Geochemical cycles cause ecological harm at one place to spill over to others.
Evidence
A sharply contrasting and more accurate image, however, is revealed by focusing on the critically important chemical cycles that interlock, and resist any notion of meaningful boundaries between, various aspects of the ecosystem. Whether basic chemical elements (such as carbon, hydrogen, sulfur, and nitrogen) or chemical compounds essential for life on Earth (such as water), constitutive components of life on Earth are perpetually cycled through virtually all ecological systems in exceedingly complex and dynamic combinations of interrelationships. These geochemical cycles bind the entire global ecosystem together over time and space and are the root cause of the spatial and temporal spillover effects of activities at one place and time on other places and other times. — Richard J. Lazarus, The Making of Environmental Law, 53
Categorization
- XREF: The no-boundaries spillover thesis is the ecological underpinning for cross-boundary pollution regulation — central to environmental justice and the Soundscape course’s jurisdictional questions. — connects to: Nature’s lack of a fixed baseline complicates legal sorting of human from natural change. — Richard J. Lazarus, The Making of Environmental Law, 62; Erosion and drainage threaten plover habitat, foreshadowing human harm from the same — Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac: With Other…, 136; Some human-caused environmental changes prove uncontrollable and irreversible — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement: How People Do Harm…, 2724 (+5 more)
- ADDENDUM: Geochemical spillover supports the trees-as-infrastructure article’s theme of ecological systems that refuse jurisdictional boundaries.
Broader Connections
- Some human-caused environmental changes prove uncontrollable and irreversible
#expands(0.80) — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 2724 - Ecological interdependence makes species destruction endanger all life including humans
#expands(0.75) — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 2519 - Persistent pollutants postpone their harm to future generations.
#exemplifies(0.72) — Richard J. Lazarus, The Making of Environmental Law, 85