David Peat

Re-envisioning the Planet 185know the future? Had we been blessed with hindsight would we havedone anything to avert the crises we now face?The answer, I believe, is to look to nature’s own model. Life surviveson this planet in a wide variety of highly improbable locations—deep in the oceans where no light penetrates, within volcanoes, insidenuclear reactors. Life has survived major climatic changes in the past.Diseases, which are one expression of life’s versatility, find ways to subvertour antibiotics and disinfectants.Nature always wins because of its profligacy and abundance. Naturesurvives for the very reasons that would entirely frustrate traditionalbusinesspeople—it makes endless duplications and is repletewith redundancy. On the face of it nature appears hopelessly inefficientand disorganized. It takes only one sperm to fertilize a humanovum yet a man produces hundreds of thousands at each ejaculation.Look at any roadside and observe the vast number of differentgrasses, weeds, and flowers. Pick up a handful of earth and note all thetiny organisms that are scurrying around. Nature is abundant. Natureoverproduces. Nature is not content with producing one type of bird,fish, or plant but explodes into endless varieties. Lift a rock, walk in thewoods, poke at a dead tree and you will find ecosystems within ecosystemsall joined together into complex networks of symbiosis and mutualsupport.This is why nature survives. Nature does not produce just one varietyof apples, potato, or wheat but a multiplicity, and while one varietymay be vulnerable to attack by a particular disease, others may beresistant. When fungi, disease, or insects attack a farmer’s field or orchard,a year’s crop may be wiped out. But if that same field is allowedto grow wild, or with a broader range of fruits and crops, then only apercentage of its growth will be destroyed.Nature keeps its options open. Nature covers all its bases. Naturemakes not one master plan but many. Nature does not have an exclusivepolicy for the future. And this is where we can learn a great lesson.Of course, we must still make plans and policies, but as we make themwe must acknowledge that certain elements in any situation lie beyondour control and that no plan or policy can be comprehensive or takeinto account all possibilities for the future. Our policies and our orga-