I think most decent philosophers allow themselves to use words like 'never', yet make exceptions.
It's so much more readable than 98.2% ... with a +- 1.4% margin of error....
'Chemicals', to a chemist, is everything. The elements and building blocks of life; minerals, hormones, and the sugar in your tea.
Where do you draw the line between 'natural stuff' and 'chemicals'?
Between
chicken manure, DE, and quicklime? Ammonia and copper sulfate? Cyanide and DDT? (They all kill different things in different ways.)
Something that comes in a bag vs. something that comes out of a cow? (If fed to cows, do chemicals become 'natural' again?)
'The Natural Step' framework offers some useful distinctions without needing to argue any particular category as 'bad chemicals.'
Their 4 system conditions are roughly:
1) "protect biodiversity / don't destroy genetic seed stock"
2) "avoid increasing concentrations of crustal materials in the biosphere"
3) "avoid increasing concentrations of persistent compounds in the biosphere"
4) "equitable resource allocation: unmet needs for immediate survival undercut long-term solutions."
#2 and #3 both address different aspects of 'chemical' to avoid. Living, biological materials are part of the thing to be preserved: life on earth. Crustal materials (minerals) are necessary, but if your business involves systematically replacing living soil with inert minerals, it's not
sustainable. Likewise, 'persistent compounds' might be natural or synthetic; what matters is if our activity stirs them up or produces them faster than they can be re-absorbed.
Female mammals naturally produce estrogen. Urban areas bring together large concentrations of birth-control users near fresh
water supplies. The frogs and fish don't care whether your 'Pill' is natural tortured-mare's-piss or artificial vegan alternative, they only notice whether there's more of it in the river.
From being a limiting nutrient locally, nitrogen has become an over-abundant problem regionally. Over-fertilization and feed-lot runoff combine to make estuaries into a nitrogen dead zone. Organic farms are just as prone to over-fertilization as conventional ones, because fertilizer is cheap and people tend to think 'more of a good thing is better.' Too much
chicken manure kills things just as fast as too much urea.
If you occasionally use some bitumen from the tar seeps around California to repair your pottery, you aren't shifting the balance. But if you are constantly extracting tars and paving bigger parking lots, you are replacing living habitat with non-living, toxic stuff. That violates both #2 and #3 above.
Of
course, there are some absolutely nasty chemical poisons. Persistent insecticides, herbicides, even antibiotics and fungicides are designed to kill. Any chemical whose name you can't pronounce is probably worth passing up: not time-tested for compatibility with life on Earth.
Physical methods are self-limiting because they're labor intensive: mulching, heating, washing, or drying things out.
'Mild but effective' chemicals break down relatively fast: vinegar, baking soda, biodegradable soaps, non-toxic oils.
Diatomaceous earth. Charcoal, ashes, sugar, salt... all known to be compatible with life on earth when diluted; all appropriate if used in suitable concentrations. That is, if you are not using them faster than they break down.
Using oil to smother scale insects and remove them from trees seems compatible with this: like poulticing and salving an infected cut. Sure, you are going to try to improve your health so you don't repeat the problem, but sometimes you also need some basic first aid in order to keep everything alive long
enough to enjoy an improvement in its overall health.
We're all using computers here, and probably most of us drive around to get our organic farm supplies in vehicles that pollute far more than the tree treatment in question.
I'm leery of any solution that is hypocritical about 'purity' for the system under management, yet the managers use all the normal, practical everyday conveniences for their own needs.
Smacks of school lunch-ladies that don't eat what they dish out.
If I'm going to be a practical omnivore in my own lifestyle, then I'm going to extend the same attitude toward my trees, pets, and livestock.
Elegant solutions when possible; Grandma's pragmatism when necessary.
What I've heard of Fukuoka suggests a blending of labor-intensive and labor-saving methods, a beautiful set of solutions but not an omniscient one. Like a watch-maker with cogs of DNA and springs of sunlight. The purist solutions are tempting simply as an exercise in seeing how far we can push the limits of our theories.
Look forward to a better acquaintance with his work when I get the chance.
Yours,
Erica W