Michael Crichton - State Of Fear

"Of course," Kenner said. "But I must admit I'm a little confused about the philosophy"

"Hey," she said, suddenly angry. "I live in a milieu where I have to keep up a certain standard. It's necessary for my husband's business, andanyway, where do you live?"

"I have an apartment in Cambridge."

"How big?"

"Nine hundred square feet. I do not own a car. I fly coach."

"I don't believe you," she said.

"I think you'd better," Bradley said. "This guy knows what he's"

"Shut up, Ted," Ann said. "You're drunk."

"Not yet, I'm not," he said, looking wounded.

"I'm not judging you, Ann," Kenner said quietly. "I know you're a dedicated advocate. I'm just trying to figure out what your real position is on the environment."

"My position is human beings are heating the planet and poisoning the planet and we have a moral obligation to the biosphereto all the plants and animals that are being destroyed, and to the unborn generations of human beingsto keep these catastrophic changes from taking place." She sat back, nodding her head.

"So our moral obligation is to othersother plants, animals, and other people."

"Exactly."

"We need to do what is in their interest?"

"What is in the interest of all of us."

"Conceivably their interest is not the same as ours. Conflict of interest is the usual case."

"Every creature has a right to live on the planet."

"Surely you don't believe that," Kenner said.

"I do. I'm not speciesist. Every living creature."

"Even the malaria parasite?"

"Well, it is part of nature."

"Then do you oppose the elimination of polio and smallpox? They were part of nature, too."

"Well, I would have to say it's part of the arrogant pattern of mankind, changing the world to suit his purposes. A testosterone-driven impulse, not shared by women"

"You didn't answer me," Kenner said. "Do you oppose the elimination of polio and smallpox?"

"You're playing with words."

"Hardly. Is changing the world to suit one's purposes unnatural?"

"Of course. It is interfering with nature."

"Ever seen a termite mound? A beaver dam? Those creatures change the environment dramatically, affecting many other creatures. Are they interfering with nature?"

"The world is not in danger," she said, "from termite mounds."

"Arguably it is. The total weight of termites exceeds the total weight of all the humans in the world. A thousand times greater, in fact. Do you know how much methane termites produce? And methane is a more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide."

"I can't continue this," Ann said. "You enjoy arguing. I don't. I just want to make the world a better place. I'm going to go read a magazine now." She went to the front of the plane and sat down, her back to Kenner.

Sarah stayed where she was. "Her intentions are good," she said.

"And her information is bad," Kenner said. "A prescription for disaster."

Ted Bradley roused himself. He had watched the debate between Kenner and Ann. He liked Ann. He was pretty sure he had gone to bed with her; when he was drinking, he sometimes couldn't remember, but he had a vaguely fond memory of Ann, and he assumed that was the reason for it.

"I think you're being harsh," Bradley said, in his presidential tone. "Why should you call someone like Ann a prescription for disaster?' She cares very much about these issues. She has devoted her life to them, really. She cares."

"So what?" Kenner said. "Caring is irrelevant. Desire to do good is irrelevant. All that counts is knowledge and results. She doesn't have the knowledgeand, worse, she doesn't know it. Human beings don't know how to do the things she believes ought to be done."

"Like what?"

"Like managing the environment. We don't know how to do that."

"What are you talking about?" Bradley said, throwing his hands in the air. "This is nonsense. Of course we can manage the environment."

"Really? Do you know anything about the history of Yellowstone Park? The first national park?"

"I've been there."

"That's not what I asked."

"Could you just get to the point?" Bradley said. "It's pretty late for Q-and-A, Professor. You know what I mean?"

"All right, then," Kenner said. "I'll tell you."

Yellowstone Park, he explained, was the first wilderness to be set aside as a natural preserve anywhere in the world. The region around the Yellowstone River in Wyoming had long been recognized for its wondrous scenic beauty. Lewis and Clark sang its praises. Artists like Bierstadt and Moran painted it. And the new Northern Pacific Railroad wanted a scenic attraction to draw tourists west. So in 1872, in part because of railroad pressure, President Ulysses Grant set aside two million acres and created Yellowstone National Park.

There was only one problem, unacknowledged then and later. No one had any experience trying to preserve wilderness. There had never been any need to do it before. And it was assumed to be much easier than it proved to be.

When Theodore Roosevelt visited the park in 1903, he saw a landscape teeming with game. There were thousands of elk, buffalo, black bear, deer, mountain lions, grizzlies, coyotes, wolves, and bighorn sheep. By that time there were rules in place to keep things as they were. Soon after that, the Park Service was formed, a new bureaucracy whose sole job was to maintain the park in its original condition.

Yet within ten years, the teeming landscape that Roosevelt saw was gone forever. And the reason for this was the park managerscharged with keeping the park in pristine conditionhad taken a series of steps that they thought were in the best interest of preserving the park and its animals. But they were wrong.

"Well," Bradley said, "our knowledge has increased with time amp;"

"No, it hasn't," Kenner said. "That's my point. It's a perpetual claim that we know more today, and it's not borne out by what actually happened."

Which was this: the early park managers mistakenly believed that elk were about to become extinct. So they tried to increase the elk herds within the park by eliminating predators. To that end, they shot and poisoned all the wolves in the park. And they prohibited Indians from hunting in the park, though Yellowstone was a traditional hunting ground.

Protected, the elk herds exploded, and ate so much of certain trees and grasses that the ecology of the area began to change. The elk ate the trees that the beavers used to make dams, so the beavers vanished. That was when the managers discovered beavers were vital to the overall water management of the region.

When the beavers disappeared, the meadows dried up; the trout and otter vanished; soil erosion increased; and the park ecology changed even further.

By the 1920s it had become abundantly clear there were too many elk, so the rangers began to shoot them by the thousands. But the change in plant ecology seemed to be permanent; the old mix of trees and grasses did not return.

It also became increasingly clear that the Indian hunters of old had exerted a valuable ecological influence on the park lands by keeping down the numbers of elk, moose, and bison. This belated recognition came as part of a more general understanding that native Americans had strongly shaped the "untouched wilderness" that the first white men sawor thought they were seeingwhen they first arrived in the New World. The "untouched wilderness" was nothing of the sort. Human beings on the North American continent had exerted a huge influence on the environment for thousands of yearsburning plains grasses, modifying forests, thinning specific animal populations, and hunting others to extinction.

In retrospect, the rule forbidding Indians from hunting was seen as a mistake. But it was just one of many mistakes that continued to be made in an unbroken stream by park managers. Grizzlies were protected, then killed off. Wolves were killed off, then brought back. Animal research involving field study and radio collars was halted, then resumed after certain species were declared endangered. A policy of fire prevention was instituted, with no understanding of the regenerative effects of fire. When the policy was finally reversed, thousands of acres burned so hotly that the ground was sterilized, and the forests did not grow back without reseeding. Rainbow trout were introduced in the 1970s, soon killing off the native cutthroat species.