[1] Nature's basic method of utilizing abundance is recycling. Most of the millions of pollen grains blowing away from the male catkins of a birch will not land, as they are designed for, on a stigma of the female flower of another birch. Instead they will be carried to some spot where they seem totally out of place and useless.But his is not deliberate or reckless waste. The stray pollen will eventually rot and become food for microorganisms that in their turn might nourish young birch trees. So the wisdom of Nature seems to be not to waste anything but use it again as material for new life. So far, man has found it difficult to accept that as model for his ways of handling natural resources. His awkward answers to the question of what to do with nuclear waste are the most telling example, I think. But EJ is nevertheless right. The times are past when the Club of Rome, the Greens or Greenpeace were minority groups listened to by a few, and at least in theory many people seem now willing to accept Nature's ways as models for our way of husbanding the dwindling resources of our planet. The equipment of plants and animals is also taken more seriously in other ways than just the utilization of abundance. The new bio-tech discipline of bionics has further advanced than EJ seems to envision in this passage. It undertakes for example -I may be allowed for quoting research work that is going here at Bonn¾, to imitate the surface structure of the lotus leaf which is extraordinarily liquid repellent. The outcome will be, as it is hoped, paints for buildings and cars on which dust, dirt and soot will never settle because their different surface structure will allow the next rain to wash away anything that would cling to conventional surfaces. But EJ is not in the mood here to ponder what ideas of science fiction might come true soon. At this point he prefers looking back in time and down into the depths of the earth, commented upon in note 3.
Markup © John King, 2008. Web archive generated Tue, 21st August 2007.