2020. Earth weeps, a biologist weeps. I am 77 and a long-retired biologist, husband and grandfather of the Seattle 3, three little male rugrats, ages 8 and 6 (twins). I will not live to see how this Earth drama plays out, but my descendants will. We are condemning the Seattle 3, your grandchildren and their grandchildren ad infinitum, to a painful ride with massive casualties and climate refugees moving all over the world, rich and poor alike, unquestionably well into the 22nd century and quite likely well beyond.
But, in my opinion, the bigger crime is the loss of millions upon millions of species to extinction, innocent victims of our greed and ignorance. Equally as heinous is the loss of the joys of future generations to be able to experience as I have, these very species in all their beauty and diversity.
After millennia of being spoiled riding this gorgeous blue-green marble, all species are ill-prepared for a future unfit for cockroaches and sewer rats. My favorite climatologist, James Hansen, a world authority on Venus, in his best-selling book, The Storms of My Grandchildren, prophesied the wild possibility of Earth becoming another Venus with surface temperatures in excess of 800 F. with all water and ice boiled away. There is one advantage to this improbable planet Venth(?), the viruses we have for politicians that keep getting re-elected like a recurrent nightmare, would be vaporized.
| Why Do I Weep? |
In his book, Hansen weeps for his grandchildren and what they are going to miss. As a biologist, what do I weep for besides my own Seattle 3?
- I weep for those millions of existing species that currently give us so much incredible beauty, diversity and evolutionary wonder as they one-by-one pass out of existence.
- I weep for what future generations (including my 2 daughters & The Seattle 3) will miss by not seeing the Earth, a beautiful beast, in its semi-natural state, and what I was fortunate to capture by its tail and hang on, back in the mid-60s (see Conclusion). Global ecosystems like coral reefs, tropical rainforests, glaciers, the Arctic Ocean, Antarctic ice sheets, and coastal mangrove swamps started to radically, and visually, unravel around 2000. Before then, I visited paradises from the Galapagos Islands to Antarctica to he New Zealand Lake Central Otago lake district before ecotourism was all the rage.
- I weep for those species extinct long before they are due for extinction. All species have, or will, become extinct. But, as in the case of some tropical frogs, in one generation? Horseshoe crabs, the gingko tree, and coelacanth fish—living fossils—are examples of evolutionary marvels having already been on Earth essentially unchanged for millions of years. And it’s OK to sentence them to extinction in a handful of years?
The coelacanth was thought to have gone extinct 65 million years ago with the dinosaurs. After surviving the deep ocean environment (2300 ft.) essentially unchanged for 400 million years, they could go extinct due in a few years, in part, to climate change. They are collateral damage in our war against Earth.
- I weep because I and millions of others won’t see a pristine Great Barrier Reef and the Eucalyptus & Gum forests of Australia, replete with koala bears and wombats or the snows of Kilimanjaro.
Elizabeth Kolbert wrote in The Sixth Extinction, in 2014, the five previous extinctions could be considered geologically abrupt, especially 65 million years ago at the end of the Cretaceous Period, 75% of Earth’s species went extinct including the dinosaurs, most within days after a massive meteor struck north of the Yucatan Peninsula. The strike caused immediate climate change. The difference between then and now is the human factor. Unlike then, now we can control the outcome, and unless you believe, as 41% of goofy Americans apparently do, that Fred Flintstone rode Brontos, a Brontosaurus to work (Peter Moore, YouGov, June 18, 2015). I would like to believe that we can avert an ending such as described in her final chapter entitled “The Thing with Feathers.” That chapter is like reading a global death sentence. I quote Kolbert as writing (p. 267), “………we, too, will eventually be undone by our ‘transformation of the ecological landscape.’”
To Slow the Tidal Wave of Earth’s Tears
- Quit thinking climate is the enemy. The real enemy are the charlatans who would have you believe that we are not to blame for climate change, those discussed in #2 and #3.
- Understand Climate. Climate, as rainfall and sunshine, is a healer and an ally. The media and our ignorance have made it an adversary. We don’t understand climate and why it is changing. Weather, we “feel” because it affects us every second, 24/7, and it can feel radically different in a second, e.g. a cloudburst. Climate is the long-term average of weather, which may change subtly every year, e.g. heat. Extreme weather events may last only minutes or days but often creates historic catastrophes, e.g., Hurricanes Katrina, Superstorms Sandy, and Australian wildfires. Extreme weather events are manifestations of climate change. Media meteorologists should take the time to help us understand the differences between weather, climate, extreme weather events and climate change. They are in front of us every day and have no excuse to not spend a few minutes teaching.
- Beware of economists, Republican politicians, Wall Street , the Koch Brothers and any obstructionists and deniers of the truth of science. They are wolves in sheep’s clothing, perpetrating the myth usually through ignorance or stupidity that economics (“THE ECONOMY”) is a stand-alone science. The environment, ecosystems, raw resources, etc., in their own jargon, are simply externalities. A healthy ecology is not only not an externality, it is the very heart and an essential ingredient of a healthy economy. That complicates their over-simplification of an economic system that is truncated and independent of ecological systems. They sucker us into believing that we, the human race, in reality, are 7+ billion Captain Americas, Batwomen, Black Panthers, and their Superhero allies. In reality, we are Antmen in a giant colony. Simply players.
- Beware of organized religion. We need to drop the biblical curse that preaches that humans have dominion and domination over Earth. Take your pick. We have neither for the same reasons stated above; we are components. Dominion implies that God made us the stewards, the caretakers of Earth and all life within. Domination implies that God gave us the Earth and the beasts within solely for man’s goals.
- Become knowledgeable and get involved. Adults and children can follow together the life cycle of an endangered species and their status globally. Almost all endangered species have funding possibilities (see World Wildlife Fund) and volunteer support for habitat restoration
- Support a proactive group that advocates a sustainable Earth. Virtually any environmental organization from Sierra Club to Green Peace support a sustainable Earth.
- Modify lifestyles to reduce our overall national ecological foot print. Do anything that helps reduce the use of fossil fuel: fund or use alternative sources of energy, walk, bike, take the train or bus, eat less meat, etc. This helps our morale and our global image.
- Elect politicians who are in touch with reality. Too many Neros fiddling in Washington while the world burns. Pre-election quizzes should be given to all Congressional candidates to determine if their knowledge goes deeper than re-election fund-raising. Republican congressmen and their tycoon base do not understand or ignore the close dependency of their precious investments and healthy ecosystems. They are notorious for not funding and defunding environmental legislation while Democrats are typically the opposite.
- Support common sense legislation that places a price on burning fossil fuels and offers incentives for clean, renewable energy. Currently in Congress, H.R. 763, Energy Innovation and Carbon Dividend Act 2019, enthusiastically supported by Citizens Climate Lobby, is a first step to reducing CO2 levels. Surprisingly, this bill is appealing because it IS bipartisan.
- Prepare for genuine sacrifice (as opposed to not wearing your mask) for the common good. The future will not be a time for narcissistic individualism over community, as we are seeing now in the Proud to be Selfish self-named, phony, “patriots” today (see post, American Pride, date). They wouldn’t know a patriot if it jumped up and took a chunk out of their ass. Their alleged thinking now is that by ignoring the “inconvenience” of observing lockdown procedures, they are tough ‘Merikans and expressing individual rights, never mind how many others you might kill in the process. In contrast, during WWII we saw major sacrifices of food, gas and coal for the good of the war effort. 12,000 Londoners died after the war because they were burning sulfurous coal instead of good coal which had been sold to pay for war debts.
Conclusion
2020. Earth weeps, a biologist weeps. And I have been silently and unknowingly weeping, but not tears of sadness but of joy since those days that began in the summer of 1965, 55 years ago when I really began my study of life and the lives of other species. When I woke up and decided to become a biologist instead of a physician probably because of a few college classes in Oxford, Ohio. The turning point probably happened in August of that summer, two weeks before I was supposed to enter Ohio State Medical School when I walked over to the OSU Zoology Department and took the last teaching assistantship available for that fall. I probably became aware without my awareness, of how beautiful other creatures were besides women and my focus shifted ever so slightly from birds and bees to trees and bees and I started taking botany and entomology classes.
The next summer,1966, the door of biology, in all its splendor and diversity, opened for me as it could nowhere else in the world, and I found myself on a four-month paleo-ecological expedition to the Galapagos Islands. What place could a biologist better launch their career than the epicenter of evolution? At that time, and in the decade following, I reveled in the splendor of life and what Earth had to offer. The Galapagos Islands is a hard act to follow but I didn’t sit idle. I lived for months to years places that I’d only dreamed about—Antarctica, New Zealand, and Argentina—researching, observing, and journaling.
And now I find myself weeping those same silent tears of joy at having had the opportunity to enjoy experiencing all that I have over the last half-century. Those tears of joy are mixed with tears of mourning for the losses of the millions of species during that period. There are occasional rays of hope that warm me; hope that dramatic actions could leave enough extant, intact biological communities of species, damaged but surviving, to save a faltering biosphere. And maybe those species that have vanished will eventually be replaced in millions of years by new ones as beautiful and diverse as their ancestors.
The human-caused extinction crisis is a tragedy beyond sad, but I, along with millions of others, are trying to slow the runaway extinction train. The reasons I’ve stated above, but the rationale, As Kim Stanley Robinson, the futurist writer, wrote “There is No Planet B. There is absolutely no alternative to maintaining life on Earth.”
I would add that there is an alternative and that alternative is to send Earth, possibly a sentient super-organism and evolutionary integrated marvel, down a path that condemns it and all its parts, to a very real facsimile of Hell. Of course, we won’t be around to experience that which is unfortunate. because maybe that image would jellify us enough to step up and accept our role and play our final hand differently.
As I said at the beginning, the crime that towers above all the rest, given the horrible suffering we will bring to our own species, is the loss of millions upon millions of species to extinction. They are the innocent victims of our greed and ignorance as are our descendents, who may never know the joys that life brings to those who truly share and love this Earth. Who knows? Weeping doesn’t have to be permanent.