One World For All (Not Just Humans)

September 17, 2009 No Comments

One World For All (Not Just Humans)

My dad gave me the Chinese version of Jiang Rong’s Wolf Totem when it was first published.  It is really a eulogy to extinct wolves in Inner Mongolia for the same reason why wolves became extinct in the Great Plain of USA back when.  I finished it in 2 days. I was thrilled that there are people like Mr. Jiang Rong in China.  The painful loss he expressed for Inner Mongolia’s grassland due to agricultural development/economic growth is like a breath of fresh air that I so needed to feel hopeful.

Around the same time I read Daniel Quinn’s Ishmael and a series of Daniel Quinn’s books after that.  They all seem to conclude that the continued existence of humans relies on the continued existence of other species like wolves and that the agriculture practice has been destructive to the coexistence between human and other inhabitants of the earth. The question I have been struggling to answer is: In pursuing the goal of eradicating poverty, where do we rank the need to protect other species and their habitats?

“Being Poor” sometimes merely means “No Excess” because one cannot afford things other than basic needs for food and shelter. Diversification of labor often meant progress because it allows producing “Excess” which in turn translates to “Profit” then to “Wealth.” China mobilized 1 billion people to produce more than their needs for the other 3 billions in the name of economic development.  Millions of Chinese got out “poverty” and China is now haled as a success.  While China’s model has been copied in India, Brazil, Mexico, and other developing countries, the destruction left by this success, however, is visible in the air, water, and land in China and across the Pacific Ocean.

When I read the story of Alatanhua http://www.wokai.org/f/contribute/b.php?id=124284544224429, my thoughts and emotions tangled up with all those books I had read and mentioned above. Below are two pictures of what Inner Mongolia would have been without agriculture practices by farmers like Alatanhua and what it is now with less than a half century of settlement by farmers.

“What was once lush native grassland is now shifting sand,” a sad fact stated on the website publishing studies in the very region where Alatanhua lives. This is exactly Mr. Jiang Rong’s message: When wolves were killed for the benefit of farmers, the ecosystem was destroyed and the lush grassland in Inner Mongolia disappeared. The devastation is so far reaching that not only Beijing is worried

about sand/dust storms every year but the dust from Mongolia showed up on the peak of Colorado Rockies.

In Ishmael and My Ishmael, Daniel Quinn argued that fighting famine (and poverty) caused by human settlement and agricultural activities will only prolong human existence at the expense of the entire ecosystem. When animals could not find food in their living quarters, they move or die.  So do humans.  Could the selfishness of trying to prevent others moving into our living quarters be the

reason why we want to help those in the distressed living environment? If not, should we think about at what and whose expense we are being generous and giving? Producing foods to feed more than ourselves has been destructive. But if we produce just enough to feed ourselves, are we condemning those who are hungry to die? Unlike the extinction of other species like dinosaurs, the potential extinction of human will bring the end to all other species as we continue to destroy ecosystem to prolong our existence (and keep on increasing human population at the expense of other species).  What to make of that?!

Right now, all I want to figure out is what I can do to help Alatanhua if I don’t want to make a loan to keep her plowing the land to grow corns?  In our existing economic model, by which all productions are specialized to maximize the output, she cannot produce food and grow materials for her clothes and resist the temptation of modern amenities and man made wonders like TV, cellphones, and cars. She will have to produce excess quantity of something in order to have money to exchange for things she does not produce (spices, meat, clothes, TV, etc). Could she be paid to grow grass and trees?

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