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Too many deer for too few people – a self-defeating study of the Highlands
George Monbiot, Guardian
I’ve read too many daft reports in the course of this job, but I don’t remember any as self-defeating as this. This morning the Scottish Gamekeepers’ Association launches its study on the economic importance of red deer to Scotland’s rural economy. It succeeds in demonstrating the opposite of what it sets out to prove.
The association represents people working for the big estates of Scotland, which are visited at certain months of the year by a small number of exceedingly rich people, who come to shoot stags or grouse.
These estates are mostly in the hands of absentee landlords. Often their ownership is channelled through trusts registered in tax havens. In some cases it’s not possible to discover who owns the trusts.
The Highlands of Scotland have one of the most concentrated landholding patterns in the world. It’s a legacy of the clearances that followed the Battle of Culloden in 1746. Small farmers and commoners were driven off their land and their homes were destroyed. Many ended up in the slums or were forced to emigrate.
The land was turned from a multi-culture into a monoculture: devoted to nothing but sheep on some estates and red deer on others, for the enrichment or exclusive enjoyment of the aristocrats who owned it.
Scarcely any employment was required to manage the sheep and deer. The Highlands, once a populated, lively, culturally diverse region, became almost void of people. Their stories were replaced, for the amusement of the new owners, by a mythologised version, like Marie-Antoinette’s Hameau de la Reine at Versailles. The ersatz culture they created, pioneered by Victoria and Albert – all tartans and claymores – is often called Balmorality.
… It was not only the people who disappeared. As sheep thronged the hills, as the number of deer – without natural predators, protected from other human hunters and fed in the winter – rose, the great Caledonian Forest, which had already retreated, began to disappear.
The sheep and deer scoured the braes and glens for seedlings, preventing the forests from regenerating. In some of the last scraps of forest there are now no trees younger than 150 years. The remaining trees are dying in their boots, unable to reproduce as a result of intensive grazing.
(2 March 2012)
Perspectives on Limits to Growth: Challenges to Building a Sustainable Planet
Smithsonian Institution
The Club of Rome and the Smithsonian Institution’s Consortium for Understanding and Sustaining a Biodiverse Planet are hosting a symposium on March 1, 2012 to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the launching of Limits to Growth, the first report to the Club of Rome published in 1972. This book was one of the earliest scholarly works to recognize that the world was fast approaching its sustainable limits. Forty years later, the planet continues to face many of the same economic, social, and environmental challenges as when the book was first published.
The morning session will start at 9:00 a.m. and will focus on the lessons of Limits to Growth. The afternoon session will begin at 1:45 p.m. and will address the difficult challenges of preserving biodiversity, adjusting to a changing climate, and solving the societal issues now facing the planet. The symposium will end with a thought-provoking panel discussion among the speakers on future steps for building a sustainable planet.
This program will be webcast live, and archived for later viewing, on this page.
Support provided by The Club of Rome, The Cynthia and George Mitchell Family Foundation, Pedro and Carol Cuatrecasas, and the Smithsonian Institution
(1 March 2012)
Suggested by EB contributor Jim Barton, who writes:
“A good companion to the Dmitri Orlov piece [A pile of straw at the bottom of the cliff], but noteworthy in its own right. I listened to the climate talk live yesterday as I was making lunch, and heard some of Neva Goodwin’s talk as well. I imagine Meadows and Rander are on video– it seems to be one huge 8 hour youtube video.”
Dennis Meadows, one of the original authors of the Limits of Growth, begins his talk at about 51:00. His talk is entitled, “It is too late for sustainable development.”
Some interesting remarks on oil at about 34:00. Ian Johnson suggests that we are in the age of non-economic oil — when the externalities of oil use outwight the internalities. -BA
Causes
studioJOHO
About that butterfly
that flaps its wings in the East
and causes a hurricane in the West
(March 2010)
Guy McPherson’s TEDx talks in Tempe, Arizona
Guy McPherson, Nature Bats Last
Guy McPherson discusses the implications of infinite growth on a finite planet.
—
I presented a TEDx talk on the campus of Arizona State University on Wednesday, 25 January 2012. The Barrett Honors College hosted, and Ashley Irvin was the facilitator. Michael Sliwa spoke before me and, as is customary for TED talks, a couple short video clips were included. All clips are presented below in the same order they appeared the night of the event. I gave an autographed and inscribed copy of Walking Away from Empire to each member of the standing-room-only audience.
(2 March 2012)
Several other videos are at the original. -BA
