If you can’t beat them, join them

By Joern Fischer

In the 1980s, conservation biologists wrote about the intrinsic value of biodiversity. — Now, conservation “scientists” write about payments for ecosystem services.

In the 1970s, excessive consumption was seen as a key problem for sustainability. — Now, leading ecologists analyse how to best meet global demand for ever more resources without thinking to question if all demand must always be met.

In the first half of the 20th century, ecologists used t-tests but understood their local systems. — Now, ecologists do complicated meta-analyses and produce global maps depicting systems they have never been to (risking a loss of the culture of ecology).

The intuition and morality of people like Aldo Leopold or Rachel Carson has been replaced with an understanding that we need hard evidence to convince those in charge (whoever they are, and whether or not hard evidence is actually what’s missing … see