The Nation of Plants by Stefano Mancuso

Author:Stefano Mancuso [Mancuso, Stefano]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Other Press
Published: 2021-03-23T00:00:00+00:00

THE NATION OF PLANTS SHALL UNIVERSALLY RESPECT THE RIGHTS OF THE CURRENTLY LIVING AND THOSE OF FUTURE GENERATIONS.

Whether Burundian, Italian, or Icelandic, humans are the most accomplished predators. Like a lion observing, sleepy and satisfied, the piece of the savannah that is his territory, with the serene awareness that no other animal can contest his sovereignty over it, the human race considers the entire planet as something under its exclusive jurisdiction. Earth, the home of life, the only place we know of in the universe able to host it, is considered by humans as neither more nor less than a simple resource: to be eaten, to be consumed. Something similar to a gazelle in the eyes of an always-hungry lion.

That this resource might come to an end, putting at risk the very existence of our species, does not seem to interest us. Have you ever seen that science fiction film in which some really wicked alien species, after having consumed the resources of countless other planets, swoops down on the Earth like a swarm of grasshoppers from space intent on turning it into a wasteland? Those aliens are us. Only the other planets still left to be destroyed after Earth do not exist. We would do well to understand this as soon as possible.

The consumption of organic material produced by other living beings is typical of animal life. Not being able, as plants are, to capture the energy of sunlight autonomously, animals must perforce rely on the predation of other living beings to ensure their survival. This is why plants are always pictured at the bottom of those typically pyramidal illustrations that we see everywhere bearing the name of the food pyramid, or the ecological pyramid, or the trophic pyramid. Whatever the name, the concept is always the same. There is a pyramid with plants, the producers, occupying the lowest level, and then proceeding upward through the various trophic levels. First, the herbivores that eat plants, then above them the carnivores that eat meat, and then the omnivores that eat both plants and meat, and so on, until you get to the apex predators, which are at the top of the food chain.

I have always found these representations of plants as the lowest level of a pyramid to be rather ungenerous, not to say wrong. It would seem to me more correct that the top should be reserved to the organisms that produce chemical energy, rather than those that consume it. I mean, in an automobile isn’t the most important part the engine? All the rest is not essential. Well, plants are the engine of life, the essential part; all the rest is just auto body.

Every time that the energy produced by plants is transferred from a lower level to the next higher level of the pyramid (e.g., when the herbivores eat plants) only 10 to 12 percent of the energy is used to constitute new body mass, thus becoming stored energy, while the rest is lost in various metabolic processes.

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