From: IN%"llurch@networking.stanford.edu" "Rich Graves" 16-JAN-1996 00:12:29.92
Morality has nothing to do with it. It's the speed of the evolution. If you walk across the straits, the system has the time to react and restore a dynamic equilibrium. If you immediately release a new species with no natural predators, the system is shattered, and it might not survive. This is not to say that ecosystems and societies are static -- they evolve constantly, displaying unpredictable punctuated equilibrium (Steven J. Gould was right, Edmund Burke and Karl Marx were wrong).
A few things from the biological point of view (and I _will_ try to bring in a bit of cypherpunks relevance). First, if the ecosystem were as unstable as the Greens in the 1960's and later kept predicting (Silent Spring and all that), it would have collapsed already. Look at how many species we've taken out already. Second, almost all ecosystems that are that vulnerable (to extinction of a keystone species or to import of something that starts eating) are small ones that don't really matter in the long run. For one thing, the more biodiversity _within_ an ecosystem exists, the more likely it is that something from outside (or something removed from within) will have a control (or a replacement). In other words, there are fewer and fewer true keystone species as the internal biodiversity of an ecosystem goes up. ------------- [...]
Cute cuddly seals and frieldly dolphins and teddy bears get "sympathy" among mainstrean "environmentalists," and the Sierra Club and World Wildlife Federation calendars raise a lot of money, but it's the plants and bugs and bacteria that are really important. Elephants and blue whales look big and important to us, but they're really inconsequential in the larger scheme of biodiversity. They could go extinct and the planet doesn't really care. But kill the blue-green algae and the trees, and we're all dead.
The algae? Sure, they're important... they're also thoroughly likely to not be affected significantly. One, they've got so many things acting on them in the first place. Two, there is quite a bit of diversity within the algal group. What takes out one strain (I have always had my doubts about "species" with mitotically reproducing organisms) is unlikely to take out the rest... and they mutate quickly enough to give rise to more strains pretty rapidly when one "niche" is freed up. The trees, on the other hand, are in the classification of "nice to look at but not really neccessary," like the elephants. They're a great carbon _sink_, but they don't really do that much CO2 recycling. And even if they were... we can replant trees very quickly. It's the rain forests and the old growth forests that are hard to replace as such. Cypherpunks relevance? Well, digital cash and encrypted messaging make it a lot easier to do the type of deals you're talking about... they also make it harder for people to place irrelevant prerequisites (like "not from rain forest land") on their purchases. So far, most of the anti-cypherpunks arguments have come from the conservative side. Be prepared for some from the liberal environmentalists (as well as the liberal socialists who want to keep lots of tax dollars flowing). -Allen