Spot the Difference

A. Taxonomic history has been made this week, at least according In the World Wildlife Fund
(WWF). a conservation group. Scientists have described a new species of clouded leopard from the
tropical forests of Indonesia with spots (or “clouds", as they are poetically known; smaller than
those of other clouded leopards, with fur a little darker and with a double as opposed to a "partial
double" stripe down its back.

B. However, no previously unknown beast has suddenly leapt out from the forest. In-stead, some
scientists have proposed a change in the official taxonomic accounting system of clouded
leopards. Where there were four subspecies there will likely now be two species. A genetic analysis
and a closer inspection of museum specimens’ coals published in Current Biology has found no
relevant difference between three subspecies described 50 years ago from continental Asia and
from the Hainan and Taiwan islands. The 5.000-11,000 clouded leopards on Borneo, the 3,000 -
7,000 on Sumatra, and the remaining few on the nearby Batu islands can now, the authors say,
claim a more elevated distinction as a species.

C. What this actually means is fuzzy and whether it is scientifically important is questionable. In
any case, biologists do not agree what species and subspecies are. Creatures are given Latin first
and second names (corresponding to a genus and species) according to the convention of Carl von
Linné, who was born 300 years ago this May. But Linneaus, as he is more commonly known, thought
of species as perfectly discrete units created by God. Darwinism has them as mutable things,
generated gradually over time by natural selection. So, delineating when enough variation has
evolved to justify a new category is largely a matter of taste.

D. Take ants and butterflies. Ant experts have recently been waging a war against all types of
species subdivision. Lepidopterists, on the other hand, cling to the double barrel second names
from their discipline’s 19th-century tradition, and categorise many local subclasses within species
found over wide areas. Thus, it would be futile - if one were so inclined - to attempt to compare the
diversity of ant and butterfly populations.

E. The traditional way around the problem is to call a species all members of a group that share the
same gene pool. They can mate together and produce fertile offspring. Whether Indonesian
clouded leopards can make cubs with continental ones remains unknown but seems probable.
Instead, the claim this week is that genetics and slight differences in fur patterning are enough to
justify rebranding the clouded leopard as two significant types. Genetically, that makes sense if
many DNA variations correlate perfectly between members of the two groups. The authors did find
some correlation, but they looked for it in only three Indonesian animals. A larger sample would
have been more difficult.

F. One thing is abundantly clear: conservationists who are trying to stop the destruction of the
leopards’ habitat in Borneo and Sumatra see the announcement of a new species of big cat as a
means to gain publicity and political capital. Upgrading subspecies to species is a strategy which
James Mallet, of University College London, likes to call species inflation. It is a common by-
product of genetic analysis, which can reveal differences between populations that the eye cannot.
Creating ever more detailed genetic categories means creating smaller and increasingly restricted
populations of more species. The trouble is that risks devaluing the importance of the term
“species”.

G. The problem of redefining species by genetics is the creation of taxonomic confusion, a

potentially serious difficulty for conservationists and others. The recent proposal to add the polar
bear to the list of animals protected under America’s Endangered Species Act is an example. That
seems all well and good. However, study the genetics and it transpires that polar bears are closer to
some brown bears, than some brown hears are to each other. Go by the genes and it seems that the
polar bear would not count as a species in its own right (and thus might not enjoy the protection
afforded to species) but should be labelled a subspecies of the brown bear.

The Fertility Bust

A. Falling populations - the despair of state pension systems - are often regarded with calmness,
even a secret satisfaction, by ordinary people. Europeans no longer need large families to gather
the harvest or to look after parents. They have used their good fortune to have fewer children,
thinking this will make their lives better. Much of Europe is too crowded as it is. Is this all that is
going on? Germans have been agonising about recent European Union estimates suggesting that
30% of German women are, and will remain, childless. The number is a guess: Germany does not
collect figures like this. Even if the share is 25%, as other surveys suggest, it is by far the highest in
Europe.

B. Germany is something of an oddity in this. In most countries with low fertility, young women have
their first child late, and stop at one. In Germany, women with children often have two or three, but
many have none at all. Germany is also odd in experiencing low fertility for such a long time. Europe
is demographically polarised. Countries in the north and west saw fertility fall early, in the 1960s.
Recently, they have seen it stabilise or rise back towards replacement level (i.e. 2.1 births per
woman). Countries in the south and east, on the other hand, saw fertility rates fall much faster,
more recently (often to below 1.3, a rate at which the population falls by half every 45 years).
Germany combines both. Its fertility rate fell below 2 in 1971, However, it has stayed low and is still
only just above 1.3. This challenges the notion that European fertility is likely to stabilise at tolerable
levels. It raises questions about whether the low birth rates of Italy and Poland, say, really are, as
some have argued, merely temporary.

C. The list of explanations for why German fertility has not rebounded is long. Michael Teitelbaum, a
demographer at the Sloan Foundation in New York ticks them off: poor childcare; unusually
extended higher education; inflexible labour laws; high youth unemployment; and non-economic or
cultural factors. One German writer, Gunter Grass, wrote a novel, “Headbirths”, in 1982, about
Harm and Dorte Peters, “a model couple” who disport themselves on the beaches of Asia rather
than invest time and trouble in bringing up a baby. “They keep a cat,” writes Mr. Grass, “and still
have no child.” The novel is subtitled “The Germans Are Dying Out”. With the exception of this
cultural factor, none of these features is peculiar to Germany. If social and economic explanations
account for persistent low fertility there, then they may well produce the same persistence
elsewhere.

D. The reason for hoping otherwise is that the initial decline in southern and eastern Europe was
drastic, and may be reversible. In the Mediterranean, demographic decline was associated with
freeing young women from the constraints of traditional Catholicism, which encouraged large
families. In eastern Europe, it was associated with the collapse in living standards and the ending of
pro-birth policies. In both regions, as such temporary factors fade, fertility rates might, in principle,
be expected to rise. Indeed, they may already be stabilising in Italy and Spain. Germany tells you
that reversing these trends can be hard. There, and elsewhere, fertility rates did not merely fall; they
went below what people said they wanted. In 1979, Eurobarometer asked Europeans how many
children they would like. Almost everywhere, the answer was two: the traditional two-child ideal
persisted even when people were not delivering it. This may have reflected old habits of mind. Or
people may really be having fewer children than they claim to want.

E. A recent paper suggests how this might come about. If women postpone their first child past
their mid-30s, it may be too late to have a second even if they want one (the average age of first
births in most of Europe is now 30). If everyone does the same, one child becomes the norm: a one-
child policy by example rather than coercion, as it were. If women wait to start a family until they are
established at work, they may end up postponing children longer than they might otherwise have
chosen. When birth rates began to fall in Europe, this was said to be a simple matter of choice. That
was true, but it is possible that fertility may overshoot below what people might naturally have
chosen. For many years, politicians have argued that southern Europe will catch up from its fertility
decline because women, having postponed their first child, will quickly have a second and third.
The overshoot theory suggests there may be only partial recuperation. Postponement could
permanently lower fertility, not just redistribute it across time.

F. There is a twist. If people have fewer children than they claim to want, how they see the family
may change, too. Research by Tomas Sobotka of the Vienna Institute of Demography suggests that,
after decades of low fertility, a quarter of young German men and a fifth of young women say they
have no intention of having children and think that this is fine. When Eurobarometer repeated its
poll about ideal family size in 2001, support for the two-child model had fallen everywhere. Parts of
Europe, then, may be entering a new demographic trap. People restrict family size from choice.
Social, economic, and cultural factors then cause this natural fertility decline to overshoot. This
changes expectations, to which people respond by having even fewer children. That does not
necessarily mean that birth rates will fall even more: there may yet be some natural floor, but it
could mean that recovery from very low fertility rates proves to be slow or even non-existent.

Teens Try to Change the World, One Purchase at a Time

When classes adjourn here at the Fayerweather Street School, eighth-graders ignore the mall down
the street and go straight to the place they consider much cooler: the local natural-foods grocer’s.
There, they gather in groups of ten or more sometimes, smitten by a marketing atmosphere that
links attractiveness to eating well. When time comes to buy something even as small as a
chocolate treat, they feel good knowing a farmer somewhere probably received a good price. “Food
is something you need to stay alive,” says eighth-grader Emma Lewis. “Paying farmers well is really
important because if we didn’t have any unprocessed food, we’d all be living on candy.”

Eating morally, as some describe it, is becoming a priority for teenagers as well as adults in their
early 20s. What began a decade ago as a concern on college campuses to shun clothing made in
overseas sweatshops has given birth to a parallel phenomenon in the food and beverage industries.
Here, youthful shoppers are leveraging their dollars in a bid to reduce pesticide usage, limit
deforestation, and make sure farmers are not left with a pittance on payday. Once again, college
campuses are setting the pace. Students at 30 colleges have helped persuade administrators to
make sure all cafeteria coffee comes with a “Fair Trade” label, which means bean pickers in Latin
America and Africa were paid higher than the going rates. Their peers on another 300 campuses are
pushing to follow suit, according to Students United for Fair Trade in Washington, D.C.

Coffee is just the beginning. Bon Appetit, an institutional food-service provider based in California,
relies on organic and locally grown produce. In each year since 2001, more than 25 colleges have
asked the company to bid on their food-service contracts. Though Bon Appetit intentionally limits
its growth, its collegiate client list has grown from 58 to 71 in that period. “It’s really just been in the
last five years that we’ve seen students become concerned with where their food was coming
from,” says Maisie Ganzler, Bon Appetit’s director of strategic initiatives. “Prior to that, students
were excited to be getting sugared cereal.”

To reach a younger set that often does not drink coffee, Fair Trade importer Equal Exchange rolled
our a line of cocoa in 2003 and chocolate bars in 2004. Profits in both sectors have justified the
project, says Equal Exchange co-president Hob Everts. What is more, dozens of schools have
contacted the firm to use its products in fundraisers and as classroom teaching, tools. "Kids often
are the ones who agitate in the family’" for recycling and other eco-friendly practices, Mr. Everts
says. “So, it’s a ripe audience.”

Concerns of today’s youthful food shoppers seem to reflect in some ways the idealism that inspired
prior generations to join boycotts in solidarity with farm workers. Today’s efforts are distinct in that
youthful consumers say they do not want to make sacrifices. They want high-quality, competitively
priced goods that do not require exploitation of workers or the environment. They will gladly reward
companies that deliver. One activist who shares this sentiment and hears it repeatedly from her
peers is Summer Rayne Oakes, a recent college graduate and fashion model who promotes stylish
Fair Trade clothing. “I’m not going to buy something that can’t stand on its own or looks bad just
because it’s socially responsible,” Ms. Oakes says. “My generation has come to terms with the fact
that we’re all consumers, and we all buy something. So, if I do have to buy food, what are the
consequences?”

Wanting to ameliorate the world’s big problems can be frustrating, especially for those who feel
ineffective because they are young. Marketers are figuring out that teenagers resent this feeling of
powerlessness and are pushing products that make young buyers feel as though they are making a
difference, says Michael Wood, vice president of Teenage Research Unlimited. His example: Ethos
Water from Starbucks, which contributes five cents from every bottle sold to water-purification
centres in developing countries. “This is a very easy way for young people to contribute. All they
have to do is buy bottled water,” Mr. Wood says. “Buying products or supporting companies that
give them ways to support global issues is one way for them to get involved, and they really
appreciate that.”

Convenience is also driving consumer activism. Joe Curnow, national coordinator of United
Students for Fair Trade, says she first got involved about five years ago as a high schooler when she
spent time hanging out in cafes. Buying coffee with an eco-friendly label “was a very easy way for
me to express what I believed in”, she says. For young teens, consumption is their first foray into
activism. At the Fayerweather Street School, Emma Lewis teamed up with classmates Kayla
Kleinman and Therese LaRue to sell Fair Trade chocolate, cocoa, and other products at a school
fundraiser in November. When the tally reached $8,000, they realised they were striking a chord.

Some adults hasten to point out the limitations of ethical consumption as a tool for doing good
deeds and personal growth. Gary Lindsay, director of Children’s Ministries, encourages Fair Trade
purchases, but he also organises children to collect toys for foster children and save coins for a
playground-construction project in Tanzania. He says it helps them learn to enjoy helping others
even when they are not getting anything tangible in return. “When we're benefiting, how much are
we really giving? Is it really sacri-lice?" Mr. Lindsay asks. Of Fair Trade products, he says: “Those
things are great when we’re given opportunities like that once in a while, but I think for us to expect
that we should get something out of everything we do is a very selfish attitude to have.”