E. O. Wilson's talk raises more questions than answers: Are Humans genetically predisposed for environmental collapse?*
April 17, 2007; 10:00 PM. Edward O. Wilson just offered his interesting talk at the Universidad de Puerto Rico, Medical Sciences branch, focusing on the environmental problems before us. He offered some material which sought to attract new students into the field. Slides were presented of graduate students in breathtaking situations: 100 feet above ground sitting on a tree branch. Other interesting data were presented, such as the logarithmic relationship between territory size and species diversity. Through it all, I couldn't help but wonder--given that the person speaking on environmental dangers created sociobiology--are humans predisposed towards damaging their surrounding environment, to the point of collapse of both of it (environment) and them (humans)? Is there a sociobiological cause to our current environmental problems? Environmental degradation is such a pervasive historical fact--Easter Island, Maya, etc,, that it raises the question as to the relationship between the two. While the suggestion might sound a bit odd, consider the following: obesity rates have drastically increased, worldwide, for the same reason. Humans minds were designed for resource-poor environments, and hence tend to maximize their daily caloric consumption for the 'just in case'--which in a modern technological world doesn't tend to happen (and hence the obesity). Could a similar argument be applied to human environmental attitudes? This seems to be a truly pressing issue that should be researched.