Friday, December 30, 2016
SHEARED NUMBERS
At this mornings
meditation, a solitary warbler flew into my visual field. I was
filled with gratitude, made more acute by the following emotion,
regret that it was only one bird. I thought back to William
Bartram's eighteenth-century description of great flocks of birds
flying overhead in North Carolina, so thick that he could hardly see
the blue sky behind them. Today, if you were a film director
shooting that scene, you'd be hard pressed to corral that many song
birds from the whole western part of the state.
Not only are we well
into the Sixth Extinction, with rates 1000x greater than the rate
when we emerged in Africa, but the numbers of wild animals are dropping precipitously. By 2020, scientists predict that we will
have lost 2/3 of their total number. We are already past 60%.
This data reinforces personal anecdotal experience: numbers of
butterflies and moths have dramatically decreased in rural WNC since
I was a boy. And I know that the decline in insect numbers radically
affects bird populations. In The Moth Snowstorm, Michael McCarthy speaks of the loss of
the “moth snowstorms” many of us remember from the 50's, when our
car headlights revealed thick clouds of them every evening. Have you
noticed how many fewer bloodied insect carcasses there are on your
car hood? Soon, even the Jains will be able to drive our monster
fossil-devouring vehicles without collateral damage to the web of
life, because the web will have ceased to exist, replaced by a motley
grid with large, sagging holes.
EO Wilson, father of
sociobiology, who has worked tirelessly for wildlife habitat
preservation and teaching ecological values (he
calls it biophilia),
used to advocate saving pockets of high biodiversity here and
there over the planet. After a talk he gave at nearby Warren Wilson
College several years back, I asked him whether he had thought about
what might happen to these small biodiversity jewels in the era of
climate change. Would not some of these third world pockets move
into urban areas as climatic zones shifted? He waved off my
question, saying that introduced too many variables. “One problem
at a time,” he said.
Wilson has now had
time to think this one through, and his response is a bold proposal
for saving half the earth for wildlife habitat, laid out in his
forthcoming book, Half-Earth.
These preserves would feature both north-south and east-west
corridors to allow migration in response to climate shifts. His idea
builds on the longstanding proposal for a “buffalo commons” in
the upper Midwest, possibly extending southward into the vast
interior of North America. With 15% of the world's land already set
aside as natural parks and preserves guaranteed by governmental
action, we have a start. I have not read the book yet, but in the
reviews I have seen, the proposed areas for these protected lands are
in North America, where the work has already begun by private
conservationists (Ted Turner's Flying D in Greater Yellowstone and MC Davis's Nokuse in the Florida Panhandle), and Europe, where the European Green Zone has
worked for a dozen years to promote setting aside a corridor along
the old Iron Curtain, including 20 countries. The idea is stunning in
its boldness, and a salutary antedote to the bad news about both
species loss and rapidly dwindling wildlife populations, with the
loss of 10% of remaining wilderness in the last two decades
amplifying the pressure on habitat.
I must say that, as
soon as I read about Wilson's proposal, I wanted to see the plan for
Africa, South and Southeast Asia, and China. I expect it would not
be hard at all in Australia, and am aware of progress in Central and
South America that could form a sound foundation for such a plan. Is
there the political will for such a project in heavily populated
China and India? Indonesia, where palm plantations sprig up, despite
legal restrictions? What will happen to the rural poor? Does Wilson
and others who share his vision envision any human sharing of this
set-aside space, or does he see it as the pure and pristine preserve
of other species? Does the proposal integrate the pioneering
conservation work that includes indigenous people in monitoring the
territories, while also making a living? Their participation in
planning the set-asides and monitoring a half-earth zone seems
absolutely critical to having a chance for such plan to work. These
are all important questions in the context of anthropocene realities,
and I plan to return in this blog with an analysis of his discussion
on these issues. I do find it troubling that one reviewer (Guardian,
April 11 2016) faults Wilson for the lack of specifics on how
to implement his plan.
I started this blog
during the George W. Bush years, and it matured during the Obama
administration. I was highly critical of him during his first term,
but ended admiring him for his work against the grain towards
stabilizing the climate during the second. Now the unthinkable has
happened, and everything we work for as earthkeepers is at risk under
the upcoming Boy-King's administration. Resistance is in order, but I also plan
to engage the few Republican senators (Lindsey Graham SC, Lamar Alexander TN, and Susan Collins ME) who are on record accepting
anthropogenic climate change. NC's own “moderate” Republican,
Richard Burr, has made carefully moderated comments on climate in
the past, and his office worked quietly with Democrat Kay Hagan while
she was in office on renewable installations in the state. He will be
hearing from me very soon, as will Lindsey Graham.
But even if we have
four years of serious backsliding on carbon emissions in Washington,
there is a campaign sponsored by Avaaz for counteracting the Trump attack: big states and big cities ramping up their shift away
from fossils. California alone is the sixth biggest economy in the
world, and continues to lead the way on renewable energy, vehicle
emissions, and other initiatives to stabilize climate. Other
countries – Japan, Canada (finally, under Justin Trudeau), several
South and Central American nations, and the politically vulnerable
European Union – will continue to do their part. But if China and
India become shirkers along with the US, then we are in jeoparday of
losing any possibility of turning the tide of warming, for some of
the positive feedback loops have already begun, and time is almost
out.
Labels: biophilia, Boy King, climate change, EO Wilson, Half-Earth, Lindsey Graham, MC Davis, moth snowstorm, Nokuse, sixth extinction, Ted Turner, wildlife decline, William Bartram
Wednesday, October 31, 2007
Juvenile Chimp Lands in Alaskan Methane Lake
It was another gripping NPR field interview, this time with a young woman PhD, a specialist in lake formations. As the seaplane buzzed steadily to its destination, the biggest new lake in Alaska caused by melting permafrost, the young woman shared her mounting enthusiasm at the research prospects. She carefully explained the phenomenon, widely noted in Siberia, trans-Finland, and Alaska: with accelerated polar warming, the tundra is beginning to melt, forming lakes where only a few years lay frozen spongy peat-like surfaces, dotted with trees. Now more and more lakes are forming, trees starkly protruding from the waters, and with them, methane gas, lots of it. Methane is 21 times more potent a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, and vast amounts have been bottled up as clathrates in frozen permafrost bands near the poles.
The young PhD was an obvious candidate for a popular interview. Not only was she a female scientist, but she had an engaging, bubbly personality. Her enthusiasm for her work was contagious. She especially liked the simple test of lighting a match to detect the methane. More sophisticated were the subsequent steps of bottling it for further study in the lab when she got home. But encountering methane from these lakes, the likes of which the earth hasn’t seen in several million years, was what really turned her on. She told the woman interviewer about the time when she struck a match and the combustion knocked her over backwards, badly singing her eyebrows, lashes and hair. What a blast!
The interviewer asked the researcher about the perennial problem of the young woman professional: what about marriage? Can you do your best work and progress in your field while raising a family? Still unmarried, she responded thoughtfully, admitting that she knew far too many women who had lost their place in the fiercely competitive world of academic research after starting families. Yes, she wanted a family, but she wanted to work in this newly emerging field to her utmost as long as she could.
As the seaplane started its descent to the lake, the excitement in her voice rose. Upon landing, she rushed to be the first to jump out of the plane. You could hear the whomp and crackling roll as she hit the ground, whooping loudly with joy. Clearly she had found work that was passionate play. How fortunate she was, and how inspiring for us, the listeners, to hear such joy over important work in an emerging field.
But not long into the interview I began to shrink in horror at this unfolding personality. What a prime example of our flawed species. Celebrating the achievement of the pinnacle of her sub-specialty by lighting methane, laughing at the rush of excitement with the explosive whoosh, she behaved like a tomboy juvenile chimp. Lost in this excitement was that she was celebrating very likely the beginning of our end, since the accelerated release of methane from the polar tundra would be more than enough to shove Gaia into uncontrollable warming.
Our species behavior has always been thus. The young scientist’s ebullient methane burning is eerily like the men who discovered oil wells, the stuff spewing over little towns in Pennsylvania and Texas like uncorked black champagne. It also reminds me of friends and acquaintances, all male, who had accidents with their basement chemistry kits, some serious, one fatal. We love to play, and fire is our favorite plaything. We are on the verge of destroying ourselves, taking many of our co-species with us in a fit of burning. The party began with the coal-powered steam engine and we've never looked back - until now. It has reached a paroxysm, the rate of CO2 emissions – and now methane - increasing every month, despite dire warnings from the climate scientists. The methane flames at the mouth of each oil well are signal fires of the Last Party, while China builds a new coal-fired plant each week to make damned sure it's a blowout.
In reflection, most of us know where we are headed. But our paleolithic emotional heritage is more like the chimp, and studies have shown that our moral code is a rational overlay on a much more basic, instinctive core that makes instantaneous decisions – for reasons of immediate survival (or gratification) - that we share with other mammals. We act first, then think afterwards, deftly rationalizing our actions.
So would the chimp-scientist be more sober about the implications for the fate of mankind of her rapidly-expanding field of study if she became a mother? I would hope so. For it is only when we reflect upon the consequences of this global bonfire for our children, grandchildren, all the seven generations, that we pause, perhaps breaking the addictive chain that fuels endless gratification of our material desires. EO Wilson builds his hope for those future generations, and continued species diversity , upon biophilia, the innate love of all life-forms. The cosmologist Brian Swimme cites studies of cross-species mammalian bonding as the basis for living with other creatures growing out of more than cultivated respect, reaching more deeply into our emotional core to affective bonding.
To counterbalance our prodigious advance in the connection between the neocortex and the technological extensions of the opposable thumb, we need remedial work in biophilia, best experienced as a creature (the hunter-gatherer)living in a nested habitat that of necessity teaches respect for the intertwined neighbor species. Lacking that, we need to raise our young, and thus place ourselves, with frequent experience of the outdoors, in a world affording as much wildness as possible, teaching by sympathetic identification the moral imagination which NPR’s engaging young woman scientist seems profoundly to lack.
The young PhD was an obvious candidate for a popular interview. Not only was she a female scientist, but she had an engaging, bubbly personality. Her enthusiasm for her work was contagious. She especially liked the simple test of lighting a match to detect the methane. More sophisticated were the subsequent steps of bottling it for further study in the lab when she got home. But encountering methane from these lakes, the likes of which the earth hasn’t seen in several million years, was what really turned her on. She told the woman interviewer about the time when she struck a match and the combustion knocked her over backwards, badly singing her eyebrows, lashes and hair. What a blast!
The interviewer asked the researcher about the perennial problem of the young woman professional: what about marriage? Can you do your best work and progress in your field while raising a family? Still unmarried, she responded thoughtfully, admitting that she knew far too many women who had lost their place in the fiercely competitive world of academic research after starting families. Yes, she wanted a family, but she wanted to work in this newly emerging field to her utmost as long as she could.
As the seaplane started its descent to the lake, the excitement in her voice rose. Upon landing, she rushed to be the first to jump out of the plane. You could hear the whomp and crackling roll as she hit the ground, whooping loudly with joy. Clearly she had found work that was passionate play. How fortunate she was, and how inspiring for us, the listeners, to hear such joy over important work in an emerging field.
But not long into the interview I began to shrink in horror at this unfolding personality. What a prime example of our flawed species. Celebrating the achievement of the pinnacle of her sub-specialty by lighting methane, laughing at the rush of excitement with the explosive whoosh, she behaved like a tomboy juvenile chimp. Lost in this excitement was that she was celebrating very likely the beginning of our end, since the accelerated release of methane from the polar tundra would be more than enough to shove Gaia into uncontrollable warming.
Our species behavior has always been thus. The young scientist’s ebullient methane burning is eerily like the men who discovered oil wells, the stuff spewing over little towns in Pennsylvania and Texas like uncorked black champagne. It also reminds me of friends and acquaintances, all male, who had accidents with their basement chemistry kits, some serious, one fatal. We love to play, and fire is our favorite plaything. We are on the verge of destroying ourselves, taking many of our co-species with us in a fit of burning. The party began with the coal-powered steam engine and we've never looked back - until now. It has reached a paroxysm, the rate of CO2 emissions – and now methane - increasing every month, despite dire warnings from the climate scientists. The methane flames at the mouth of each oil well are signal fires of the Last Party, while China builds a new coal-fired plant each week to make damned sure it's a blowout.
In reflection, most of us know where we are headed. But our paleolithic emotional heritage is more like the chimp, and studies have shown that our moral code is a rational overlay on a much more basic, instinctive core that makes instantaneous decisions – for reasons of immediate survival (or gratification) - that we share with other mammals. We act first, then think afterwards, deftly rationalizing our actions.
So would the chimp-scientist be more sober about the implications for the fate of mankind of her rapidly-expanding field of study if she became a mother? I would hope so. For it is only when we reflect upon the consequences of this global bonfire for our children, grandchildren, all the seven generations, that we pause, perhaps breaking the addictive chain that fuels endless gratification of our material desires. EO Wilson builds his hope for those future generations, and continued species diversity , upon biophilia, the innate love of all life-forms. The cosmologist Brian Swimme cites studies of cross-species mammalian bonding as the basis for living with other creatures growing out of more than cultivated respect, reaching more deeply into our emotional core to affective bonding.
To counterbalance our prodigious advance in the connection between the neocortex and the technological extensions of the opposable thumb, we need remedial work in biophilia, best experienced as a creature (the hunter-gatherer)living in a nested habitat that of necessity teaches respect for the intertwined neighbor species. Lacking that, we need to raise our young, and thus place ourselves, with frequent experience of the outdoors, in a world affording as much wildness as possible, teaching by sympathetic identification the moral imagination which NPR’s engaging young woman scientist seems profoundly to lack.
Labels: biophilia, clathrates, methane, moral imagination, paleolithic emotional heritage, permafrost
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