What's an ecological tipping point? Why do we care?

Mon, 12/04/2006 - 10:14 — Don Scavia

The concept of a tipping point is being used in both the scientific and popular literature. In Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell defines a tipping point as ?? that magic moment when an idea, trend or social behavior crosses a threshold, tips, and spreads like wildfire? When writing about tipping points ? or thresholds as they are more commonly called in ecology -- scientists describe them as events or stresses that push an ecosystem from one ?stable point? to another. One can imagine this transition as being like that game where we tip the toy from side to side trying to get the bead to move from one hole to another. While Nature prefers to be in one of the holes, she doesn?t really care which one ? however society does!

There has been considerable press recently about a white paper ?Prescription for Great Lakes Ecosystem Protection and Restoration: Avoiding the Tipping Point of Irreversible Changes? (http://restorethelakes.org/PrescriptionforGreatLakes.pdf) that warns we may be tipping the Great Lakes ecosystem game board in ways that will move the bead from a place we like to another stable point that we might not like. The paper provides some examples of potential symptoms of moving past an ecological tipping point. These include: 1) the well-documented rapid disappearance of the once abundant bottom bug, Diporeia, from large areas of all the lakes except Superior; 2) the recent declines in growth, condition and numbers of lake whitefish in Lake Michigan and portions of Lake Huron; and 3) the elimination of the rooted plant community and degradation of the benthic food web, in Sandusky Bay and Cootes Paradise in Hamilton Harbour on Lake Ontario. However, the problem with tipping points is that they are hard to predict and you often don?t know if you?ve reached one until it is too late. And the changes can be irreversible.

Tomorrow I will write more about the loss of Diporeia and other dramatic changes in Lake Huron that may be examples of passing a tipping point. On Wednesday, I will write about ecosystem resiliency and restoration, the need for a precautionary approach, and why it may be hard to move that bead back to our favored place on the Great Lakes ecosystem board game once it has been moved to another.

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"Tipping points"

Submitted by Alan Maki on Mon, 12/04/2006 - 14:13.

It seems to me that while the environment obviously has its "tipping points," either those caused by nature or created by people through how we use, or abuse, our natural resources... "tipping points" that cause ideas "to spread like wildfire" are of a different nature requiring an honest and in-depth analysis of what is causing the problems in the first place, and what solutions will be required to solve the problems.

For the most part I am firmly convinced that we do ourselves and Mother Nature a great disservice in leaving out any critical analysis of the role of capitalism in creating or exacerbating these problems that cause "tipping points" in nature; and this is grossly dishonest, not to mention completely unscientific. We treat capitalism as if it is some kind of "untouchable."

Eventually we are going to have to ask the question: Can we survive under capitalism?

I just visited "Slag Beach" in Fayette, Michigan located on a beautiful, quiet, pristine peninsula on Lake Michigan in the Upper Peninsula... the now abandoned site of an old company town founded over a hundred years ago for the purpose of smelting iron ore.

I wonder if this peninsula had a "tipping point?" I think it did, and that is why this company town no longer exists. Was the "tipping point" determined by what a greedy corporation did to nature; or, was the "tipping point" the result of economics; or was it a little of each?

While the slag and byproducts of modern-day capitalist enterprises may not be disposed of in as open a manner as what created "Slag Beach," I don't think one has to look very far beyond the power generating facilities of a coal fired power industry like that in Marquette, Michigan where Wisconsin Power dumps its wastes out of sight and out of mind just off the roadside behind the trees as its smokestacks belch mercury contamination into the air to realize that we are fast approaching a "tipping point" in which we have to question if it is not a system based upon corporate greed that profits from raping Mother Nature through the exploitation of human labor that is the source of our problems... without an honest inquiry we are liable to pass the "tipping point" from which there will be no return.

Has capitalism in its twilight years reached a "tipping point?" If so, we had better discuss this in relation to the survival of the Great Lakes.

Shouldn't we be asking: Does capitalism have a "tipping point?" Our very survival may depend on how we investigate this question in relation to all these other questions and problems which have been the focus of attention of the Great Lakes Town Hall Forum.

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Alan L. Maki

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E-mail: amaki000@centurytel.net

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Anthropological Tipping Point

Submitted by JBohland on Mon, 12/04/2006 - 20:31.

I understand and appreciate the principal of an ecological tipping point as outlined by Dr. Scavia.

The geologic record shows many tipping points through the 4 billion years or so that the third rock from the sun has been around. This is just nature at work.

What's more interesting to me are the ideas outlined in the reply by Alan Maki and in fact prompted me to add my thoughts.

Alan is exaclty right; we are living in denial. Our economic system is built on the myth of perpetual growth. We will expire like bacteria in a petri dish when the abuses of industry and agriculture have consumed the resources that sustain us. I urge everyone to read Jared Diamond's book Collapse. It takes Malthus to the next level. Our species has a habit of exploitation, living beyond carrying capacity and ultimately crashing.

The changes that people are making to the environment are un-natural and unprecedented. We enjoy a fleeting sense of control and prosperity through the one time gift of cheap energy (mainly oil). This can work in the short term but it is quite insane to think it can work for the long term.

I often think we are just the re-distributors of the Earth's elements for what comes after. We are just not that smart. If we were, we'd change the root cause of the decline of the whitefish and the Diporeia; we'd lead an anthropological tipping point where we begin to consume less, not more.

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