 Thank you, Chapman elderly one of the easiest things to do when you're on the committee to organize the Nobel conference for the year is to give the introduction to the speaker I may sounds a little curious that it seems to be an easy task, but in fact many of you are professionals out there Who are very well acquainted with the personalities that we have here this year, and you've read all the literature You know the achievements that they've made in the in the particular dismiss that they come from and many of you people Who are laypersons have followed the environmental Writings and the ecological writings and so if you too are familiar with with these people So they hardly need an introduction There are a number of you out there however particularly I suppose who are from high schools Who don't yet know the names of the personalities involved in the various scientific disciplines and so on and so to Alleviate some of those concerns you have in your hands. I'm sure a brochure There was hand it to you came through the doors that has a brief synopsis on each of the Participants and so if you have that in your hand right now You will recognize that our next speaker professor botkin is a highly recognized authority in in ecology and global change And so you will also see that he has written well over a hundred scientific articles that he has written books and edited books that he has Served as a consultant at virtually every level of government from the local government to a state and national and international levels that he has been actively involved in computer modeling for Several decades now in fact is one of the very earliest to get involved in ecosystem modeling and is still very active in that field further he has You can notice from your your description there that he has started his he started his professional career at Yale That he then went on to Woods Hole finally to more recently to University of California in Santa Barbara I can tell you that he is now he and his wife or just recently moved to Washington, DC where he is currently the director of the global change program and he still maintains an affinity with the Santa Barbara where he is the director of The Center for Study of the Environment Now when you when you read those credentials Concerning these people you recognize that that is just a brief synopsis of what they have really done And what you have to understand is that to a cut to arrive at that sort of a stature in the field that they have to Wear what we say are many hats that is they cannot be Specialized in any particular narrowly defined discipline But they had to be very broad and expert in all sorts of things and certainly Professor Botkin is one of those people who exemplify that Great deal So what you expect them for someone like Professor Botkin is to wear these different hats And so clearly he can wear the hat of a field biologist where he has literally paid his dues out in the field painstakingly obtaining data While at the same time Swiping at mosquitoes in northeastern Minnesota are swiping at Tessie fly and the Serengeti Plains of East Africa So you can wear that kind of a hat, but at the same time you can go into another situation and wear a different sort of a hat where he's in the Rockerfeller foundations or in the offices of the World Bank organization or perhaps in the National Geographic Society offices And there the level of conversation and the track of the other conversation takes quite a different turn And they'll be discussing things like the environmental destiny of countries for example He can put on a different hat and be happy behind a computer Coming up with fancy exquisitely complex models about forest dynamics and regeneration about the populations of whales of elephants of hooping cranes he can bring up together sophisticated models on CO2 cycling on a whole host of other things and additional to that He has another hat that he wears very nicely and that is a hat of a writer He is very skillful in his writing thoughtful and sometimes provocative. I would like to just Read a few quotes from some of his works that he's done and I'd preface this by saying that Excuse me for those of you that the thing to study nature It's just a matter of studying science in itself and nothing else counts This is what professor Bakken has to say a concern with nature is not merely a scientific curiosity But a subject that pervades philosophy theology aesthetics and Psychology and this of course is the very stuff that the well conferences are made out of and for those of you that think That technology is largely responsible for getting into what we perceive at least many of us as an environmental mess And that somehow if we could unload technology that we could go back to a steadier state that things would be Easier to deal with and so on professor Bakken writes a harmony between ourselves and nature depends on Indeed requires Modern technological tools to teach us about the earth and to help us manage wisely what we realize We have inadvertently begun to unravel Finally for those of you that still think that That Nature is is in balance and not changing and is static He has this to say to you There are both natural and unnatural changes and there are natural and unnatural rates of change To recognize that melodies and themes are made up of changing tones does not imply that any noise is music The key to a new but wise management of nature is to accept changes that are natural in kind and in frequency that is to pick out the melodies from the noise Finally, what I can say is that as the current environmental literature and the Chapters and the general biology textbooks are rewritten about ecology that what the the new text that will be coming out will owe a great measure to Professor Botkin and his legacy of work that he's done over the last few decades. It's with great pleasure. I introduce to you professor Botkin Thank you very much for that very kind introduction I'm happy to be back in Minnesota I've done fieldwork here in the boundary water canoe area and in the Superior National Forest I've enjoyed my work there. I appreciate the state that has a million-acre wilderness and also my experience with the citizens of Minnesota is a group of people who are very receptive to Reasoned and reasonable approaches to issues and so I'm very happy to be here to talk with you I want to focus on the topic of the conference nature out of balance Now when you talk when you say that nature is out of balance That suggests that it must have a balance and if we have put it out of balance We must be able to simply return it to that other that balance and what I want to submit to you is that that's not really the way nature works and Perhaps that's not quite with the way to phrase the question What I want to share with you today and what I have been involved with Over the last years more and more intently is attempts to try to solve environmental issues Now you've heard today from our previous speakers very eloquently About serious problems that we face The question is what happens when people of goodwill on all sides want to sit down And actually solve an environmental problem What I found is that we tend to fail more often than we succeed Even when all the parties agree that they want a solution And the question I've been struggling with is why is it that we continue to fail Even when we want to try to succeed and I think there are two major reasons the first reason is that we Live with a mythology about nature of false mythology The second is that we fail to understand the appropriate role of science and scientists in the solution To environmental problems. I want to concentrate today on the first subject On the idea that we have a false mythology that our world view of nature is not correct Now some people say that solving environmental problems is simply a matter of more facts and information as Someone who has spent many years struggling to attain obtain more facts and information I agree with the importance of better information and more refined information But I think at a deeper level The fundamental issue has to do with our world view of the environment and in fact the world view from which We have operated Tends us tends to make us not interested in those facts Bob may pointed out how little money we spend on Finding out about nature Compared to studying the cosmos and it's our world view. I believe that tends to influence us influence us not to care And what do I mean by saying that we have a world view? Think when you view something from a certain context you have blinders on That influence what information you're willing to take in and watch You won't take in I'll tell you a little story That I hope will clarify Clarify this point. I went to high school in a little town called Croton on the Hudson in New York State About 30 miles north of New York City just up the Hudson River That was the place that the trains changed from diesel to electric so they could go into Grand Central Tunnel From New York City, actually there were two train lines one went north to Croton and the other went east to Stanford, Connecticut And I got friendly with a railroad conductor when I was in high school I had a very good sense of humor and he would tell me what happened to him. One day I met him and Asked him what was new. He said I had a very funny experience He said I was on a conductor on a train coming out of New York And as the train was leaving the station this businessman in a suit carrying a briefcase came rushing down the railroad platform And as the train pulled out he leaped on the train and was out of breath and sat down And once he caught his breath and the train was well on his way He looked up at me and said is this the 502 to Stanford meeting the train to the east And my friend the conductor said no it's the 505 to Croton going north And the businessman said oh heck what's three minutes Now that's a case where the businessman had a certain mindset It was the timing of trains that was important to him And he refused internally to take in the information that it was really the spatial variable he had better pay attention to Now you didn't need to put it into such theoretical terms to let him know that he was on entirely the wrong train But that's what I mean. Now it's also nice to be in Minnesota in a state which has a program To help reintroduce timber walls And that's a good example of an issue which you might think could be cast simply in terms of facts How many wolves are there? How fast are they changing? Are they endangered? Do they perform an essential ecosystem function? But I'm sure you all understand that wolves throughout the history of western civilization in western literature Has almost always been a symbol of evil And in other cultures some Indian American Indian cultures it has been a positive symbol And Aldo Leopold in a sand county almanac speaks of the wolf and the mountain lion as necessary To maintain the control the abundance of their prey and therefore has an important role And argues that we have an aesthetic and moral reason to preserve them And so right in your own state you have an issue that clearly revolves around beliefs as much as it does around facts Now I'm involved today in a very controversial issue of this kind I'm directing a study for the states of Oregon and California about the salmon and trout, the anadromous fish of the Pacific Northwest And especially about the effects of forest activities and deforestation That's a very controversial issue with many sides, fishermen, foresters, environmentalists But there is a sense among many of the people that it's time to stop the rhetoric and the confrontation And seek to find innovative solutions and so we are struggling with that And as I'll mention later on I can assure you that the mythologies I'm going to talk to you about Are alive and well in the Pacific Northwest of our own country Now I think it's instructive when you look at an issue like reintroducing the wolves in Minnesota Or saving the salmon on the Pacific Northwest To look at previous attempts to try to solve environmental problems and see what happens Before I do that I want to make one other point that I think is well made If you can see this in this Calvin and Hobbes cartoon This Calvin says dad what causes the wind and his father says trees sneezing and Calvin says really And his father says no but the truth is more complicated I also find when it comes to environmental issues that when people try to look at solving them They tend to want to rely on the simple answers And often those simple answers come from our mythologies I'll start by telling you a story about one of my favorite animals the African elephant Which I've had the good fortune to be able to study to a limited extent I want to tell you the story about the attempt to conserve elephants In one of the largest national parks in Kenya Savo National Park that's TSAVO Now the controversy over Savo was very well known publicly In the 1960s and early 1970s made the national papers in the United States Very much like the issues that I just mentioned such as the salmon on the Northwest and the spotted owl These issues come and go with fashion and so many of you may never have heard of this Now Savo was an example of a situation where all the sides had the same overall goal Which was to try to conserve the elephants and wildlife of Savo and the ecosystem of Savo In perpetuity for people to enjoy And something went wrong It's a very different kind of issue than the usual confrontation issue The way environmental issues are usually stereotyped As the issue between the conservationists who believe the salvation of the world lies in the conservation of nature And the developers who believe that the salvation of civilization lies in continual exploitation of nature This situation of