of the scale of the San Gabriel Mountains, their proximity to metropolitan Los Angeles, and the size of some of the debris that regularly flows out of them.

Heimaey, 1973

Here's some amazing footage of the 1973 eruption in Heimaey, Iceland, that should help to visualize what McPhee describes in The Control of Nature.

Cooling the Lava

            Here, Mcphee presents another narrative that struggles with many of the same conflicts as those we saw in the Atchafalaya reading. The polemical rhetoric is just as prevalent if not more so. Many of the scientists and workers compare trying to control the lava to going into a battlefield. This kind of language influences the way we think of nature and its actions, as though as nature has a personal vendetta against us and we therefore have to fight it. On Monday we discussed how in some ways this rhetoric is justified because horrific events can happen to us because of nature. I think that this connects more broadly to the fact that we highly anthropomorphize nature, and by doing so impose our ideas of morality on it. The polemical rhetoric forms because of this. For example when Dora is talking about having to leave Heimaey, she blames the volcano and says, “I couldn’t be angry at anyone else could I? (117 Mcphee). “ This kind of language leads to us trying go to “war” with volcanoes or rivers. Does this mean that nature cannot be defined without us projecting ourselves onto it?

            When finding the solution to the lava flow, Thorbjorn resorted to imitating natural processes. I found this to be a bit ironic. Even though he wants to simulate a nature, he is still performing a quite unnatural act by doing so. Once the act is performed, the people must take responsibility for the results of it as well, like when the lava started going towards the town.

            Mcphee also highlights the economy again as being highly infused into environmental issues. When they were able to stop the lava flow from reaching the harbor they then caused the lava flow to redirect towards the town. The harbor was significantly important, not only to Heimaey but to Iceland. It was “producing a twelfth of Iceland’s income”(97 Mcphee). For this reason, the most important and immediate issue was to stop the lava from reaching the harbor and hurting the economy. Magnus even said “There is no use of any town if we don’t have a harbor (129 Mcphee).” It becomes controversial whether protecting the harbor justifies almost destroying the town, people’s homes, and putting humans in harms way. It quickly escalated to a conflict between the economy and humanity.

            A sense of home also drastically affected this event and story. Mcphee presents many instances of disasters in order to show the resilience of the people of Heimaey. The people are so use to disasters and a harsh environment that the threats of more or going through more does not faze them.  I find it strange that they would not just leave since it is such a hard place to live but it is their home and they have become attached to it. Even to the point of cleaning their houses before they know that they will be destroyed by the lava.

            Another tension that occurs is between religion and the environment or nature. Mcphee mentions that the people of Heimaey are very suspicious because of all the disasters that have happened. After a son of a bishop arrived and became their minister, an eruption took place (130 Mcphee). Then in 1973 another man was to become clergy and a week before he came an eruption occurred (130 Mcphee). This made it hard for the people to embrace Christianity because of nature. The environment and religion or faith has always had a great tension. Religion often influences the way people see nature but in this case nature influences the way people view religion.

Atchafalaya Response

“Man against nature. That’s what life’s all about.”

I remember first really thinking about conflict discussing “The Interlopers” in my 7^th grade English class. We were taught then that narratives would have conflict, and that conflict should be broken down into one of the following: man vs. man, man vs. self, or man vs. nature. Characters or events pit against another force to resolve an occurrence, explaining some sort of theme or moral to the story. Conflict typically creates more conflict, and if we look at  John McPhee’s narrative as we often cyclically look at history, or even nature, knowing what we know about damage and land in Louisiana today and post-Katrina, can we begin to believe that man over nature in any case could win?

Although the main conflict in the Atchafalaya chapter if not all of The Control of Nature is man vs. nature, the possible man vs. man theme is under-pronounced. If the environment is the world around humans, how much does human interaction pertain to the idea of control? It is fascinating to me that although there are so many stakeholders: fisherman, crawdad catchers, property owners, farmers, residents, engineers, and others, the only ones who really have a say in the story seem to be the US Army Corps of Engineers, even when the Mississippi River Commission exists and outnumbers the Corps. Being provided with the most authority for this conflict against an uncontrollable, dynamic body of water, the Corps assumes responsibility for aiding man with the potential to become a man vs. man conflict as we know it does when people lose their property or livelihoods if the Corps’ decisions have consequences.

If we are to lock ourselves in the narrative conflict bubble, where McPhee seems to want us, we may lose the fact that nature can and will retaliate. “The more the levees confined the river, the more destructive it became when they failed” (35). When we build ahead for resiliency or have to immediately react to environmental damages as both were the case with the Atchafalaya, we risk putting people who may not be stakeholders stewarding someone else's environment. Or is everyone a stakeholder because it is everyone's environment? How much does responsibility play into this? The idea that the levees that man builds are alien to nature show domination of man on the environment, just like the diversity of uses on the land and water around from fishing to transport to farming, they all take advantage of the resources available. 

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7a/Geomorphology_of_Old_River.jpg 

Our friends at Wikipedia helped us with this visual history of the controls that I found to be helpful to further understand the canalization and spatial reasoning of the waterways. Man’s control of nature has made it so the history of the Acadians and the Atchafalaya is not what is present today. It is safe to assume in the next century the Atchafalaya will change even more, but as things change, how can we create a collaboration, rather than a conflict, with nature? Is that possible, or with control must humans always show the upper hand?  

Reading Response: “The Future of Environmental Ethics” by Holmes Rolston III

Reading Response: “The Future of Environmental Ethics” by Holmes Rolston III

Humans lived for thousands of years in cultures that operated within the bounds of the natural world. In most modern day societies, we live in a culture that does not seem to operate alongside nature or within nature, but at odds with nature. However, our culture is dependent on the existence of the natural world. Our working against nature, or our straining nature to its limits, destroys the necessary platform (our planet) for this culture to develop.

Natural history has always been determined by nature, and human culture only very recently began to operate and grow within natural history. However, modern human culture, our “technosphere,” is not only growing and reacting to natural events, but having a significant effect on natural events. The extinction of species, disappearance of ecosystems, and even the state of the earth’s climate are being affected and determined by human activity. All organisms affect and change their environment to some degree, but humans are doing so on an incredibly large magnitude at an accelerated pace. Humans seem to be a very unnatural organism of the earth.

In our increasingly technological and manufactured world, nature comes to be defined and valued according to its relationship and practical value to us.

However, natural systems are so interconnected, we really don’t know what’s ultimately of value to us and what’s not. Certainly, we know animals and plants that are of direct value to us due to their nutritional or medicinal importance, but we don’t know all the steps and factors and other organisms required for the ultimate continued survival of the “important” organisms and systems. We could be harming or destroying what we view as pests, annoyances, or seemingly useless parts of nature without realizing that we are in fact in some way dependent on them. Arrogance appears not only the human assumption that all other beings or things in the world exist in relative importance to us, but also in the assumption that we actually understand what’s essentially important and what’s not in a system as massive, interconnected, and complex as the natural world.

 Global warming demonstrates the difficulties of understanding our relationship with nature and how large and convoluted and unclear certain problems are, as well as how people decide who’s to blame when things go wrong and who’s to fix them.

Some argue that biophilia, the natural urge of humans to like and surround themselves with nature, will counteract total and irreversible damage to the natural world. However, biophilia is at conflict with the evident tendency of humans to create cultures separating and distancing themselves from the natural world. Besides, there is a difference between enjoying hiking sometimes, and understanding the importance and defending the existence of ecosystems foreign and unpleasant to humans. Humans have an urge stronger than biophilia to consume the things they want as long as they are in supply, and we live in a culture that manipulates nature to an extreme degree, so that we have those desired things, healthy or not, often in great supply. This other side of human nature leads to the excess causing damage to nature.

If we talk about nature as though we are above it, as though it is something under our control and power, then can we really look to human nature as a scapegoat or a savior for our treatment of the natural world?

Rolston compares the idea of sustainable development with the idea of a sustainable biosphere. They are really just different lenses with which to view the future of human development within the natural world. Sustainable development is seeing nature as simply the limiting factor to what we can accomplish with development and technology. With a sustainable biosphere, the health of the biosphere is foremost in importance. Development is welcome to operate and grow within these limits, but it is not to push to the extremes. The natural elements within the biosphere are not valued solely by their use to humans. The problem with sustainable development is that development will “inevitably overshoot” the sustainability of the biosphere. Humans have the ability and economic incentive to assert power over nature. Patterns demonstrate that humans will continue to assert this power over nature to stretch development out as long as possible. Looking at sustainable development really is looking at a huge system with a narrow lens. How is sustainable development practically different from a sustainable biosphere?

Rolston discusses the relationship between social justice and environmental conservation. The unequal distribution of wealth in the world apparently enables greater harm to the natural world. The rich and powerful are often the most responsible for the widespread and chronic issues of damage and destruction to the natural world. Though responsible, they are the one best able to avoid the more immediate consequences of this environmental destruction to humans, in terms of their health and quality of life. Those more dependent on the natural environment, and those with no access to decent health care or clean water feel these consequences.  If we do want to work to preserve or restore nature, then some humans will bear the costs more than others, very likely the poorest humans who are least able to bear such costs. The rich will be the ones to easily avoid the discomfort or harm that will result from environmental solutions, for they have the power to influence who is affected and they have the wealth to ensure their own comfort is a priority. How can a more equal distribution of wealth lead to better treatment of our environment?

Some sides may argue that we can have it all. Unrestricted growth and development economically, socially, politically, and we can still maintain healthy nature and biodiversity. Biodiversity serves humans too, so humans, in their desire to have it all, will preserve biodiversity for its aesthetic beauty and value to us. However, when people see themselves as the ultimate value with everything else in relative value, it’s not a mindset conducive to causing lasting change in the way we deal with nature.  Rolston argues that we can have it all, but we have to see the “all” as something different. What kind of goals or values would allow us to hold both humanity and nature as things to be respected and preserved?

Earth Overshoot Day 2013

Yesterday, on August 20, human consumption of natural resources globally outstripped the amount generated by the earth annually, meaning that for the rest of the calendar year we are living on "borrowed money." Put differently, this means that the global community is using natural capital at a rate over 30 percent higher than the rate it which it is being renewed. Our present way of life is simply unsustainable.

There is obviously a great deal of simplification of complex issues involved in developing a common measure for vastly different kinds of resources (renewable, non-renewable, contamination, etc.), but those interested in the methodology behind this calculation can find more information here.

Apart from questions about whether such a way of life is in our own best interest, we might ask whether it is fair to place the burden of our own debt on future generations, who will suffer the consequences of our actions more profoundly than we will. The issue becomes even more complicated when we consider the vastly different rates of resource consumption that exist between countries. For a global comparison of "footprints" by country, see here.

Comments are welcome.