Timothy Wilken, MD writes: In modern representative democracies,
we find the majority rule mechanism used to select our representatives,
to make decisions within committees and to make decisions within the
legislative bodies.

In the United States, we elect one president, 100
Senators and 435 Congressman. As of 2000, this is one President for ~276 million
Americans. There are two Senators for each state. Senatorial
representation would vary from one Senator for ~16 million Californians
down to one Senator for ~350,000 Delawareans. The members of the first
House of Representatives were elected on the basis of 1 representative
for every 30,000 inhabitants, but at least 1 for each state. At present
the size of the House is fixed at 435 members, elected on the basis of
1 representative for about 500,000 inhabitants.

Our representatives do
not even know us. If any Congressman met with 10 of his constituents
every day for 365 days a year, it would take over 137 years for him
just to meet all of them. And Congressmen are only elected for two year
terms.

If our Congressman don’t even know us how can they represent us?

So if we carefully examine modern representative democracy scientifically, we discover it is an oligarchy. In other words, we are ruled by the few.

When we go to the poles to elect a President, we are simply electing the leader of the few who rule.
Majority rule democracy ends for we the people the moment we exit the
voting booth. And, our elected leader will have no need of our opinion
for four years. (10/14/08)
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Arthur Noll writes: There are several related principles of sustainable food production, but probably the most central, is not to use resources faster than they renew. A common example I’ve used is that if you want to cut one 50-year-old tree a year, you need to have 50 trees growing of that kind, from seedling to 49 years old. As long as you have all these trees growing, you can cut one 50-year-old tree a year indefinitely, and sustain the forest in its present size.

That might seem more important for forestry than food production, but when we look at the problems of maintaining fertile soil in many areas of the world, trees become a logical source of food, as they produce fruit, nuts, and fodder for animals. The plant nutrients of soil are a resource, than can easily be used faster than they will renew under the plow. Perennial plants like trees can help to solve this problem, as well as reducing needed energy use to pull cultivating tools. Which is once more, following the principle of not using resources faster than they renew, to avoid using too much energy, whether from fossil fuel, or anything else.

Many other factors come into play as we consider trees. Many other things will kill trees, animals like deer, goats, beavers, and diseases and insects and fire and weather events. The animals represent valuable resources themselves, and even if they are not directly valuable to us, they often are indirectly valuable in that they are vital parts of the ecosystem in which they live. For the ecosystem to sustain itself, we can’t use them faster than they replace themselves.

Fortunately, trees will usually produce very large numbers of seeds, and if a seedling gets established and grows beyond the reach of browsing animals, it is not so vulnerable to being killed by them. Mature trees are also usually less vulnerable to wind and fire. Too many animals will prevent any seedlings from growing up, and the forest will soon have an uneven generational pattern: too many older trees, no seedlings or saplings. Yet if too few mature trees are killed, the forest floor may not get enough light to grow vegetation to support many browsing animals at all.

Very often, we can find a tree that is dying or dead from these other factors, and still get good use from it. This looks good, we might think to just be scavengers, but we want to remember, though, that other animals are also scavengers of dying and dead wood, and that they can be valuable to the overall health of the forest. Woodpeckers dig holes in dead trees, looking for insects burrowing in the wood, these holes can be nesting sites for birds that keep insects in check. Whatever we do needs to be considered, all activities need to be kept in balance. The tops of dead trees provide nesting sites, as well as perches for birds of prey.

Trees tend to follow secessions, where one sort of tree grows best in a certain set of circumstances, and when it dies or is killed, the circumstances are changed and a different variety will do better.

How can we possibly keep track of all these factors? It isn’t impossible. We have needs, too, and we belong. Ideally, we can take our share of what grows, and we can watch for things that are getting out of balance and work to restore that balance. (10/14/08)
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BBC Environmental Science – The world’s largest gathering of conservation scientists and NGOs have been meeting in Barcelona to ask: “What price do we put on nature?”

In these extraordinary times of credit crunch and climate change, the world feels hitched to an uncertain roller coaster ride where we don’t know what to value any more. What investors thought was safe as houses has turned out to be nothing more than the property of the poor disguised in a silver wrapper, enabling bankers to pocket billions.

In a curious way, all this chaos may turn out to be a good thing because it will force the world to ask: “Are we creating wealth that’s worth having?”

A wine broker said to me recently: “The thing about investing in a first growth is, the more the world drinks a good vintage, the more valuable it gets.” So could disappearing forests one day be a safer investment than houses. …

In global markets today, rainforests are worth more dead than
alive. Poor and often opaque governments, with little to sell, offer
their rainforests to raise revenue, attracting largely risk capital
with strings attached.

The only way to do this is to convert rainforests into
something else, usually timber, beef, soy or palm oil that Westerners,
and now prosperous Asians, have a burgeoning appetite for.

Most deforestation today is enterprise driven and funded by
hedgefunds, pension funds, and other sources of liquidity from capitals
often far from, and blind to, the forests they are destroying. Billions in green dollars end up on investors’ balance sheets,
but there is a catch: billions of tonnes of carbon dioxide goes up in
smoke from the trees burned in the process - and the risk to everyone
is building up to a climate credit crisis.

The timetable on this issue is tight. In December 2006, at the
UN in New York, Papua New Guinea invited rich countries to pay poor
ones to stop deforestation. In May 2007, London’s Independent newspaper blew the whistle
on “the hidden cause of global warming”, the destruction of the world’s
rainforests. (10/14/08)
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BBC Biological Science — You go to a region where there is a strong chance that certain species will wink out of existence, and you get your hands on a piece of land where they still live.

In Colombia, a link with two other groups, the American Bird Conservancy and ProAves, enabled the purchase of a 1,100-hectare site. Then, money went in for rangers and a bit of infrastructure and training. For an initial investment measured in tens of thousands of dollars, the last remnants of a few species can be saved.

In Sri Lanka, the charity struck luck when the government bought patches of forest on an old tea plantation. Any conservation deal has a much higher chance of success when the government and the local community are on board.

Mike Hoffman, another scientist with joint IUCN and CI accreditation, highlights the value of meetings that have brought together expertise from the global and local levels.

“In some of the sessions we’ve arranged, there’s a difference of 50 years between the oldest and youngest people in the group,” he says. “And you can just imagine the information they release, whether the frogs are in a protected area, whether they adapt well or are totally dependent on a pristine forest biome, whether they’ve been undergoing rapid decline.”

By the time the Amphibian Conservation Summit convened in Washington, the Global Amphibian Assessment had already shown the parlous state of the creatures: one-third were on the threatened species list and 165 species were already believed to be extinct.

An estimated 500 species, it was estimated, could not be conserved in the wild. The only solution was to take them out of their habitat, put them somewhere safe, and wait until conditions returned to something like normal on their home patch. This is where Amphibian Ark comes to the fore. A joint initiative between IUCN and the World Association of Zoos and Aquaria (Waza), it numbers many zoos and other institutions that are prepared to give shelter to the endangered animals.

It is not as simple as it might sound. Habitat, moisture, temperature, humidity and prey have to be maintained; water has to be kept free of disease.

It is far from an ideal solution. Recent research demonstrates that some animals lose their robustness and resilience in a captive breeding environment as natural selection stops winnowing, and the range of environmental conditions is constrained.

But with species such as the Wyoming toad (Anaxyrus baxteri), whose natural waters are infested with the lethal fungus Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis, it is at present the only option.

The Atlanta Zoo has even built a portable captive breeding kit facility that can be shipped and used on site. (10/14/08)
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BBC Medical Science — For middle aged and older people at least, using the internet helps boost brain power, research suggests.

A University of California Los Angeles team found searching the web stimulates centres in the brain that control decision-making and complex reasoning. The researchers say this might even help to counter-act the age-related physiological changes that cause the brain to slow down. The study features in the American Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry.

As the brain ages, a number of changes occur, including shrinkage and reductions in cell activity, which can impact on performance. It has long been thought that activities which keep the brain active, such as crossword puzzles, may help minimise the impact - and the latest study suggests that surfing the web can be added to the list.

Lead researcher Professor Gary Small said: “The study results are encouraging, that emerging computerized technologies may have physiological effects and potential benefits for middle-aged and older adults. Internet searching engages complicated brain activity, which may help exercise and improve brain function.”

The latest study was based on 24 volunteers aged between 55 and 76. Half were experienced internet users, the rest were not. Each volunteer underwent a brain scan while performing web searches and book-reading tasks.

Both types of task produced evidence of significant activity in regions of the brain controlling language, reading, memory and visual abilities. However, the web search task produced significant additional activity in separate areas of the brain which control decision-making and complex reasoning - but only in those who were experienced web users. (10/14/08)
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