I want that one! I want that one! I want that one!

When the finite seems infinite.

I ended up doing other stuff yesterday, hence no post. All right, too much UT3. Anyway, the first of the dilemmas in environmental ethics is about that symbol of extinct, the dodo, which sailors would catch as food. They discovered that if one of the bird was caught, its cries would attract others. There must’ve been a huge population of dodos on Mauritius which must’ve seemed infinite to the ravenous sons of the briny.

The only problem is that if you remove something faster than it can replace itself, then it’s going to disappear. If you don’t want that to happen, then you need to start farming it. If someone had thought to breed dodos, then we might still be enjoying dodo burgers today. (Actually, I thought I’d read somewhere that dodos weren’t exactly good to eat. If it wasn’t for hunger, there’d be a lot of things any reasonable human would refuse to eat and would never have tried.)

There seems to be something which might be called Apparent Infinity Syndrome. We mistake inconceivable quantities for a boundless supply, and treat them accordingly. There may seem to be endless numbers of fish in the sea, but there aren’t. I suppose there might once have been huge pods of whales, but I find it hard to imagine.

I also find it hard to understand why the people who depend on these animals for their livelihoods keep taking them even when it must be obvious that there are no longer plenty of fish in the sea. And here’s something I’ve never thought of before. If there were plenty of dodos when the Dutch found Mauritius, in which the locals showed no interest, then why didn’t they conclude that these things weren’t good to eat? And how was it that they kept coming back for them?

Without some point of reference such as a cloud or visible land, it was hard to tell whether the boat was moving at all. The sea, otherwise restless, had become lethargic. The captain sat at the stern with his hand on the rudder which served little purpose apart from symbolising his impotent authority. He had only been thinking that morning how fortunate he had been to have such a hard-working, well-disciplined, efficient crew. Knowing that provisions were getting low, he had remarked to the first mate that they should stop off in Mauritius for some dodos. As the captain sat alone in the boat, he wondered to himself, “What’s so bad about Mauritius?” And then he realised – the dodos.

Tomorrow’s dilemma is about the folly of causing ecosystems to become unbalanced.