The Balance of Nature

 

A student recently lamented how human technology can disturb the balance of nature. This is a widespread idea, the balance of nature, that mankind upsets by his existence. Yet this is a nonsensical idea.

Nature without man is not steady state. One wet spring, a given species will proliferate. This will provoke some other species to reproduce with abandon. Next year, conditions will change; there will be mass die-offs. 

The one factor that creates balance in nature, year over year, is man. Man gardens, or farms, or manages nature, mending eroding riverbanks, irrigating, making it predictable and preventing sudden shocks to the ecosystem.

We speak of environments being “damaged” or “destroyed.” Barring some disintegrator beam, what we mean is environments changing suddenly and dramatically. Man sometimes does this, to make some environment more suitable for man; but it also happens more often in nature.