Natural history

ETBNC is one of my most thoughtful commenters. Almost a year ago, we exchanged a few comments and in the process, he made me realize that while capital H History [what arrogance!] may not be over, natural history is.

Natural history ends when you have a predator that can just keep switching prey as it wipes out one thing after another. That ability to switch, more or less unprecedented in the history of the world, spells the end of natural history. We take a piece of ground and we don't move on until nothing will grow there and nothing to eat lives there any more.

Any natural predator comes into balance with its prey or perishes when it has eaten is food source into extinction. Its a good rule not to break. We broke it.

My personal fear, one I apparently share with a growing minority in this nation, is that we may have broken more than we can fix. We seem, for the first time in American History to have a slight PR edge and growing though minor demographic to employ against the flat earth wasters. My own shortcomings with regard to my ecological foot print I will leave to the Insufferable Carbon Snob to confess. There will be a confused and self contradictory series of posts from the ICS...we who have lived well must, of necessity, be more than a little conflicted about living within the means of what would be our share of the planet, were any environmental justice or equality to suddenly break out.