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THE
DEVELOPING WORLD
AA:
My impression is that the developed world, the world that
I mainly live in, is responsible for most of the destruction
of species.
PR:
The population of the United States has doubled since 1943.
The 135 million people that we've added since then are consuming
at 30 or 40 times the rate of a person in rural Brazil or
rural Indonesia. This means that the consumption and the waste
and the pollution associated with those 135 million people
is nearly equal to the entire population of the developing
world. We often don't think about that, but it's true.
The
population of the U.S. has doubled since 1943. These additional
135 million people are consuming at 30 or 40 times the
rate of a person in rural Brazil or rural Indonesia.
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We
need to think a lot more about conserving energy and other
resources in the United States and in other industrialized
countries. Which doesn't mean we need to go around in sackcloth,
but it means we need to be a lot more conservative about the
ways in which we use resources. If developing countries will
follow their own paths of development and learn more efficient
ways of doing things, rather than simply copying us, they
will be inventing many things that we would want to buy from
them.
AA:
And yet there seems to be an urge to develop any way you can.
I have a friend who stood with a very bright guy on a plane
in Africa and said, 'What do you envision here 20 years from
now? What do you hope for?' And he said, 'Smog,' because he
wanted everything that goes with smog.
PR:
Well, think about paintings that came out in Victorian times
glorifying slagheaps and smokestacks and so forth. It is an
image of progress. Human beings regard an image of progress
as clearing forests, clearing prairies, building cities and
the like, but ultimately, the roots are always in natural
productivity. And the extent to which we understand that is
the extent to which we'll really be successful.
CONSEQUENCES
OF EXTINCTION
AA:
Why should we worry about things going extinct?
Most
of us believe at some level that we have an obligation
to save the products of 3.8 billion years of evolution
on Earth.
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PR:
The world needs to be sustainable. If you look at what's happened
during the last 50 years, we've wasted 25% of the topsoil,
we've lost 20% of the agricultural land, we've added 1/6 of
the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, and we've cut down 1/3
of the forests that were around 50 years ago. We've depleted
the stratospheric ozone layer, increasing our risk of skin
cancer. That's not sustainable. The world has only so much
to offer. What we're really talking about is what kind of
a world we want our children and grandchildren to live in.
It's either a diverse, nourishing, healthy, prosperous, productive,
interesting, beautiful place to live, or it's a dull, homogenous,
uninteresting place to live. That's the most basic answer.
It's not that we have any choice about attaining sustainability.
It's what is the world going to look like when we do attain
sustainability.
AA:
Is it possible to make it clear to somebody in Utah that it
matters to them if the last elephant dies in Africa?
PR:
Whether the last elephant dies in Africa matters morally,
in the first instance. Most of us believe at some level that
we have an obligation to save the products of 3.8 billion
years of evolution on Earth, and that the enhancement to our
lives of knowing that we live on an Earth with all of this
diversity in it is exceedingly important.
But
beyond that, we use biodiversity to support our lives. We're
just beginning to understand how life differs, how it works
and how it evolved. It seems an awfully good idea, whether
we're talking practically or morally, to save as much of that
diversity as possible, to understand it as well as we can
and to keep it around for our descendents to enjoy, to study,
and simply to have there as a resource for their future.
Photos:Conservation
International
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