A Review of "The Future of Life," by Edward O. Wilson

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A Review of "The Future of Life," by Edward O. Wilson 
The following is from http://home.attbi.com/~neoeugenics/eow.htm 

Book review of Edward O. Wilson's The Future of Life, 2002. Reviewed 
by Matt Nuenke 

This latest book by Wilson, in trying to make the argument that we 
should preserve all extant species and subspecies (which he calls 
races), is a continuation of the biophilia argument: that humans have 
emotional, religious, and ecological reasons for promoting the future 
existence of other organisms over the expansion and prosperity of 
humans. I addressed the biophilia argument earlier in my article 
Biophilia vs. Human Evolution: Insurmountable Constraints, available 
on this site, but I find it beneficial to address the issue again and 
contrast it to eugenics. 

The book is filled with stories about extinct and soon to be extinct 
species, and when stripped of any philosophical perspective it may be 
of interest strictly based on a naturalist interest in organisms. 
What I want to address however, are Wilson's extension from an 
interest in other organisms, to the assertion that the welfare of 
humans and/or the welfare of the earth itself is contingent on 
preserving species and races of other organisms. His assertions are 
scattered within the book almost as snippets of dogma, and I will 
address these as they occurred. 
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WILSON: The ecologist sees the whole as a network of energy and 
material continuously flowing into the community from the surrounding 
physical environment, and back out, and then on round to create the 
perpetual ecosystem cycles on which our own existence depends. 

NUENKE: The assertion seems to be that humans are a passive species, 
dependent on the existing ecology, and any disruption would put us in 
peril. The eugenicist position would assert that we altered the 
ecology drastically over the last few decades, which has been merely 
an acceleration of our altering of the ecology as we have expanded 
around the world over the last 200,000 years, and we have only 
prospered as a result. We live longer, better and we are capable of 
modeling the results of our altering of the ecology far in advance of 
any catastrophe outside of global warfare. There just is no evidence 
that we are in danger of destroying the ecosystem that we depend on. 

WILSON: The concept of the biosphere as Gaia [a superorganism] has 
two versions: strong and weak. The strong version holds that the 
biosphere is a true superorganism, with each of the species in it 
optimized to stabilize the environment and benefit from balance in 
the entire system, like cells of the body or workers of an ant 
colony. This is a lovely metaphor, with a kernel of truth, providing 
the idea of superorganism is broadened enough. The strong version, 
however, is generally rejected by biologists, including Lovelock 
himself, as a working principle. The weak version, on the other hand, 
which holds that some species exercise widespread and even global 
influence, is well substantiated. Its acceptance has stimulated 
important new programs of research. 

NUENKE: I agree with Wilson that "some species exercise widespread 
and even [a] global influence," but what type of species would these 
be? The AIDS virus comes to mind and malaria is another. However, 
the same people who claim that we are in a delicate balance with 
other species in fact spend most of their time trying to preserve or 
save higher mammals rather than lowly parasites. Humans have 
slaughtered to extinction numerous species from the woolly mammoth to 
the saber toothed tiger, but these species had little impact on the 
ecology other than to extinguish a food source for humans. Large, 
lovable mammals as elephants, rhinoceros, whales, etc. have little 
impact on the ecology because they are at the top of the food chain? 
just like humans. If a new virus wiped out the human species, the 
ecology of the earth would chug along just fine, filling in the voids 
that we left behind. New creatures and plants would occupy the 
cities, and new plants would take over the once harvested fields.   
There is no evidence if humans exited the earth that the biosphere 
would suffer. Nor is there any evidence that if we continue to 
expand in numbers and in our dominance of the earth, including 
extinguishing some species, and altering others through genetic 
engineering, that the earth would be adversely affected. Nature 
after all is an unknowing, purposeless algorithm?one that is hard to 
define much less to declare that it can be either enhanced or 
extinguished. For the biosphere to be extinguished with regards to 
species, it would mean there would be absolutely no organisms left.   
Nature then is value neutral, except as it has value in relation to 
the species that occupy it?and to eugenicists the species with the 
most important values towards the biosphere are humans. 

WILSON: The twentieth century was a time of exponential scientific 
and technical advance, the freeing of the arts by an exuberant 
modernism, and the spread of democracy and human rights throughout 
the world. It was also a dark and savage age of world wars, genocide, 
and totalitarian ideologies that came dangerously close to global 
domination. While preoccupied with all this tumult, humanity managed 
collaterally to decimate the natural environment and draw down the 
nonrenewable resources of the planet with cheerful abandon. We 
thereby accelerated the erasure of entire ecosystems and the 
extinction of thousands of million-year-old species. If Earth's 
ability to support our growth is finite?and it is?we were mostly too 
busy to notice. As a new century begins, we have begun to awaken 
from this delirium. Now, increasingly post-ideological in temper, we 
may be ready to settle down before we wreck the planet. It is time to 
sort out Earth and calculate what it will take to provide a 
satisfying and sustainable life for everyone into the indefinite 
future. The question of the century is: How best can we shift to a 
culture of permanence, both for ourselves and for the biosphere that 
sustains us? 

NUENKE: First, I would deny that humans have decimated the natural 
environment and drawn down the nonrenewable resources of the planet 
with cheerful abandon. In the recent book by Bjorn Lomborg, The 
Skeptical Environmentalist: Measuring the Real State of the World, 
all of the so-called environmental catastrophes over the past fifty 
years and more have been rebutted by sound statistical data. Global 
warming may be a problem we need to look at, but we are well within 
the allowable time frame to deal with it. Wilson, like so many 
naturalists, just wants humans OUT of nature altogether it seems, 
forgetting that we are as part of nature as some pesky weed. As to 
the question, "How best can we shift to a culture of permanence, both 
for ourselves and for the biosphere that sustains us?" the eugenicist 
would answer: "by increasing the overall intelligence of humans so 
that along with technology and foresight, we can improve the quality 
of life for all humans while living in a pleasing environment."   
Wilson's answer seems to ignore humanity's ability to formulate a 
lasting presence by improving the genetic quality of humanity for a 
draconian elite dictating what can and can't be done. He and his 
followers are the new ecological papacy, and there is no tolerance 
for deviation from the dogma. The eugenic religion admits, and even 
embraces, that there is not one way or one eugenic perspective, but 
that all eugenic religions should compete with each other to see 
which one is the most successful. We embrace the third way, by 
rejecting absolutism for incremental progress based on multiple 
programs. We are the religion of tolerant experimentation. 

WILSON: If natural resources, particularly fresh water and arable 
land, continue to diminish at their present per-capita rate, the 
economic boom will lose steam, in the course of which?and this 
worries me even if it doesn't worry you?the effort to enlarge 
productive land will wipe out a large part of the world's fauna and 
flora. 

NUENKE: The nationalist-eugenic's stance would simply close borders, 
restraining the flow of those population groups who fail to control 
their explosive reproduction. The advanced countries have 
sustainable food supplies, stable or falling population densities, 
are expanding natural habitats, and promote international protocols 
such as the Kyoto protocol on global warming (the United States being 
the exception). These same countries are the ones with a higher 
average intelligence (see IQ and the Wealth of Nations by Lynn and 
Vanhanen, 2002). That is, it is not humans in general who wreck the 
environment, but particular human races. Each country then should be 
held accountable for their actions, and if they starve to death 
because they did not have the wisdom to plan, then Mother Nature has 
done her job vis-à-vis Wilson's position. 

WILSON: When we alter the biosphere in any direction, we move the 
environment away from the delicate dance of biology. When we destroy 
ecosystems and extinguish species, we degrade the greatest heritage 
this planet has to offer and thereby threaten our own existence. 

NUENKE: Delicate balance? What delicate balance? If 3.5 billion 
years of evolution have taught us anything, it is that there IS 
no "delicate balance." When meteors extinguished the dinosaurs, life 
continued and new species were born. No matter what any single 
species does, nature still exists. If humans advanced to an 
evolutionary stage where they were the only species left on earth, 
free of parasites, plants or animals as we know them, and had instead 
reached out to other species on other planets, would our heritage be 
degraded? We don't know nor do we know how to find out. Evolution 
marches on and it does not have any purpose or intrinsic values. We 
make the value judgments that determine what is and is not important 
to us. As far as our heritage is concerned, it is up to each 
individual to decide what is and is not important. To an architect 
it may be a building, to and engineer a bridge, to a lawyer a legal 
precedent, and to a rabbi racial purity of the tribe. Many value 
systems exist and coexist?none more important than another. 

WILSON: The great dilemma of environmental reasoning stems from this 
conflict between short-term and long-term values. To select values 
for the near future of one's own tribe or country is relatively easy. 
To select values for the distant future of the whole planet also is 
relatively easy?in theory at least. To combine the two visions to 
create a universal environmental ethic is, on the other hand, very 
difficult. But combine them we must, because a universal 
environmental ethic is the only guide by which humanity and the rest 
of life can be safely conducted through the bottleneck into which our 
species has foolishly blundered. 

NUENKE: Wilson has everything backwards here. First, a nation-state 
based on close kinship is in a far better position to make collective 
decisions for long-term values because they are making decisions now 
for their children's children. On the other hand, to select 
universal future values for all people is impossible. Cultures, like 
people, vary dramatically in what they feel is important. What we 
need to do is break humanity down into smaller communities, where the 
collective is ready to work towards a collective set of values. The 
most dangerous path is for one totalitarian ethic to force all people 
to live by. Communism tried this and it doesn't work. It will never 
work. There is no one way or one value system that applies to all.   
However, with regards to the coming bottleneck, when each nation is 
forced to deal with their own situation of over-population, then they 
must be allowed to stand on their own. No immigration, no economic 
asylum for immigrants, no transfer of resources from the haves to the 
have not's. Let each nation deal head on with their ecological niche. 

WILSON: The wealth of the world, if measured by domestic product and 
per-capita consumption, is rising. But if calculated from the 
condition of the biosphere, it is falling. The state of the latter, 
natural economy, as opposed to that of the former, market economy, is 
measured by the condition of the world's forest, freshwater, and 
marine ecosystems. When distilled from the databases of the World 
Bank and United Nations Development and Environment Program as a 
single Living Planet Index, the result forms a powerful counterweight 
to the more familiar GNPs and stock market indexes. From 1970 to 1995 
the index, as calculated by the World Wide Fund for Nature, fell 30 
percent. By the early 1990s its decline had accelerated to 3 percent 
per year. No leveling trend is yet in sight. 

NUENKE: Again, see The Skeptical Environmentalist for an 
organization by organization rebuttal to the above scam.   
Environmental advocacy groups are no different from any corporation 
selling a product. In this case, they sell gloom, doom and panic.   
However, the numbers just don't add up. These organizations can only 
sustain themselves, and keep the money flowing, if they can convince 
people that they are in grave peril if nothing is done. But the fact 
is we live longer, the cities are getting cleaner, the wilderness 
more protected, the water more pure, and there is no reason to think 
this trend will not continue indefinitely as long as we control 
immigration. It is immigration that causes environmental 
degradation, because the countries where immigrants are trying to 
enter have reached zero population growth. Wilson never mentions 
this?it is not politically correct. If we want to reduce birth 
rates, just stop migrations of peoples from over-reproducing nations 
to under-reproducing nations. 

WILSON: As a result, a majority of resident land birds and nearly 
half of the plant species are now alien. Insects, spiders, mites, and 
other arthropods were unintended companions, arriving as stowaways in 
cargo and ballast. An average of 20 such species are detected in 
quarantine each year; a few slip through and succeed in establishing 
themselves. Among 8,790 insect and other arthropod species known to 
be resident in Hawaii in the late 1990s, 3,055, or 35 percent, were 
of alien origin. Of the grand total of 22,070 species of all kinds of 
organisms, plants, animals, and microbes recorded thus far on the 
land and in the surrounding shallow waters, 4,373 are alien. This is 
about half the 8,805 native species known exclusively from Hawaii. 
Moreover, the aliens dominate in numbers of individual organisms, 
especially in the disturbed environments. As a result, immigrants own 
the bulk of Hawaii. Most of the invaders are relatively innocuous: 
only a small fraction build populations large enough to become 
agricultural pests or harm the natural environment. But the few that 
do break out are capable of enormous damage. Biologists cannot yet 
predict which immigrants will upon arrival become "invasives," as 
harmful alien species are now officially called by U.S. federal 
agencies. 

NUENKE: Isn't is ironic that Wilson believes there are good and bad 
immigrant species, but has no concept of good and bad human 
immigration. In the United States, immigration from countries where 
people have low innate intelligence and high reproductive rates has a 
harmful effect on this country, and accelerate destruction of the 
environment, especially the cities with higher crime, welfare, and a 
degrading economy. Likewise, other parasites dominate the ruling 
elite where a few percent of the population own almost all the wealth. 

WILSON: [Wilson speculates about the world circa 2100] The causes of 
aging are known, and birthrates have plummeted in compensating 
degree, especially in the richest countries, where young people are 
increasingly obtained through recruitment from poorer countries. The 
genetic homogenization of the world population by intermarriage, 
already well advanced by 2000, has accelerated. There is more genetic 
variation within local populations but less between the populations 
than was the case back in 2000. Biological races grow fainter with 
the passage of each generation. None of these changes has altered 
human nature in the least. No matter how sophisticated our science 
and technology, advanced our culture, or powerful our robotic 
auxiliaries, Homo sapiens remains in 2100 a relatively unchanged 
biological species. Therein lies our strength, and our weakness. It 
is the nature of all biological species to multiply and expand 
heedlessly until the environment bites back. The bite consists of 
feedback loops?disease, famine, war, and competition for scarce 
resources?which intensify until pressure on the environment is eased. 
Add to them the one feedback loop uniquely available to Homo sapiens 
that can damp all the rest: conscious restraint. 

NUENKE: Now I will speculate about the future based on a eugenic 
religion. Humans will continue to intermarry between races, but some 
humans will begin to practice selective breeding and will begin to 
differentiate from the masses. The few who take steps to breed a 
more intelligent race will maintain their genetic uniqueness, and 
many of the eugenic religious communities will start separating 
genetically from the underclasses. They will also take steps to form 
new nation-states where they are technologically self-sufficient and 
will not need cheap labor. As the rest of the world breeds 
themselves into obliteration through starvation and ethnic conflict, 
the new eugenic nation-states will amass sophisticated armamentaria 
along with closed borders to separate themselves from global 
overpopulation and destruction. As the rest of the world annihilates 
themselves, the new advanced human species will take charge of world 
affairs and order will be restored. One note on Wilson's lack of 
scientific coherency when he gets the religion of biodiversity: "It 
is the nature of all biological species to multiply and expand 
heedlessly until the environment bites back." He is mixing up 
proximate with ultimate evolutionary principles. Human procreation 
is based primarily on sexual urges, a proximate cause. However, we 
now have contraception. The ultimate cause has become disconnected 
from the proximate cause. I am surprised Wilson did not catch this 
faux pas in evolutionary principles. 

WILSON: Such is likely to be the world of 2100?if present trends 
continue. The most memorable heritage of the twenty-first century 
will be the Age of Loneliness that lies before humanity. 

NUENKE: Wilson claims that with the loss of biodiversity, humans 
will become lonely. I find this so absurd as to be almost offensive, 
especially because I have been dealing with my own loneliness over 
the past year. I had never felt much remorse nor have I ever felt 
loneliness from another creature's death. However, about a year ago 
one of my two dogs died, painfully in my arms after three days of 
trying to convalesce him after a difficult spinal chord operation 
that failed. I had nightmares for months, and still now, his loss 
hurts like nothing I have ever experienced. The question is why?   
Why would someone as emotionally tough and independent as I have 
always been, succumb to such a loss? 

This beautiful creature had laid on my lap, slept in my bed, put his 
head on my computer keyboard, and literally purred when I petted him? 
all 115 pounds of him for nine years. I didn't realize that we were 
becoming one. No human had ever been so close to me, and now 
separation was tormenting me. No, I am not going to make myself whole 
again by getting another dog, it doesn't work like that for me. This 
dog was unique. So it was not animals or even dogs per se that I 
needed. What happened was we grew together and bonded in a way that 
seems to go beyond an evolutionary explanation, though I think there 
is one. There are mechanisms in humans and other higher mammals for 
bonding when organisms are together for long periods of time. In 
addition, I have always loved dogs, having grown up in a household 
that had a revolving door of animals as pets or fallen creatures in 
need of temporary sanctuary. But I do not buy for a minute that 
humans are or could be lonely in a world where there would now be 1 
million species because there once was 2 million species. Humans can 
surround themselves with an assortment of loveable species, but the 
number of species is irrelevant. I think what Wilson is lonely about 
is the theoretical loss of his hobby?species watcher, like a bird 
watcher. But we all have hobbies, and no particular hobby is any 
better than any other. 

WILSON: Why should we care about Campephilus principalis? It is, 
after all, only one of ten thousand bird species in the world [that 
has gone extinct]. Let me give a simple and I hope decisive answer: 
because we knew this particular species, and knew it well. 

NUENKE: And I knew my dog well, I cared for my dog, and I still care 
for him. But he is gone, just like many species are gone. These are 
facts, they are not reasons for action. My dog died and I will get 
on with my life. Species will go extinct and humans will continue 
with their lives, with no indication that life will be in any way 
diminished or enhanced, only that it is. There is no way of knowing 
if on average, all of humanity is a bit more or a bit less [you fill 
in the blank] because a species has gone extinct. Would my life be 
better today if I had never grown too close to my dog? I can say 
yes, the pain of the loss seems greater than the joy of his 
companionship. Maybe that will change in time. 

We can't even determine if life itself is worth living. No one has 
been able to make the case for existence versus non-existence, 
because existence includes both pain and pleasure?non-existence 
includes neither. Again, Wilson is pleading with the rest of 
humanity to accept his own personal hobby in lieu of our personally 
chosen hobbies, for are not hobbies just another way for humans to 
fill in time until they die? His special pleading is just that? 
special to him and nauseatingly a plea for his personal perspective.  
As a eugenicist, I would never plead for others to follow my hobby or 
religion based on rational arguments. It is meant for those who 
chose it voluntarily. 

WILSON: "Don't mess with Mother Nature." The lady is our mother all 
right, and a mighty dispensational force as well. After evolving on 
her own for more than three billion years, she gave birth to us a 
mere million years ago, an eye blink in evolutionary time. Ancient 
and vulnerable, she will not tolerate the undisciplined appetite of 
her gargantuan infant much longer. 

NUENKE: Oh really? Wilson seems to have reified nature herself and 
given her a purpose. But what if from a eugenic perspective we claim 
to be the only purposeful species on earth, that is one that can 
decide our future because we have stumbled upon language, knowledge, 
and technologies to change our very essence. Only humans can direct 
their own evolution based on preconceived plans, and that means 
bending Mother Nature to our will if we so desire. 

WILSON: In conserving nature, whether for practical or aesthetic 
reasons, diversity matters. The following rule is now widely accepted 
by ecologists: the more species that inhabit an ecosystem, such as a 
forest or lake, the more productive and stable is the ecosystem. 
By "production," the scientists mean the amount of plant and animal 
tissue created each hour or year or any other given unit of time. 
By "stability" they mean one or the other or both of two things: 
first, how narrowly the summed abundances of all species vary through 
time; and second, how quickly the ecosystem recovers from fire, 
drought, and other stresses that perturb it. Human beings 
understandably wish to live in the midst of diverse, productive, and 
stable ecosystems. Who, if given a choice, would build their home in 
a wheat field instead of a parkland? 

NUENKE: There are several errors in this statement. The first is we 
need to ask what is meant by production in an ecosystem that is 
diverse? It seems here that ecologists have defined terms like 
production, aesthetic, stability as well as where humans want to live 
to prove a nonsensical value system. Production for humans is 
different from production as defined above. We don't harvest from 
swamps, rain forests, wetlands or remote mountains. Most of our 
food, minerals, timber, etc. is harvested from ecological systems 
that are low in diversity. From wheat fields, to timber forests, to 
chicken farms and coal mines?targeted products extracted from 
ecological systems that have high concentrations for one type of 
product is the norm. So clearly, an ecologist's definition of 
production has nothing to do with what society needs from nature for 
productivity. In addition, for stability, again our farms, forests, 
and mines are quite stable from natural disasters because they are 
distributed. When one area suffers a setback, the void is quickly 
filled by products shipped from somewhere else. Just the opposite of 
which would be the case if small human communities tried to live in 
harmony with nature without support from neighboring communities. 

In addition, where do people want to live? Well, they may not prefer 
to live in the middle of a cornfield, but they also don't want to 
live in swamps, dense forests, wetlands, and near mountainous 
volcanoes. Actually, most humans prefer to live in large cities if 
numbers mean anything, where diversity approaches zero with regards 
to species. Most humans would have a hard time naming 100 common 
plants and animals that they would likely encounter in the larger 
cities. I live in Chicago, and the building boom in ultra high-rise 
condominiums is astonishing. They are sprouting up all over the 
central business district at prices from $300,000 to millions of 
dollars per unit. These people have decided that they love the urban 
life, with its theaters, shopping, restaurants, and urban excitement 
and have turned their backs on nature. Quite the opposite of what 
the biophilia hypothesis would have one believe. 

WILSON: Homo sapiens is an ecosystems engineer too, but a bad one. 
Not having coevolved with the majority of life forms we now encounter 
around the world, we eliminate far more niches than we create. We 
drive species and ecosystems into extinction at a far higher rate 
than existed before and everywhere diminish productivity and 
stability. 

NUENKE: Every species is in competition with ever other, species 
don't exist to go around and create niches for other species to 
thrive in. The fact that humans have completely dominated the world, 
and eliminated other species and other species' niches in the process 
of being successful, indicates to me only that we are a very 
successful species if expansion is the definition of success. In 
evolutionary terms, reproductive success determines which organisms 
have adapted and which ones have gone extinct. However, there is no 
value system in play here. It is merely an observation. There is no 
basis for stating that humans have been a failure or a success while 
dominating the world, only that we have and we will continue to do so 
until we cease to do so. Wilson seems to want to condemn humanity 
for destroying other species, but that can only be done if humans are 
somehow "outside" of the rules of nature, some type of "guiding 
hand." We are here just like any other species, no better or worse, 
but just being. 

WILSON: Twenty species carry most of the load, of which only three? 
wheat, maize, and rice?stand between humanity and starvation. For the 
most part the premier twenty are those that happened to be present in 
the regions where agriculture was independently invented some ten 
thousand years ago, namely the Mediterranean perimeter and Near East; 
Central Asia; the horn of Africa; the rice belt of tropical Asia; and 
the uplands of Mexico, Central America, and Andean South America. Yet 
some thirty thousand species of wild plants, most occurring outside 
these regions, have edible parts consumed at one time or other by 
hunter-gatherers. Of these, at least ten thousand can be adapted as 
domestic crops. A few, including the three species of New World 
amaranths, the carrot-like arracacha of the Andes, and the winged 
bean of tropical Asia, are immediately available for commercial 
development. In a more general sense, all the quarter-million plant 
species?in fact, all species of organisms?are potential donors of 
genes that can be transferred by genetic engineering into crop 
species in order to improve their performance. With the insertion of 
the right snippets of DNA, new strains can be created that are 
variously cold-hardy, pest-proofed, perennial, fast-growing, highly 
nutritious, multipurpose, water-conservative, and more easily sowed 
and harvested. And compared with traditional breeding techniques, 
genetic engineering is all but instantaneous. 

NUENKE: In numerous instances, Wilson's logic is contradictory.   
Before he talked about diversity and "productivity" and then he 
elaborates on how humans have thrived on just a few plants for 
survival, and yet we could domesticate many more and with genetic 
engineering, do it almost instantaneously. It is hard to know if he 
is promoting naturalism, conservationism or futurism. They don't 
need to be contradictory. A eugenicist perspective would include a 
well-ordered ecological balance, but it includes the breeding of 
humans as well as plants and animals. It also recognizes that we 
need to preserve human races for the same reason Wilson wants to 
preserve diversity, to be able to gain access to exotic and rare 
genes that may not be found if human races die out. On the other 
hand, we see humans as the most important component of nature because 
it is our existence. We are not willing to make a religion out of 
preserving other species to the detriment of eugenic goals. The 
difference then is one of choice, a subjective choice of what is 
important to competing philosophical or religious stances.   
Eugenicists want to preserve biodiversity also, as long as it does 
not get in the way of eugenics. When resources and agendas conflict, 
we will come down on the side of strengthening the nation-state and 
protecting and promoting our racial kin. It is a matter of resource 
allocation and making decisions for biodiversity or for new species 
of humans. Wilson's agenda would hold humans back and send them 
spiraling into a dysgenic abyss.   

WILSON: The exploration of wild biodiversity in search of useful 
resources is called bioprospecting. Propelled by venture capital, it 
has in the past ten years grown into a respectable industry within a 
global market hungry for new pharmaceuticals. It is also a means for 
discovering new food sources, fibers, petroleum substitutes, and 
other products. Sometimes bioprospectors screen many species of 
organisms in search of chemicals with particular qualities, such as 
antisepsis or suppression of cancer. On other occasions 
bioprospecting is opportunistic, keying on one or a few species that 
show signs of yielding a valuable resource. Ultimately, entire 
ecosystems will be prospected as a whole, assaying all of the species 
for most or all of the products they can yield. 

NUENKE: The above prospecting for genetic variance does have value, 
but Wilson I believe uses it as a justification for his need to 
collect species. As he admits, there are only a few hotspots where 
biodiversity flourishes; most of the earth is far simpler and 
genetically less interesting. So, let me propose a compromise. When 
we want to build a new damn for instance, and we find an endangered 
species in the way, we study its genetic code, preserving it if 
necessary, and then get on with building the damn. 

WILSON: A few technophiles, I expect, will beg to differ. What, after 
all, in the long term does it mean to be human? We have traveled this 
far; we will go on. As to the rest of life, they continue, we should 
be able to immerse fertilized eggs and clonable tissues of endangered 
species in liquid nitrogen and use them later to rebuild the 
destroyed ecosystems. Even that may not be necessary: in time 
entirely new species and ecosystems, better suited to human needs 
than the old ones, can be created by genetic engineering. Homo 
sapiens might choose to redesign itself along the way, the better to 
live in a new biological order of our own making. Such is the 
extrapolated endpoint of technomania applied to the natural world. 
The compelling response, in my opinion, is that to travel even 
partway there would be a dangerous gamble, a single throw of the dice 
with the future of life on the table. 

NUENKE: The key here is Wilson's assertion that eugenicists will 
lurch into the future with "a single throw of the dice." Nothing 
could be more wrong, at least as I understand the nationalist-eugenic 
position. We want to see numerous eugenic communities and/or   
eugenic nation-states progressing in incremental steps towards 
creating new human species that will then compete with each other.   
In fact, the eugenic community that I have observed is very 
conservative in terms of keeping human behavioral diversity. Now, 
only intelligence would be selected for along with reducing genetic 
diseases that can be easily controlled. The reason Wilson does not 
understand this eugenic individualism is that he sees solutions in 
terms of a singular global consensus. He adopts the totalitarian 
stance that the elite will decide what is the correct path for all of 
humanity, and we will be forced to follow. Eugenicists are by nature 
not willing to submit to any single position from a central authority? 
we reject any form of "a single throw of the dice." 

WILSON: And to redesign the human genotype better to fit a ruined 
biosphere is the stuff of science horror fiction. Let us leave it 
there, in the realm of imagination. Another reason exists not to 
take the gamble, not to let the natural world slip away. Suppose, for 
the sake of argument, that new species can be engineered and stable 
ecosystems built from them. With that distant potential in mind, 
should we go ahead, and for short-term gain, allow the original 
species and ecosystems to slip away? Yes? Erase Earth's living 
history? Then also burn the libraries and art galleries, make 
cordwood of the musical instruments, pulp the musical scores, erase 
Shakespeare, Beethoven, and Goethe, and the Beatles too, because all 
these?or at least fairly good substitutes?can be re-created. The 
issue, like all great decisions, is moral. Science and technology are 
what we can do; morality is what we agree we should or should not do. 
The ethic from which moral decisions spring is a norm or standard of 
behavior in support of a value, and value in turn depends on purpose. 
Purpose, whether personal or global, whether urged by conscience or 
graven in sacred script, expresses the image we hold of ourselves and 
our society. In short, ethics evolve through discrete steps, from 
self-image to purpose to value to ethical precepts to moral reasoning. 

NUENKE: Wilson above is using the slippery slope argument: If even 
one species dies, we are on the slope of ruin, all will be lost.   
Well the fact is, libraries have burned before, original works of art 
lost, and humans rose up repeatedly and rebuilt. Nevertheless, no one 
is suggesting that we throw our history away. But we also can't 
preserve every detail of life if we want to keep living, because 
living involves consumption. Wilson is making an argument similar to 
historical preservationists. If a certain building is lost, it is 
lost forever for posterity (forgetting we have pictures and plans of 
how it was built, and noting it could be duplicated again if so 
desired). So historical preservationists start out preserving a few 
buildings, then some more, then all of the buildings in a city 
because each one has a piece of history. No building can be torn 
down. Eventually the city dies because it can't be renewed. Slippery 
slope arguments are invalid. We don't live in such a world, we 
decide when a building should be preserved and which ones are better 
torn down to make way for new ones. The same is true in nature, 
species and races are constantly being reorganized, revised, going 
extinct and coming into existence. The world does not cease because 
species are lost. His reasoning is flawed because it is based on a 
static view of nature rather than a dynamic, changing one. The 
universe has never stood still. 

WILSON: A conservation ethic is that which aims to pass on to future 
generations the best part of the nonhuman world. To know this world 
is to gain a proprietary attachment to it. To know it well is to love 
and take responsibility for it. 

NUENKE: Likewise, a eugenics ethic is one that takes a proprietary 
interest in passing on to future generations the best part of the 
human world, and that includes preserving the best human genomes and 
combinations of genomes. Eugenicists are conservationists when it 
comes to preserving the best genes, and futurists when it comes to 
creating better genomic combinations. Wilson's worldview is static, 
ours is dynamic. We see a canvass to paint on; Wilson sees nature 
with a fence around it like a concentration camp. He is a stamp 
collector writ large. 

WILSON: A prominent component of biophilia is habitat selection. 
Studies conducted in the relatively new field of environmental 
psychology during the past thirty years point consistently to the 
following conclusion: people prefer to be in natural environments, 
and especially in savanna or park-like habitats. They like a long 
depth of view across a relatively smooth, grassy ground surface 
dotted with trees and copses. They want to be near a body of water, 
whether ocean, lake, river, or stream. They try to place their 
habitations on a prominence, from which they can safely scan the 
savanna and watery environment. With nearly absolute consistency 
these landscapes are preferred over urban settings that are either 
bare or clothed in scant vegetation. To a relative degree people 
dislike woodland views that possess restricted depth of vision, a 
disordered complexity of vegetation, and rough ground structures?in 
short, forests with small, closely spaced trees and dense 
undergrowth. They want a topography and openings that improve their 
line of sight. 

NUENKE: The above is true of human preferences in habitat, but of 
course, these preferences are not very powerful. Humans end up living 
where they need to, and if where they live is any indicator, then 
they prefer to live in urban environments that also have aesthetic 
qualities including water sculptures, plant life, clean streets, 
parklands, etc. That is, they like the aesthetics of nature but they 
also want to be near modern culture and other people over a hermit 
like existence in a cabin on the lake somewhere. Humans are very 
flexible with regards to where they live, but they do seem to prefer 
the cosmopolitan life when they can afford it, and when it is safe.   
The leading cause of flight from urban centers is crime and poor 
schools?it has little to do with wanting to "return to a more 
suburban natural setting." In fact, suburbia is often criticized for 
its sterile conformity and blandness even though it has far more open 
space, parklands, nature preserves, rivers and lakes, than urban 
environments. What people desire then is a safe and aesthetic blend 
of other people, safety, and things to do. Also, note that a 
cosmopolitan life style is completely devoid of animal diversity.   
Except for dogs, cats, pigeons, and rats?there is little diversity in 
the animals that live in large cities, and then most of them are 
considered to be pests. 

WILSON: Studies of response prior to surgery and dental work have 
consistently revealed a significant reduction of stress in the 
presence of plants and aquaria. Natural environments viewed through 
windows or merely displayed in wall-mounted pictures produce the same 
effect. 

NUENKE: Wilson lists numerous examples like the one above showing the 
benefits of natural settings where bare and cold settings become 
frightening. I find this observation underwhelming. Humans are 
naturally tense when in the hospital or a dentist's chair. I wonder 
how serene they would feel if they were being operated on in some 
open air tent in the jungle? I think they would prefer the sterile 
hospital, but with distractions such as a beautiful view, pictures, 
television, and perhaps some dogs running around to play with. None 
of these observations help advance Wilson's vision of a pristine 
environment, untouched by human intervention, as the ideal world.   
They are of interest with regards to human health and well being 
however. 

WILSON: The critical stages in the acquisition of biophilia have been 
worked out by psychologists during studies of childhood mental 
development. Under the age of six, children tend to be egocentric, 
self-serving, and domineering in their responses to animals and 
nature. They are also most prone to be uncaring or fearful of the 
natural world and of all but a few familiar animals. Between six and 
nine, children become interested in wild creatures for the first 
time, and aware that animals can suffer pain and distress. From nine 
to twelve their knowledge and interest in the natural world rises 
sharply, and between thirteen and seventeen, they readily acquire 
moral feeling toward animal welfare and species conservation. 

NUENKE: If humans have this great moral concern for animals, I fail 
to see it. I am often distressed when I see people with pets and how 
they treat them. For ten years, when I lived with my two dogs, I 
always rushed home to take care of them, I never hit them or abused 
them, I cooked for them, etc. When we went on trips they were taken 
care of by relatives. Nevertheless, I fail to see the same concern 
for animals in most other people. Many people have dogs, cats or 
both but the pets are not treated very well in my opinion. They are 
left by themselves often, they are hit for doing things that they are 
not aware of, they are left outside or in small pens most of the 
time. Wherever this moral concern for animals resides in humans, I 
have failed to find it. I have only met a handful of people that are 
as passionately responsive to the needs of animals as I am. At the 
park where I would take my dogs twice a day, I achieved a bit of a 
reputation for attracting other dogs. Dogs would have a tendency to 
run up to me, jump on me, or play before moving on. When I was young, 
my mother commented on how I could walk up to almost any animal on my 
uncles' farms and not get bit or attacked (though my father did have 
to save me from a bull once when I wondered into the pen at about the 
age of four). And when my uncles went hunting or fishing in 
Wisconsin, the only thing they talked about was a good kill or a good 
catch. They didn't come back and discuss the marvels of nature?they 
were hunters, not naturalists. I don't deny that there is a powerful 
connection between human behavior and nature, but I do not see that 
connection in the same way that Wilson portrays it. As he describes 
it, it is a just so story, devoid of reality. 

WILSON: According to the United Nations Human Development Report 
1999, the income differential between the fifth of the world's 
population in the wealthiest countries and the fifth in the poorest 
was 30 to 1 in 1960, 60 to 1 in 1990, and 74 to 1 in 1995. Wealthy 
people are also by and large profligate consumers, and as a result 
the income differential has this disturbing consequence: for the rest 
of the world to reach United States levels of consumption with 
existing technology would require four more planet Earths. 

NUENKE: What makes Wilson think the rest of the world deserves or 
ever will reach the level of wealth we have in the advanced 
countries. If Sweden closed its borders, allowed its population to 
stabilize or even decrease, they could sustain a high standard of 
living no matter what happens in the rest of the world as long as 
some trade with other nations continued. The wealth in advanced 
countries was created using the technology developed in these 
countries. Others in the world can develop, stay where they are, or 
die out from disease and famine?as long as they do it in their own 
back yard. Nations, and civilizations, can take steps to isolate 
themselves from the profligate breeders of the world. It is open 
immigration that threatens to destroy advanced nations with the 
displaced masses from third world countries, that lack our innate 
intelligence and our ability to control population growth. Unwelcome 
parasites from other countries must not be allowed into advanced 
nations. Like fast growing weeds, they are not natural races in 
Western countries and must be turned back. 

WILSON: The strength of each country's conservation ethic is 
measured by the wisdom and effectiveness of its legislation in 
protecting biological diversity. Without dispute, the most important 
conservation law in the history of the United States is the 
Endangered Species Act. Passed in 1973 by a vote of 390-12 in the 
House of Representatives and 92-0 in the Senate, and signed into law 
by President Nixon, it was unprecedented in its sweep. Every kind of 
plant and animal at risk became eligible for listing. Previous 
legislation had only protected vertebrates, mollusks, and 
crustaceans. Now, under ESA provisions, the Tennessee purple 
cornflower, San Rafael cactus, Palos Verdes blue butterfly, and 
American burying beetle joined the Florida panther and golden-cheeked 
warbler as the legal wards of the American people. Further, in the 
special case of birds, mammals, and other vertebrates, not just 
species but local races were taken under the umbrella. (Races of 
invertebrates and plants remain excluded.) Finally, not just species 
and races on the brink of extinction but those classified as 
threatened?likely to become endangered?were included. 

NUENKE: These same people would protect the races of other species 
while celebrating the destruction of human races. Wilson finds 
wisdom in this? It is an odd form of conservation that protects the 
other while destroying the self. 

WILSON: The central problem of the new century, I have argued, is how 
to raise the poor to a decent standard of living worldwide while 
preserving as much of the rest of life as possible. Both the needy 
poor and vanishing biological diversity are concentrated in the 
developing countries. The poor, some 800 million of whom live without 
sanitation, clean water, and adequate food, have little chance to 
advance in a devastated environment. Conversely, the natural 
environments where most biodiversity hangs on cannot survive the 
press of land-hungry people with nowhere else to go. 

NUENKE: Yes, this is a dilemma. But if the poor of underdeveloped 
countries were left alone to pursue a hunter-gatherer existence as 
they have done for over a million years, then their ecological niches 
would persevere as before. Likewise, the advanced nations can 
proceed with science and technology, and proceed in a different form 
of culture. Why does every race of man have to follow the same 
path? End colonialism, the International Monetary Fund, the World 
Bank, and any other program that meddles in the affairs of backward 
nations. Just leave them be, as Wilson wants others to leave other 
ecosystems alone. There is no difference between human ecosystems 
and ecosystems per se. They are all just ecosystems with humans as 
just another organism. Developing modern technological ecosystems is 
just another step in the evolutionary process. There is no need for a 
guiding hand to plan where the world is going?it just keeps on 
going. Wilson's bioethical religion is just one of many in 
competition with others. Let them worship in their naturalist 
cathedrals, as I will worship in my genetic engineering lab, creating 
the human masterpiece.