The Monarch Butterfly Dilemma
This year I’m growing swan plants in an effort to attract Monarch Butterfly caterpillars. There’s a problem though: the butterflies have managed to find my plants well before they are mature enough to support the voracious eating habits of just one (let alone a dozen) hungry caterpillars. I discovered a single, minute caterpillar along with about four tiny eggs and was faced with the dilemma of having to ‘abort’ the eggs and murder the caterpillar in an attempt to let the plants grow so as to be able to support more of them in the future.
It got me thinking about the environment we humans live in. We live on a ball suspended in space and our resources are limited. Aided by our dominance of our environment we are now multiplying too fast and have consumption habits that our planet can’t sustain.
Lots of species have gone the way of the dinosaur. Some through catastrophe, some through predation and others have gone extinct because they got too far ahead in the race and plundered the resources they relied on. Are we the next species in line for extinction for the crime of being too smart for our own good? Or are we going to start to control our urges to breed and consume everything in sight?
If you live in a village somewhere in Africa and you know you can only grow enough food to support 100 people is it unethical for a family to have a family of 10 children when your village already has 130 people in it? Will the same thing happen on this planet? Will having large families become unethical in the future?
We only have ourselves watching over us. No one is going to make the decision for us. It’s probably something we should be talking about.
And the fate of the eggs and the itty bitty caterpillar? I had a brief moment of silence and squashed the lot of them. Perhaps the next batch will thank me for it.
Tags: butterfly, caterpillar, Environment, monarch, resources
Interesting that your Monarch Butterfly dilemma has sparked such profound allegory for humanity. (Next time you could cover the plants with netting until you reckoned they were ready for the caterpillars).
The population explosion and diminishing resource dilemma has been around for quite a while. The dust of history is witness to past civilisations that have come and gone having perished depending on a tenuous supply of a single resource. Today, however, it’s global.
From the late sixties came the green revolution in the developing world. It was going to be the solution. However, the super breeds of plants were either more susceptible to drought, pestilence or degraded the soil structure so that the communities were worse off after a few years. A bit of western technology going awry.
Next came the campaign to convince developing countries to curb their populations by family planning (abortion and contraceptives). But many resisted because of social conventions and the need (high mortality rates) to guarantee a future income for the family in later years.
Amazingly, though even these efforts to civilise the third world pale at the real population controls that are currently at play in the third world; war, famine (due to drought and war), disease (polio, malaria, poor water and sanitation, aids).
The resources the world has to offer are adequate. But, the developed world doesn’t want to disengage from its extreme levels of consumption. For example Canada and the US consume over 11kw of energy per capita, whereas India only 0.5kw.
The need for sustainable living levels needs to be tackled in an holistic way. Not just taking hold of the symptoms. This applies to both developing and developed countries. Probably the hardest will be us in the western European oriented countries. Unfortunately we have generated a consumerist worldview that now developing countries seek to mimic, and we push that along because that fits our current economic model and sustains our expensive lifestyle.
We are painting ourselves into a corner. The problem lies within the heart AND mind.
An interesting book that tackles poverty (economic and social) in a holistic manner through transformational development, and is worth reading, is called ‘Walking with the Poor’, by Bryant L. Myers.
We could well do with its principles being effected in New Zealand.
Ha! I didn’t even consider to set up netting – next year will be a better year for Monarch Butterflies at my place.
You raise some good points about changing our mindset with regard to our consumption (especially in the West) but do you think that even if we did change our consumption habits we could sustain our current growth rates?
Thanks for the book recommendation – I’ll have to keep my eyes open for it.
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The promise we have from the world’s limited resources is that our consumption habits will change. We can do it gradually and gracefully, or we will suffer all hell breaking loose (pretty much the same effect as your digital control of your monarch caterpillars!).
If your are talking economic growth rates, then there will be a slow down. But if there is carefully co-operative planning of alternative, sustainable ways of meeting our needs and not our wants, then there will be plenty for all.
However, mankind is not known for such co-operation, even often within families, let alone internationally, without coercion. Although such dire facts stare us in the face, those in power and those seeking power, continue to weal and deal, seeking their own advantage. It is truly evidence of a spiritual dilemma and not only a educative, knowledge based problem. It is a matter of the heart and mind – not a dualistic spirituality but a holistic one. Not unusually, this returns us to the old chestnut – which spirituality, if any.
Heh, “digital control”
I agree that our human desires may be too much to voluntarily reign in our consumption habits. But this is why we elect governments – to sometimes regulate our base wants for the benefit of the whole.
We need food, water and a clean environment to live but we want the things that pose a threat to just those things. I’m educated on this, I’m totally convinced that we are threatening our environment but even I continue to consume as much as the rest. I’d like to be able to make one vote for a government that will push me out of my comfort zone by penalising my harmful actions and rewarding my environmentally beneficial ones.
But what are the chances of that ever happening?
At present the political advantages of pushing people into responsible behaviour are slim. In fact, they’re pretty slim in any event. So don’t hold your breath. Very often changes to societal character come from completely different sources. As in England and Wales in the 18th century, more recently in Poland during the 1980′s.
An acceptance of personal responsibility, and even a responsibility to others (particularly to an Other), is a source for personal and societal renewal. Government and isms can’t legislate or cajole this out of a population. Mankind suffered and suffers much at the hands of those who thought this was the way to go. The 20th century witnessed the bankruptcy of fascism and communism, and currently to a growing degree, we suffer the limitations of democracy.
What is needed, and you touch on this as a personal observation of your own behaviour, is a change of mindset and heart, which creates those seemingly unrequited desires. This is difficult if you feel and think you are on your own in pursuing such changes, and that, in some way, you may lose out. In fact, on our own, it will be a long, hard road.
Solving all the world’s problems, aye?
Something I like to do regularly… Personally, I’m saving the world by buying only fair-trade beans for our home coffee machine… but let us not talk about the poverty-inducing beans made to produce the coffees I drink at cafe’s… 
Indeed, personal transformation is the name of the game, and this process is certainly not done in me!
Must go to bed.
-d-
Dale
It’s probably not the beans that induce the poverty! We’re pretty good at blaming our situation for inaction or blaming something or someone else. Drink water if in doubt. It better for everyone!
Damian,
What a charming story. But might I invite you and your readers to perhaps pause for a moment to consider the difference between humans and caterpillars. If you do, you might allow yourself to see the difference between the reality we face and the your doom-and-gloom woe-is-I scenario you posit here.
Caterpillars don’t think. They don’t plant new swan plants. They don’t have a large brain. They simply act on ‘instinct’ — and when the swan plants run out, they die.
I trust you and your friends don’t act that way.
The fact is humans qua humans haven’t acted that way since the first hunting-and-gathering Mesopotamians discovered that if you plant stuff one day and cultivate it properly then you can come back in a few months and find good stuff to eat and keep you alive – in other words, we haven’t acted like your caterpillars since we stopped simply hunting and gathering like the lower animals do, and discovered that if we use the brain gifted to us by evolution that we can actually expand the resources available to us.
The fact is that resources are not limited by the exiting number of resources, since those resources only become a resource by our own intervention in the first place. The ‘ultimate resource’ is not the limited number of swan plants or corn plants or steel plants currently in existence. The ultimate resource is the ingenuity of the human mind that made all those plants possible in the first place.
A chap called George Reisman both explains this point and dismisses the doom-and-gloom in an article that you might enjoy called ‘,a href=”http://www.mises.org/story/661″>Environmentalism Refuted.’ I’m sure you’ll enjoy the challenge of refuting it. ;^)
Good points Peter.
Are we clever enough to stay ahead of demand for resources? Will we continue to be clever enough in the years to come given our current growth rate and given our tendency to become less sustainable the more clever we get?
I realise that there’s an infinite universe of resources out there but surely you must admit that our modern consumption of resources is greater than what is sustainable?
That was the purpose of the swan plant analogy – if we consume more than the earth (or our cleverness) is capable of sustaining then something has to give. My suggestion would be to put the brakes on our population growth and to curb our consumption habits. At least to give us some breathing space for a while.
If you were to put 100 people on a desert island with no way of building a boat or swimming to the mainland would you agree that ingenuity will only get them so far and that there is bound to be some upper limit to how many people that island will support? Well the same thing with our earth – it’s bigger but it’s still a fairly closed system and there must be an upper limit to how many people can survive on it’s resources and human ingenuity. Until we find a way to colonise the universe (or built a boat to the mainland so to speak) we’re stuck here and there are limits.
Damian,
You say “My suggestion would be to put the brakes on our population growth and to curb our consumption habits. At least to give us some breathing space for a while.” But you offer no evidence we’re anywhere near ‘the limit.’
Just to put the world’s population in perspective, consider that if the whole world chose to live at the density of Manhattan (not likely I’ll admit) but just humour me for a moment, the world’s entire population could fit into what used to be Yugoslavia — and probably with fewer fights.
Consider too that we don’t live on a desert island, we live on a solid, densely packed ball of minerals — resources if you will — in a universe that’s filled with possibility. We’ve almost literally only scratched the surface. And what we’ve used doesn’t go away, it just changes its form.
Frankly, I see no evidence at all that we’re anywhere near ‘the limit.’
Well argued.
So would you say that we should instead be focussing all of our attention on developing better technologies to stay ahead of the world’s population grown and demand for resources?
Indeed. And that’s what free people do every day.
Peter has fairly pointed out, the problem of resources has little to do with population levels.
However, living space is a highly prized resource, as it is fairly well known that psychological stress increases with proximity. Anyone at a football match or other event where there is restricted movement, undoubtedly will witness the inevitable tension or fight over the delegated resource of space. (Maybe if we were all set down in old Yugoslavia, we would have no room to throw a punch!)
In fact, the problem of resources is not necessarily any perceived shortage, but the control of these resources. This is in spite of technology developing alternatives or extending current resources. Furthermore, those most able to develop these alternatives are the very same who already control the present covey of resources.
Having read Reisman’s spiel, the disturbing thing is, it has the same tone as the 1950′s predictions of utopia for the 21st century. In simplistic terms, the logic seems to depend on ignoring the obvious view anyone has when approaching by air any large city within the industrialised world.
Sure, there is abundant resources universally, but their control, use and disposal for mankind’s happiness (whatever that may mean) or any other reason, disturbs the finely tuned ecosystem (including human beneficiaries) that does not handle major disruption without a fair amount of pain. Stating that the inconsequential loss of some varieties of natural phenomena because we presently don’t know their worth, smacks of the same arrogance of our colonial past.
The perception that one person does little on their own to add to this disruption and therefore is not responsible for the accumulative effect, is clearly illogical. And additionally, stating that any imposition of restrictions to preserve the environment is some sort of extended conspiracy on the part of a fading socialist agenda, denies that the political turmoil of extreme forms of socialism was clearly comprehended by a world, with both its mouth and eyes wide open, throughout most of the 20th century.
The so-called progressive nature of mankind and the progressive accumulation of capital is an economic myth. The progressive summation seems to ignore the factors of environmental and human cost. (you know, dead lakes, dead rivers, dead forests, dead people).
Fortunately, the earth and universe is so much more than just a collection of chemicals. To reduce it to such a level of utilitarianism, in fact extracts any reasonableness from the argument for exploiting these ‘chemicals’; as a mere process of creating human happiness it seems not too far removed from the way the Nazis conceived the Final Solution.
Hi Damian
About time I came and checked out your site : ). What a cool discussion and I can totally relate to your starting point. We just did the swan plant thing this year and had the same problem. We were then told to put netting over a couple of branches to preserve those while letting the rest feed the caterpillars. Perhaps we should set aside an area of the world not be touched – hehehe, anyone willing to leave their land for that one. There have been some interesting points made here, but at the end of the day the earth is as you say a fairly closed system and can only sustain a certain population. Peter, yes what we have used just changes form but you fail to mention it can take millions of years to return to a form we can use – look at oil, coal etc. Yes perhaps we will develop the technologies to speed that up. I don’t like the ‘Yugoslavia’ argument because the resources to sustain ‘Yugoslavia’ would still have to come from all over the earth. I think the point needs to be made though that the end of the human population still isnt ever likely to be caused by over population because in all species this self-corrects through a natural decrease in offspring brought on by malnourished mothers and an increased death rate through disease and starvation brought about by over-crowding and malnutrition. If ‘Yugoslavia’ were a closed system these things would happen, or do you think we have the brains to beat disease and starvation? So far the viruses with no brain at all – have us beat : )
Hi Jack, and welcome!
Just to bring this conversation back to reality for a moment; I later let a handful of eggs develop into caterpillars and a couple of them got quite big. This morning the last of them was gone – presumably one of the lady blackbirds that hang around the deck had a nice meal.
There are plenty of new eggs on the leaves though so either the caterpillars will make it through by sheer force of numbers or the blackbirds in my neck of the woods will be thanking me for planting swan plants this year!
Yeah I have to confess that even with our ever so wise – cover half the plant approach – the caterpillars just got big then vanished into the mouths of birds- however last year we ripped a branch off a friends large, established plant that had one big caterpillar on it and my daughter kept it in her bedroom. Despite the plant withering, the caterpillar did its cacoon thing and we got to watch the butterfly come out and live in the bedroom for a day before we let it free. Its amazing how the whole metamorphosis thing happens – quite the miracle and whats more you can observe it
True. Metamorphosis is mind-boggling. I’m looking forward to seeing it in action again after all these years.
By the way, my wife and I visited the butterfly exhibition down in Dunedin in the New Year and thoroughly recommend it to anyone passing that way. It’s in the museum and all of the butterflies are live and you get to walk amongst them. Well worth a visit.
As it happens I’m headed to Dunedin this weekend for a wedding so might just check it out, haven’t been to Dunedin in yonks so am looking forward to it. You have some really cool photos on this site, are you into photography? Am always on the lookout for good pics for bio teaching resources : )
How about that eh? Yeah, I hadn’t been to Dunedin for a long time too and we managed to spend a long day visiting all the sights. Dunedin actually has a lot to offer – especially when it’s sunny.
No I’m not particularly into photography – I’ve got a tiny 3.2mp pocket camera that’s about five years old and it just happens to take pretty nice photos. I was a graphic designer in another life and so it probably helps with composition a little.
You teach biology? Cool! I sort of missed out on all that at school and am only beginning to make up for it now. I bought a really crappy microscope on TradeMe and occasionally continue my search for the elusive tardigrade (to see one in real life is on my list of things to do before I die). I’ve been meaning to buy a better microscope but have other priorities at the moment – if you ever hear of a school microscope sale please let me know.
Have fun in Dunedin!
Yup it would be cool to see one of those little water bears – funny you should mention them as I always show a powerpoint presentation that has a cool slide of one to get kids interested in the microscopic world. I am actually teaching maths this year due to a desperate shortage of maths teachers but have taught bio in the past and thats certainly the area I’m most passionate about – the mathematicians say it all comes back to maths patterns and rules anyway but I miss Bio : (. I’ll see where we are at re microscopes. We have this thing called a proscope that the kids enjoy as you can put it over something and the magnified image comes up on your laptop/projector. They have a lot of fun comparing hair strands, zits …
The thing about microbiology that fascinates me is that we didnt know that whole world existed due to the limitations of our perception (eyes) and I wonder whether there are things that live on bacteria and then on those things and so on down – infinitely. And of course, going up too – are we just a ‘microscopic’ creature living on a speck of dust in the ecosystem of something far bigger!
Anyway gotta go, classes to teach and a plane to catch tonight. Heard on the news some woman tried to blow up a domestic flight today – can’t help wondering if she suffered any God delusions.
Man I love the way the love spreads around the blogging world with communities developing and spreading by following each other’s links
Jack, yes, the invention of lenses is quite possibly the most important invention of all time. Our understanding of the worlds within worlds at our feet and the mind-staggering size of the universe increased by orders of magnitude.
I recently watched a talk that was linked to on Ken’s blog and it was mentioned in passing that in a single drop of sea water there are something like 10,000 organisms and 1000 viruses. Just as biologists have been concerned about the introduction of non-native species to ‘arks’ like New Zealand the micro-biologists are now concerned about ships dumping their foreign bilge water in other ports without properly studying the possible consequences.
This comment has me intrigued; are you serious that you think this is possible or are you saying that it would be cool if life were like that?
(Also, regarding the Somalian woman, I don’t think it had anything at all to do with her religion. Poor thing.)
I am serious – already there have been viruses found that live on bacteria. Why do you assume we have found the smallest living things? Because we can detect them with current technology? They thought the atom was the smallest possible bit only to get more technology and divide it up more. How many times can a bit of paper be torn in half – what limits it – our fumbling fingers and lack of technology to keep breaking it or to see the halves made : ), otherwise things can infinitely smaller can they not? Why should it be any different than things getting infinitely bigger?
Regarding the seawater – well with the way people move over the globe, I’m sure there’s millions of bacteria and viruses already on these shores that were not the original ‘ark’.
And regarding the Somalian woman, that was a bit dumb stereotyping by me. Yes it looks as if there were definitely a sad set of circumstances there and mental illness. I thinks its quite a challenge for society to care for those with full on mental illnesses, harder to love than unborn babies, neglected kids, injured folk and old people. I saw a lady in Dunedin picking smoke butts out of the gutter on Sun morning and yelling at people – hard to know what to do, people tended to give her a wide berth
Sorry, I missed out a lot of words in that last post – think I’m over tired. I meant to say , regarding perception, the other thing that fascinates me is the idea of camouflage. Could there be living things around us that we simply cannot see? We tend to assume our vision is perfect, yet some camouflaged species are really hard to detect – are there others (not microscopic) that go a step further so that we cannot actually see them?
The problem with the idea of “and so on down – infinitely” is that living things have to be able to replicate and this replication is done at the molecular level. Once you get smaller than molecules you are dealing with just atoms and electrons. How would you see life (or replication) happening at this level?
Microbes are about as small as we’ve found so far and it’s possible you could get smaller but once you get down to the building blocks of life how would you propose other, smaller, organisms would be constructed?
[just noticed your second post] Yes, camouflage is a common trick used by lots of species – do you think there might be some averaged-size species right under our noses that we haven’t spotted yet because they are very cleverly camouflaged?
Yes I had wondered about that (good point)- but I do think there’s a big gap between current microbes and molecular level size and I suspect there’s a lot we don’t know about thats smaller than molecules too. What is an electron made of? We can’t say because we can’t see that small and we don’t have the language to name it. But it must be made of something right? Is the DNA molecule the only ever defining element of life? RNA is already creeping in. Its what I love about science, its OK to keep changing the rules as more is learned : )
Do I think there might be some species right under our noses? Well in honesty I doubt it, but I wonder whether that is just my human arrogance. Why shouldn’t it be possible? I started to wonder when I went tramping with my Dad who is colour blind and he couldnt see the orange tags against the trees. I practically had to put his hand on them for him to detect them. Normally he just gets along knowing no better, not feeling like he’s missing anything because he’s never known any different.
Update: We came home from holiday and the two plants that were healthy and covered with caterpillars when we left are now two bare sticks. I managed to find a single, fat caterpillar about to go into a chrysalis but nothing else (do they eat each other when they are hungry??).
Overnight it went from hanging slightly curled to a chrysalis and I’ve now moved it inside and pinned it above the window. I’d like to get a time-lapse of the chrysalis stage – I have no idea how it happens.