Wednesday, January 23, 2019
The Great Vanishing
We need to be more
like Jains, who take the greatest care not to kill anything, the
vegan orthodox eating only dropped fruit and wilted greens, refusing
to drive because of the insect snowstorm, and wearing masks to
prevent accidentally inhaling tiny creatures. A friend recently
wrote, explaining that he and his partner carefully removed spiders
and wasps from their house, concerned not to contribute further to
the insect die-off. I have long done the same thing.
The alarm has been
sounded by the Germans, who have done the world’s first extensive
inventory of flying insects, using a network of amateurs similar to
Audobon bird counts in the US. Two years ago German scientists
reported a staggering drop of 76% in these numbers over a 27 year
period, calling it “biological Armageddon.” At El Yunque
National Forest in Puerto Rico, the number of arthopods dropped 98% -
before Hurricane Maria.
This has led to a plunge in insectivore numbers, with some species
disappearing from the forest. This
data, and the numerical
data which
follows, I am reporting
from a powerful article recently published in the online journal
TomDispatch by Subhankar Banerjee,
“BiologicalAnnihilation: a Planet in Loss Mode.”
Vertebrates.
It’s not only the polar
bear, tiger, leopard,
elephant, rhino, and large sea vertebrates like manatees, dolphin,
and whales that are at risk. The
World Wildlife Fund reports a 60% decline
in global vertebrate population from
1970-2014. Some biomes have suffered more than others. Worldwide,
83% of freshwater vertebrates have died. We have heard for quite some
time about the die-off in amphibians, especially frogs, but I suspect
this is true of many salamanders as well, since they are much less
plentiful here in Southern Appalachia – one of the areas in which
they have thrived - than they were when I moved here in the
Seventies. Vertebrates only make up 3% of the kingdom Animalia, but
we and much that we love are part of that family.
Birds.
Three and half billion
birds die annually from crashing into glass or being killed by feral
cats in North America alone. With climate change, the timing of the
arrival of birds in spring with the appropriate diet is off. With
the passing of the moth snowstorm, species like the chickadee, whose
young need large numbers of moth larvae, are in rapid decline.
Softwoods in the Western US and the boreal forest of Canada are dying
rapidly, hundreds of
millions of them. Weakened
by stress from severe droughts and rapid warming, they succumb much
more readily to pest like the exploding bark beetel population. In
New Mexico, 90% of mature
pinon trees
have died in the last four years. This, too, removes food and
nesting places for
resident birds.
Ocean
life. Ocean life is
dying. Since the ocean is our largest carbon sink, and first line of
defense against rising CO2, it is acidifying (carbonic acid), making
it increasingly difficult for shellfish to make their lime-based
shells. Coral reefs are being bleached increasingly from warming
oceans, and suffering rapid decline. Starfish
on the West Coast are
dying from a virus, with ocean warming rendering them more
vulnerable. In some areas, 99% of them have died. Sharks,
tunas
and dolphins,
virtually all the top
predators, are in rapid decline.
Whales are barely holding
their own, the blue whale
populatoin in particular being held in check by ship strikes.
But, as
on land, it’s not just the large creatures who are at grave risk.
The phytoplankton, chief
source of the oxygen we and other animals breathe, are suffering.
Two species in the North Pacific are now reported extinct.
All
of this is connected.
And it is connected to us. The
causes of these population collapses are complex and overlapping, but
they include over-exploitation of species, agricultural practices,
and habitat loss, “all driven by runaway human consumption”
(Banerjee), with climate change an exacerbating driver.
The
data is devastating. But unless we
live these facts,
as scientists, naturalists, sportsmen, hikers, and wilderness
explorers do, it’s just a mental worry. It passes, and we remain
comfortable
within the redoubt of our human infrastructure, which has made a
dwindling, diminished and suffering parkland of the natural world.
So much of what we cherish
still holds together, as we enjoy the fruits of civilization built up
since the beginning of the Holocene: the symphony, theater,
the array of sports
events, plenteous food, general
civic order, at
least in the rich world. But we are teetering on the edge of
disaster. The world we inhabit is hollowed out, our sureties
misplaced, because we pretend the
world of human artifacts,
the built world, is bedrock reality. The truth is that the
cascading effects of insectageddon and of biological annihilation
will reach us, sooner rather than later. Though we have subjected
the natural world to enclosure, the walls around the zoo are subject
to natural law. We are not outside the system, but thoroughly
embedded within it.
I’ll
give Banerjee the last word: “To mitigate the crisis, to save life
itself, would require not merely the replacement of carbon-dirty
fossil fuels with renewable forms of energy, but a genuine
re-evaluation
of modern life and its institutions.”
Subscribe to Posts [Atom]
