Feedback On ... Peat

(Page 3 of 3)

September/October 1975
By Barry Devine  
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Peat bogs spread over some 80 million acres today only because they've been left in their natural state to fill and build. It has taken eons of time for these areas to become what they are. Moreover, to think of a bog as an autonomous system is certainly not sound ecologically. This fragile community is inextricably linked to the delicate fabric of life in the biosphere. To tamper with it needlessly for short-term gain will have unimaginable effects elsewhere. The fact that we may not see these effects directly doesn't mean that they don't exist, or make them any the less serious. For this reason—the essential unity of all life—we must avoid shortsighted solutions to our need for energy, and look instead to the sound long-term alternatives offered by sun and wind.

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Or the even sounder three-part alternative: [1] less people limited to [2] less per-capita energy and resource consumption supplied only by [3] renewable sources.—MOTHER.

GLOSSARY

Climax: a stable stage or community of plants which have successfully adjusted to a certain environment.

Emergent plants: those that are rooted in shallow water but grow mainly above the surface.

Mesic plants: those that require moderate amounts of water.

Seral: from "sere", a series of ecological communities that succeed one another in the development of an area or formation.

Substrate: the base on which an organism lives (as a plant on soil)

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