“After hearing the arguments of IFFA representatives, we find that none of these objections apply to them.
“Similarly, our broad stand against hunting was based on the scarcity of wildlife in comparison with the chief predator, humankind. But this does not hold where hunters are few, responsible, and sportsmanly, and where the prey species is renewable.
“Contrary to our initial expectations, we have determined that IFFA duck hunters have been among the most ardent supporters of conservation, spending millions to buy up and preserve wetlands, pursuing polluters and poachers, and regulating their own activities admirably. Any complete ban on hunting would, we estimate, lead to catastrophic loss of remaining migratory routes. The church therefore rules that IFFA is beneficial to society and to Gaia, and grants its blessing.”
In fact, there are precedents for this surprising action. Thirty years ago, for instance, the church campaigned against the’ selling off of many obsolete military bases, which they deemed better preserved in that state than sold to be developed as commercial property.
To today’s announcement, however, a spokesper for No-Flesh had only this comment:
“This takes NorA ChuGa hypocrisy to new heights. Killing is killing and murder is murder. All animals have rights, too. Let IFFA and their new allies beware. What they do unto others may yet be visited on them!”
When asked if this was a threat of violence, the spokesper declined elaboration.
• BIOSPHERE
Nelson Grayson was having trouble grasping “cooperation” and “competition.” The two words were defined as opposites, and yet his teacher claimed they were essentially the same thing.
Moreover, at some deep level Nelson felt he’d secretly suspected it all along.
“I’m still confused, Professor,” he admitted at their next meeting, though it cost him to say it. Each time Dr. Wolling granted one of these sessions, he feared she was finally going to give up on his slowness, his need for palpable examples at every point of theory.
She looked pale, sitting across the table from him. That might just be because she spent so much time with those enigmatic strangers, performing mysterious surveys in the abandoned gold mine below ark four. Still, Nelson worried about her health.
Frail she might seem, but her gaze was unwavering. “Why don’t you start off where you do understand, Nelson?”
He quashed an urge to consult his note plaque. Once, Dr. Wolling had slapped his hand when he did that too often. “Respect your own thoughts!” she had snapped.
“All right,” he breathed. “The Gaia theory says Earth stays a good place for life because life itself keeps changing the planet. Otherwise, it would’ve gone into a permanent ice age, like Mars. Or a runaway, um, greenhouse instability — losing all its water like Venus did.”
“More likely Venus than Mars, actually,” she agreed. “Earth is rather close to its sun for a water world, near the inner edge of the habitable zone. So how did we avoid a Venus-style trap?”
For this he had a ready answer, the standard one. “Early algae and bacteria helped ocean chemistry take carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. They bound the carbon into their skeletons, which, uh, sedimented to the sea floor. So the atmosphere got clearer—”
“More transparent to heat radiation.”
“Yeah. So heat could escape, and the oceans could stay wet even as the sun got hotter. In fact, the air temperature’s stayed roughly the same for four billion years.”
“Including ice ages?”
Nelson shrugged. “Trivial fluctuations.”
He liked the phrase. Liked the way it rolled off the tongue. He had practiced it last night, hoping there’d be a chance to use ;t. “Like the heating everybody’s so worried about these days. Sure it’s making terrible problems, and a big die-back may be coming… including maybe us. But that’s not so unusual. In a million years or so, the balance will swing back.”
Jen Wolling’s nod seemed to say he was both right and wrong. Right that the greenhouse effect of the twenty-first century wasn’t the first upward jolt in Earth’s thermostat. But perhaps wrong that this excursion was like all the others.
Keep to the topic! He reminded himself. That was the problem with intellectual talk. It spun out so many sidetracks, you never got where you were going unless you used discipline. As if “intellectual” and “discipline” were words he had ever imagined applying to himself, only six months ago!
“So,” Dr. Wolling said, placing one hand on the other. “Life kept changing Earth’s atmosphere in just the right way to maintain a suitable environment for itself. Was this on purpose?”
Nelson felt briefly miffed she’d try to snare him so. Then he realized she was only being a good teacher and giving him an easy one. “That’d be the strong Gaia hypothesis,” he answered. “It says the homeo… um, homeostasis… life’s balancing act… is all part of a plan. The religious Gaian people—” Nelson chose his words carefully out of respect for the Ndebele ” — say Earth’s history proves there’s a god, or goddess, who designed it all to happen this way.
“Then there’s the middle Gaia hypothesis… where people say the Earth behaves like a living organism. That it has all the properties of a living creature. But they don’t say it was actually planned. If the organism has any consciousness, it’s us.”
“Yes, go on,” she prompted. “And what’s the standard scientific view?”
“That’s the weak Gaia theory. It says natural processes just interact in a predictable way with things like oceans and volcanoes… calcium runoff from continents and such… so carbon dioxide accumulates in the atmosphere when it’s cold, but when things get too hot the gas is pulled out, letting heat escape again.”
“It’s a process, then.”
“Yeah, but one with all sorts of built-in stabilities. Not just in temperature. Which is why so many people see a plan.”
“Indeed. But I only made you review all that because it bears on your question. How can competition be looked at as a close cousin to cooperation?
“Think about the Precambrian Era, Nelson, two to three billion years ago, when green algae in the ocean began pulling all that carbon out of the air in earnest. Tell me, what did they pour forth in its place?”
“Oxygen,” he answered quickly. “Which is transparent…”
She waved one hand. “Forget that for a moment. Think about the biological effects. Remember, oxygen burns. It was—”
“A poison!” Nelson interrupted. “Yeah. The old bacteria were Anna…”
“Anaerobic. Yes. They couldn’t deal with such a corrosive gas, even though they were the ones putting it there! It was a classic case of learning to live in your own waste products.”
Nelson blinked. “Then… then there must have been pressure to adapt.”
Dr. Wolling’s smile transmitted more than just satisfaction. The encouragement both warmed and confused Nelson.
“Exactly,” she said. “A crisis loomed for Gaia. Oxygen pollution threatened to end it all. Then some species stumbled onto a correct biochemical solution — how to take advantage of the new high-energy environment. Today, nearly everything you see around you is descended from those adaptable ones. The few surviving anaerobes are exiled to brewery vats and sea bottoms.”
Nelson nodded, eager to keep that expression in her eyes. “So Gaia went on changing and getting better—”