Winnable battles
I just got back from a workshop run by The Nature Conservancy, which brought together academics to talk about the state of conservation science. I was struck by the delicious tension in the room. On the one hand, as scientists we were interested in defining a clear problem that could be fully solved with the best available data. On the other hand, as environmentalists we were all concerned with answering the big, grand questions of our global civilization.
The scientist role requires a great deal of humility. So much is unknown in this world, and uncertainty is everywhere. Smart scientists ask questions that are well defined and can be answered with good hard data. The environmentalist role requires, more than anything, a passion for protecting the environment. And passions were indeed high at the workshop, in part because the slowly evolving concept of sustainable development is maturing, and commonalities between movements are coalescing into a more general (and profound) global justice movement.
The challenge for us at this meeting was to find some middle ground between humility and passion. This land is the most fertile for research, but also the most unstable. One has to pose the most grand question that can be fully answered, while at the same time acknowledging fully what is not know. A zen-like challenge...
