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Agreed: Man is part of Nature. But for those who wax romantic and wish we could all live in harmony with Nature like the Indians have to keep in mind that an aborigine woman had to carry 8 pregnancies in her lifetime, hoping 2 of them would survive to adulthood to have some of their own and keep the race going. Aborigines live on the razor's edge, right at the carrying capacity: maximum competition & quick death when something goes even a little bit wrong.
While many of us do have the time, ability and land to grow our own, the vast majority of us do not. You wouldn't last long growing tomatoes upside down in a hanging basket on your condo balcony as your only source of food. And Chia Pet bean sprouts grown on the window sill don't go very far.
Industrial ag methods, including herb-& pesticides, allow us to grow more food on less land. Prior to WWII, all ag was essentially organic. A good farm got 50bu/ac for corn. Half of us were farmers. Now a mediocre yield is 150bu/ac and only 2% of us are farmers. If we shifted back to grass finished beef, we could let about 1/4th of our corn/beans acreage go back to natural pasture. Feedlots improved profits, analogous to assembly lines and auto production, but they didn't come into general use until the mid-60s. I learned to love beef before that and still raised grass finished beef for myself.
Humans tend to sterilize their living area. While my closest neighbor is 1/2 mi away, there's still no bear or wolves around here. If I walk down to the barn to check out a horse in the middle of the night, I don't need to arm myself for protection from beasts.
Maybe concentrating the population in a small town does save habitit & wild populations?
There is an intellectual dishonesty that happens whenever we debate crop yields per acre of land. Often the debates make the assumption that the only difference is how much land is being used. Thus ignoring how many barrels of petroleum must be consumed to make fertilizer for these larger yields. It is not just about using less land. Land is not the most precious resource that must be in the equation.
To double crop yield required that suddenly petroleum-based fertilizer consumption went crazy.
Plus the poisons now being used on conventional crops.
The original question is too simplistic to answer with an "either or" response. Cities can't exist without support from the country, so every city dweller has a country footprint as well. Fifty years ago, Vermont had a minimal population of moose and bears, because the previous generations had eliminated them. Now, both are back in fairly large numbers.
Economics and regulation are more drivers of impact than city or country dwelling.
Submariner, your approach works for an individual because you buy many items, including Internet services from the complex society. Your approach is not scalable, because you can't build your own computer from sand, haven't reverted to horse and oxen for transportation, don't manufacture your own pv, etc. Again, I'm not picking on your lifestyle. I think it's fine, but we need to not think it is a model for a 21st century economy.
Apartment dwellers use less heating and A/C, because each apartment has only one side with windows facing out. Single-family homes by contrast, have windows on all sides of the house, for hot air (summer) and cold air (winter) to escape out of, no matter how thick the glass.
The same goes for so-called vacation cabins touted as "harmonious with nature" in beaches/ tropical locales. They can actually use more energy than condos or hotels do in the same locale.
Your conclusion about trees is obvious because you live in BC -- mainly Northern Arboreal Forest Biome where trees are the defining vegetation. A more general rule is that one should protect/restore the native plants for their location. Planting an oak tree in the desert outside Phoenix wouldn't provide food or habitat for anything there, and its demand for water would be a negative, for example.
You're right about the complexity of my original question. I ask it because I got to thinking about my own situation. I lived in Chicago & suburbs. I paid attention to providing food, shelter & water for the natural flora & fauna and tried to be frugal in my use of resources. Then I retired to WI onto 40 ac of fallow pasture (practically natural grassland) and oak/hickory climax forest.
But, given that loss of habitat is the main environmental problem, aren't we helping Mother Nature more by concentrating ourselves in densely populated areas, leaving more natural habitat untouched?
I was in a rush and didn't explain myself.
What I'm getting at about trees is that trees can bring humans and nature together and help to improve their shared environment. More trees need to be encouraged everywhere. They are especially needed in densely populated areas. Trees create micro-climates and more natural and healthier habitats everywhere for nature and humans together, whether it's in the city or in the country. So if you fill a treeless but densely populated city/cities with as many trees as possible you will be changing the barren habitat of the entire city into a healthier and more natural habitat plus attracting more nature into the city from elsewhere. That is helpful to mother nature in general because it helps to make up some of the lost habitat that occurred when the city was built and it improves the overall environment.
With the addition of the trees the climate of the city changes to a healthier, more moderate and safer climate. The trees change the constitution and purity of the air, water and soil, they filter pollutants and over time the soil becomes more enriched and fertile than it previously was, with more beneficial myceliums, bacterias and other organisms spreading out enriching more soil and thereby attracting more native flora and fauna. It also becomes more possible and attractive for humans to grow better, easier cultivated gardens and container plants at their homes because of the change in local micro-climate.
I do realize that it may not be feasible in all places to plant more trees but whether people are in the city or in the country and where it is feasible and can be done, it should be done (and yes, in cities I encourage both native and introduced species that are compatible).
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Your conclusion about trees is obvious because you live in BC -- mainly Northern Arboreal Forest Biome where trees are the defining vegetation.
Actually more than 2/3rds of BC is delightful rainforest and mountains, it's not boreal except for a small corner in the far northeast and there's a desert region in the mid south of BC, but east of the Rocky Mtn ranges most of the rest of northern and eastern Canada is all boreal. I'm spoiled, I live in a Mediterranean micro-climate within the southwest coastal rainforest region of BC (coastal rainforest is a bit different from the interior and mountain rainforests). But you are right that trees (of all kinds and mostly very big) are the defining vegetation of this province. You can't look in any direction without seeing trees somewhere close by. I can't imagine what this part of the world would be like without them, it would be awful.
I don't see anyone factoring in car use, which is usually very high outside cities, and the further outside, the more use, and often larger cars (trucks, SUVs). Just another factor.
To double crop yield required that suddenly petroleum-based fertilizer consumption went crazy.
Plus the poisons now being used on conventional crops.
Artificially produced fertilizers are produced from air, but the process (Haber) is energy intensive (just for scientific clarity.)
"Poisons on crops" is a talking point of the the TreeHuggers. There's no evidence pesticides/herbicides are causing any significant damage to the environment or to human health. The ones in use have been selected to break down quickly (for the most part. There's a few notable exceptions that must be handled with extra care in terms of secondary use of the crop as fertilizer.)
Submariner, your approach works for an individual because you buy many items, including Internet services from the complex society. Your approach is not scalable, because you can't build your own computer from sand, haven't reverted to horse and oxen for transportation, don't manufacture your own pv, etc. Again, I'm not picking on your lifestyle. I think it's fine, but we need to not think it is a model for a 21st century economy.
Hey DC--we finally agree on something!
I always say that we "homesteaders" are really like 8 y/o kids who camp out in the backyard in a tent and feel so proud they're experiencing great adventure in the wild outdoors... but if a sudden thunderstorm should come up over night, they can always run back into the safety of the house.
And if everybody chose to live the self-sufficient lifestyle, the economy would quickly grind to a halt.
I wasn't trying to contradict you, only trying to generalize your comment to other biomes in regards the value of restoring native plants/habitat. Isn't it ironic that the Latin word "populatio" translates as "devastation?"
I can't rep you again yet, but that was an excellent dissertation on the value of trees. I too have always lived in a forested part of the country and feel the same way about trees, but ranchers can get just as passionate about grassland. (Although we know trees are better, we shouldn't leave them out and hurt their feelings. )
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