Posts Tagged ‘adaptation’

Protein Adaptation Shows Life on Early Earth Lived in a Hot, Acidic Environment
A new study reveals that a group of ancient enzymes adapted to substantial changes in ocean temperature and acidity during the last four billion years, providing evidence that life on Early Earth evolved from a much hotter, more acidic environment to the cooler, less acidic global environment today.
Read more on Newswise

Crater focus for drilling plans
A spate of deep-sea drilling projects includes plans to plumb the crater linked to the end of the dinosaurs, researchers say.
Read more on BBC News

New planning system agreed
A new system for considering planning applications was agreed by the Northern Ireland Assembly, just before it was dissolved for May’s elections. Related Stories The Business On… Bob Dudley, chief executive, BP Rates set to rise but no need to panic Is NI really good for business? Defying the poisoned flute Weighing up inflation
Read more on Belfast Telegraph

Due to uncertainties in projected climate changes and in how systems respond to those changes, adaptation options offer varying degrees of uncertainty,or risk if you will.

No-regret: Actions that make sense or are worthwhile regardless of additional or exacerbated impacts from climate change.

Opportunity: Actions that capitalize on observed or projected climatic changes. The proactive farmer who switches to a more adaptative crop, for example.

“Win-win”: Actions that provide adaptation benefits and meet other social, environmental, or economic objectives.

Low-regret: Measures with relatively low costs for which benefits under climate change scenarios are high, like factoring climate change into public land management policies.

If we had a sustainable and viable relationship with our ecology instead of a superficial unsustainable one reliant upon non-renewable resources, wouldn’t our population be better moderated because our resources would inevitably be distributed in a manner that wouldn’t enable population increases that are reliant upon resources which are both limited and unsustainable?

Any time an excess of resources is introduced to any population in nature it causes a population increase, which explains why the human population exponentially grew after the Agricultural Revolution, and the Industrial Revolution allowed for further population increases due to practices such as mechanized agriculture. The adaptation of ‘developing’ countries’ economies into economies that are internationally competitive influenced those populations to increase as well because agriculture changed from self-sustainment to surplus-oriented mono-crops; having more children became an economic benefit to them because children are a source of labor to them.

In arguing this I am advocating more indigenous lifestyles in which people have a more immanent and engaged relationship with their immediate local ecologies which, I believe, would create more favorable political and economic relationships worldwide. I think it would imply self-sufficiency and having immanent, viable, and engaged relationships with the people immediately around us instead of being so globally interdependent upon each other for trade, labor, and resources.

I think our ecology is essentially our economy, and that our political actions are directed by our economies which are determined by our ecologies. If you dislike the political climate, shouldn’t you consider that the source of political power lies in how a society relates to its actual environment? Is this a valid way to understand our ecological, economic, and political paradigms?