Readers may remember E.O. Wilson, father of sociobiology (which got rebranded as evolutionary psychology). He recently stirred controversy by switching sides on his fellow evolutionary biologists, deciding that his group selection theory was wrong and natural selection can do it all.
His current idea is to set aside half the planet for wildlife.
From The Smithsonian Magazine:
Wilson recently calculated that the only way humanity could stave off a mass extinction crisis, as devastating as the one that killed the dinosaurs 65 million years ago, would be to set aside half the planet as permanently protected areas for the ten million other species. “Half Earth,” in other words, as I began calling it—half for us, half for them. A version of this idea has been in circulation among conservationists for some time.
“It’s been in my mind for years,” Wilson told me, “that people haven’t been thinking big enough—even conservationists. Half Earth is the goal, but it’s how we get there, and whether we can come up with a system of wild landscapes we can hang onto. I see a chain of uninterrupted corridors forming, with twists and turns, some of them opening up to become wide enough to accommodate national biodiversity parks, a new kind of park that won’t let species vanish.”
We can take it from Wilson’s half, but for sure not mine. And for sure not from my Indian foster families’ halves either! – O’Leary for News
Note: Yes, he is also the one who began one of his books, “Dear Pastor,” rashly presuming an acquaintance with people he clearly looks down on (and—be it noted—would deprive of their homes, given a chance). Sure, he hopes there can be a workaround, but …
Look, no one expects Joe Job-in-Science to wonder, let alone the “aren’t I good?” girls, but at some point, wouldn’t you think at least some commentators would start putting two and two together about some of these people?
I mean, how long are we supposed to meekly put up with the nonsense that, oh well, he is a gentleman, not like Darwin’s Rottweiler? That’s the only standard he has to meet, in order to be this grey eminence we should all listen to? He’s better than the guy Trig Palin has been ordered to be polite to? That’s our standard now?
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