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By Root 1038 0

is not how much resource consumption the global ecosystem can or cannot absorb. It’s moot to wonder whether the world should optimally hold nine billion people or nine million, colonize the sea, or all move to Yakutsk. No doubt we humans will survive anything, even if polar bears and Arctic cod do not. Perhaps we could support nine hundred billion if we choose a world with no large animals, pod apartments, genetically engineered algae to eat, and desalinized toilet water to drink. Or perhaps nine hundred million if we choose a wilder planet, generously restocked with the creatures of our design. To me, the more important question is not of capacity, but of desire: What kind of world do we want?

NOTES

1 The October 2008 median home price in Los Angeles County, California, was $355,000. Los Angeles Times, November 19, 2008.

2 Personal communication with Marsha Branigan, Manager, Wildlife Management Environment and Natural Resources, Inuvik, NWT, December 4, 2007.

3 “Hairy Hybrid: Half Grizzly, Half Polar Bear,” MSNBC World Environment, May 11, 2006.

4 Of particular relevance to the pizzly story is the recent discovery that transient grizzly bears are now regular visitors to Canada’s Arctic Archipelago, and a small but viable population may be establishing itself in or around Melville Island. See J. P. Doupé, J. H. England, M. Furze, D. Paetkau, “Most Northerly Observation of a Grizzly Bear (Ursus arctos) in Canada: Photographic and DNA Evidence from Melville Island, Northwest Territories,” Arctic 60, no. 3 (September 2007): 271-276. The second hybrid animal was shot April 8, 2010, near the Canadian town of Ulukhaktok. Genetic tests confirmed it was the offspring of a polar-grizzly mother and a grizzly father. “Bear shot in N.W.T. was grizzly-polar hyprid,” CBC News, April 30, 2010, http://www.cbc.ca/canada/north/story/2010/04/30/nwt-grolar-bear.html?ref-rsss; also “Grizzy-polar bear cross confirmed,” Vancouver Sun, May 3, 2010; “Tests confirm offspring of hybrid polar-grizzly bear;” CTV News, May 2, 2010.

5 6.1 km/yr average range shift from a quantitative assessment examining historical data for >1,046 species. C. Parmesan, G. Yohe, “A Globally Coherent Fingerprint of Climate Change Impacts across Natural Systems,” Nature 421 (2003): 37-42. Springtime phenological shifts averaged 4.2 days earlier per decade between 32° and 49° N latitude, and 5.5 days earlier per decade from 50° to 72° N latitude. T. L. Root et al., “Fingerprints of Global Warming on Wild Animals and Plants,” Nature 42 (2003): 57-60.

6 In February 2010 successive blizzards buried Washington, D.C., and were followed by snowstorms that closed schools from Texas to the Florida Panhandle to the coasts of Georgia and South Carolina, whitening places that hadn’t seen snow in a decade or more. Classes were canceled in Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Mississippi. M. Nelson, “Rare snowflakes start falling from Miss. to Fla.,” Associated Press, February 12, 2010, http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5glTiXzN068z_xAn_fl4DY8L-fpnQD9DQT2J00. The collection of storms was dubbed “Snowpocalypse” and “Snowmageddon” by pundits, e.g., S. Bezrob, “Covering the Snowpocalypse,” FoxNews .com, February 10, 2010, http://liveshots.blogs.foxnews.com/2010/02/10/covering-the-snowpocalypse/?test=latestnews. Meanwhile, snow sport events at the Vancouver Winter Olympics were mired in rain, e.g., S. Almasy, “4,000 to miss out on snowboard cross because of rain,” CNN.com, February 15, 2010, http://www.cnn.com/2010/SPORT/02/15/snowcross.refund/?hpt=T3.

7 This is an actual supply chain. For an in-depth examination of the globalization of the tomato, see Bill Pritchard, David Burch, Agri-Food Globalization in Perspective: International Restructuring in the Processing Tomato Industry (Burlington, Vt.: Ashgate Publishing, 2003), 308 pp.

8 G. A. Strobel et al., “The Production of Myco-diesel Hydrocarbons and Their Derivatives by the Endophytic Fungus Gliocladium roseum,” Microbiology 154 (2008): 3319-3328, DOI:10.1099/mic.0.2008/022186-0.

9 S. Pinker, “A History