Environment – Page 7 – Brimmings: up from the well

Reflections on the Supreme Court’s EPA Rebuff

This has been a busy time for America’s highest court, with gargantuan issues–gay marriage, Obama Care, and approval of a controversial capital punishment drug, cases decided by razor thin majorities.

No less important, perhaps the most impacting of all, is the Supreme Court’s decision ultimately affecting climate change; namely its one vote majority ruling against the EPA’s Mercury and Toxic Standards (MATS) provision, designed to reduce mercury and other air pollutants from the nation’s myriad power plants, especially those utilizing coal.

Though MATS wasn’t specifically disavowed, the Court ruled that the EPA must consider the financial burden it imposes. Accordingly, the case goes back to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia to deliberate new guidelines.

I think the decision horrendous in the context of the preeminent threat we and, especially posterity, face in the context of climate change, which the vast weight of environmental science affirms is human induced.

In fact, if we don’t get our act together, we may find ourselves joining the plethora of species we’ve either driven into extinction or endangered.

On the other hand, I laud justice Elena Kagan, who wrote the minority decision in the 5-4 verdict:

Over more than a decade, EPA took costs into account at multiple stages and through multiple means as it set emissions limits for power plants. And when making its initial ‘appropriate and necessary’ finding, EPA knew it would do exactly that — knew it would thoroughly consider the cost-effectiveness of emissions standards later on. That context matters.

While it’s probable the lower court won’t gut the act, but simply mandate that EPA integrate cost factors upfront, not after-the-fact, as it had done, this may sadly take another five years and still be subject to legal scrutiny.

Climate change, in the meanwhile, isn’t about to go into a stall while we continue to rely upon coal as an energy source for many of our power plants.

The corollary is that like a credit card we don’t pay off, our delay will exact cost burdens exceeding mere cash reckonings in hazarding the health of both ourselves and the impinging on the ecological interplay upon which we depend.

Nobody wants to pay more for energy costs any more than we relish replacing a malfunctioning stove or fridge for a newer, more efficient model, at increased cost. Alas, sometimes it is what it is and we move on.

What moved me to write this post as I awoke today to a new dawn outside my window is a news story just out of the BBC, reporting on “Irreversible Change to Sea Life from CO2, compiled by twenty-two experts in the journal Science: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-3336902

Coral reefs, polar bears, many fish–all gone by century end as oceans continue to heat up, lose oxygen, and become more acidic, consequent with our embrace of CO2 energy sources.

And we’ll not be spared either, as the ocean out of which all life came and upon which it substantially depends, not only overwhelms our coast lines, but our ecosystems as well.

This is the true cost of our delay and our neglect, unacknowledged by the Court as in the public’s greater interest and for the well-being of Mother Earth.

–rj

BEE Alert

Recently I posted about the plight of butterflies, especially that aerial tiger, the monarch butterfly. I mentioned that I’m trying to certify our backyard as a way station. But while I’m at it, bees also play a vital role in planning a pollinator garden.

You may be aware that bees have been disappearing over the last several decades. And we haven’t known why–that is, until now.

But let’s go back to 1958, when marine biologist Rachel Carson received a copy of a letter her friend, Olga Huckens, had sent to the Boston Herald, describing the aftermath of mosquito spraying in Duxbury, Massachusetts, the previous summer: the wipeout of songbirds, bees and other helpful insects. Ironically, the mosquitos returned in full force. Olga asked Rachel if she knew anybody in Washington, DC, with influence who could halt the spraying.

Out of this came Silent Spring, perhaps the greatest American nature classic since Thoreau’s Walden. It would catch the eye of the youthful president, John Kennedy, who would meet Rachel Carson with his team of advisors. Ultimately, her book would lead to the banning of DDT.

Unfortunately, other countries didn’t join the ban and its use continues abroad. But now there are new, perhaps even more devastating pesticides at work called neonics, sprayed on hundreds of crops you and I eat. Seeds get coated with these pesticides, infesting both soil and pollen, killing off bees, butterflies, and other insect friends.

The good news is that in 2013, the European Union enforced its newly imposed two year ban on some of the leading neontics.

The bad news is that in America, the EPA has been dragging its feet, despite President Obama’s directive to prioritize its review of neonics.

Let me expand on the fallout of neonics, since they threaten not only our insect friends, but you and me.

When you resort to neonics, not only do you kill off bees, for example, but you impair their immune system, making them vulnerable to disease.

But it doesn’t stop there. Neonics linger in the soil, water and plants for many years. As such, they threaten whole ecological systems that include earthworms, amphibians (under severe threat), and birds.

Neonics, according to the European Food Safery Authority, “may affect the developing nervous system” of children.

What may surprise you is that you may be harboring neonics in your own yard when you purchase plants at box stores like Lowes and Home Depot, According to a study launched by Friends of the Earth, on whom I’ve drawn for some of my information, “many of the so-called ‘bee friendly’ plants we grow in our gardens have been pre-treated with bee-toxic neonics at doses up to 220 times higher than those used on farms.”

Unfortunately, we’re facing an uphill fight, with giant petrochemical and seed corporations like Monsanto, Syngenta and Bayer devoting huge sums to divert attention and pedal influence.

The EPA, for example, recently gave the green light to Bayer, based on a study primarily funded by the corporation!

I haven’t even talked about the exponential use of GMO’s used massively in soy and corn production with their built-in resistance to powerful herbicides, thus allowing for their use.

There’s so much more I’d like to say, but let me end with some sobering facts regard lhoney bees:

Pollinators are essential for our crops. Honey bees (Apis mellifera) are the grand masters, one hive of 50,000 bees capable of cross-pollinating twenty-five million flowers in a single day! No other insect comes close.

Now think about what you maybe had for breakfast: cereal, fruit juice, toast? Maybe you had almonds or berries topping your granola. Hey, honey bees made that possible.

For supper, cukes, zukes, squash?

Or how about that cream in your coffee from clover-foraging cows?

Or maybe your beef?

Bees helped put these foods on your table!

In nature at large, some 250,000 known plant species exist. Of these, three quarters rely on pollinators to reproduce.

Bottom line is that more than 100 crops comprising 90% of our global food supply rely on bees for pollination.

You get where I’m going with this. No bees, no food, unless you like eating bark.

Now I hate to tell you this, but our bee population has declined as much as 70% just in the last several decades. Given the stress imposed on bee colonies by neonics and GMO’s, we may have reached the tipping point.

While other factors weigh in like electromagnetic radiation–think cell phones—and climate change that encourages pathogens, organic bee colonies aren’t experiencing these huge losses in bees or collapsing colonies. In short, pesticides appear to be the villains.

Rachel Carson not only warned us 45 years ago of a world in which there would be no birds to serenade spring, but of a world in which “there was no pollination and there would be no fruit.”

What can you do?

Beautify your landscape with bee friendly indigenous, organic plants using organic starts or untreated seeds.

Shun products with neonicotinoids. Read labels carefully.

At your grocery and garden centers, opt for organics plants and produce.

Together, each of us doing what we can, we may be able to avert beemeggedon and a fruitless fall.

–rj

Same Sun Here

Dear River,
I cannot tell from your name if you are a boy or girl so I will write to you like you are a human being.

The above comes from a book I’ve been reading for middle grade children, called Same Sun Here, by Silas House and Neela Vaswani.

My wife, a middle school teacher, brought the book home several weeks ago for me to read. She said, “It’s really good and you’ll like it.”

Well, I got hooked. It’s too good to put down. Teeming with prose often approaching poetry and vivid scenarios that can move hearts, it resonates those values that define the better portions of ourselves. I venture it’s one of those books you start missing no sooner you’re done.

Briefly, it’s told through a series of letters exchanged between two 12 year olds: Meena, formerly from India, now living in NYC, and River, who lives in the mountains of Eastern Kentucky.

[Mamaw] says that the everyone used to write letters all the time and it’s a lost art form.

Turns out, these two have a lot in common, despite their differences in background and locale:

Both are close to their grandmothers.

Have fathers with out-of-town jobs.

Share an affection for dogs.

Are fond of mountains. (Mountains were part of Meena’s Indian childhood. River lives in the mountains.)

In New York, the buildings are in someways like mountains, but they are only alive because of the people living in them.

Are sensitive to the beauty and wonder of nature.

I usually walk through the woods instead of taking the driveway because it’s a different world there.

Are outliers. (People make fun of their strong accents and origin.)

Like to read.

I like that library books have secret lives. All those hands that have held them. All those eyes that have read them.

The Same Sun Here is primarily about the faulty way we perceive others. River had been told that people who looked like Meena were terrorists. Mina, that people in Kentucky were hillbillies.

Mamaw says that people don’t really care about people here because they think we’re a bunch of stupid hillbillies who are looking for handouts.

Hey, if this old guy likes the book, typically self-conscious young adults will like it even more

Having said this, I think some readers won’t like the book for its seeming political preachments. It’s big on environment (mountain top removal) and waxes enthusiastic over Obama’s election victory. (The story is set in 2008.). A book of several strands, it features the powerless and, thus, exploited and how they may still find a voice.

Climate change challenges us as well, menacing not only our quality of life, but our survival. I cringe with every forest leveled, diminishing resources, declining species, sulfur fumes, unrestrained growth, etc.

I like people who lay their cards face up on the table.

I like a book that advocates awareness of a wider humanity and the folly of stereotyping that walls out our fellows.

Too often, bound by cultural mores, we’ve only a corner perspective.

We need a wider view to forestall our prejudices. Achieving empathy, we’ll discover a surprising commonality–that we’re more alike than we thought.

Sometimes you write things in your letters that I thought nobody had ever thought before except me, but then there it is in your letter.

Or as the title nuances, the same sun here.

–rj

Monarch Butterflies: Beleaguered Friends

Spring is for tidying and trying out new ideas.

This spring I’m bent on turning the back yard into a pollinator’s paradise and bird sanctuary. In particular, I want to get it certified as a waystation for my beleaguered garden companion, the monarch butterfly.

Butterflies, like so many of nature’s creatures, are facing tough times. Unless you and I get involved, these tiger emissaries of beauty won’t be with us much longer.

There are, however, simple things homeowners can do; but first, a few things about the monarch you may not know:

They are a dying species. According to the the Department of Ecology at the University of Iowa, their numbers have declined a startling 81% in the Midwest since 1999.

Their demise has come about largely due to the increasing scarcity of the common milkweed and its several varieties. Development and herbicides have taken a huge toll.

Monarch butterflies use no other source for laying their eggs and feeding their larvae. Here I am reminded of Rachel Carson’s observation how “in nature, nothing stands alone.”

Each year, however, milkweed increasingly gets bulldozed, poisoned, or pulled. In suburbia, the monarch’s last great hope, millions of us obliterate them every weekend with our mowers and weed eater arsenals fresh from Lowe’s and Home Depot.

Farmers haven’t been much help either in their embrace of GMO soybean and corn production and consequent use of toxic herbicides like glyphosate (a probable cancer carcinogen in most processed foods).

I can’t say I haven’t cut down milkweed myself, seeing I didn’t even know what it looked like until recently.

But knowing now the plight of the monarch, I aim to make up for my misdeeds against these aerial delights and daily garden companions.

Monarchs are amazing. These diminutive creatures fly 3000 miles, traveling on thermals at a speed of 12-25 mph, from southern Canada and the eastern U. S. every August through September to overwinter in Mexico, returning in spring to produce a new generation.

They don’t have lungs, breathing instead through tiny vents in the thorax, or abdomen, called spiracles.

Monarchs can perceive colors and assess habitat. They can even detect UV lights, something humans can’t do.

This may surprise you, but monarchs store a poison, which helps protect them from predators like frogs, lizards and birds. (I’ve never ceased marveling at the wonders of evolution.)

Monarchs are unique among all animal species in their regeneration pattern. Every spring and summer, three generations, each living only two to six weeks, are born. Then comes that fourth generation in August and September.

Though biologically the same as the others, this generation is mysteriously programmed to live for some eight months, making winter migration possible. It’s this generation, the great grandchildren, who produce progeny, a miracle that continues to baffle scientists.

Now here are things you and I can do to help them out and to get more of them into our yards:

Create a waystation: This means converting a portion of your yard–doesn’t have to be large–that will provide milkweed and nectar plants for monarchs along with habitat and shelter.

You can get your waystation certified. Just go to MonarchWatch.org and follow the link. In just the past two years, waystations have increased nationally from 36 to 234. In Lexington, KY, where I live, their number has gone from 36 to 60!

You will also enjoy the video available at YouTube.com. Look for the Main Street Monarch Migration video. It’s filmed in Kentucky’s gorgeous Audubon State Park, which observes a butterfly festival each year.

Here are some recommended plants to help you create your pollinator sanctuary, via the kind auspices of Lexington photographer and gardener Betty Hall (http://www.bettyhallphotography.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/25-Favorite-Native-Plants.pdf). Many of these plants may be suited for your own locale, but try always for indigenous plants as they’ll fare best.

Be sure you include the crucial milkweed you’ll see in her listing. You’ll have to search your locale a bit, since the majority of nurseries, including the box stores, don’t carry them.

Saving the monarchs has taken an international turn. Did you know that President Obama recently discussed the issue with Mexican president, Enrique Peña Nieto and Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper?

The good news is that Mexico has now set aside some 62 square miles of forest in the Sierra Madres for their preservation. You’ll find it by googling Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Preserve,

I find the challenge of keeping our monarch guests around exciting and hope you will too.

–rj

And Then There Were None: Mountain Gorillas in Imminent Danger

“

In this central African park.

Desperate refugees crowd park boundaries.

Charcoal producers strip forests.

Then, last summer [2007], someone killed seven of these magnificent creatures in cold blood.

(National Geographic)

Yet another species, this time one of our closest relatives, faces a grave threat of extinction– mountain apes, of whom only 700-800 remain.

The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) reportedly has asked UNESCO to redraw the boundaries of one of Africa’s largest wildlife sanctuaries, Virunga Park, to facilitate oil drilling.

Consisting of 300 square miles, or 7800 square kilometers, the park shelters not only the gorillas, but other wildlife and Lake Edward, a key fishing resource.

In 2010, the DRC signed a contract with British firm, Soco, to begin exploration, despite its designation as a World Heritage Site, in violation of international law.

Such scenarios inevitably occur whenever economic interests are pitted against environmental concerns. In Africa, however, grinding poverty is so widespread that nations like the DRC must prioritize developing income resources.

On the other hand, much of that poverty is rooted in Africa’s post colonial history of chronic civil strife and kleptomaniac leadership.

Properly developed in a context of political stability, the DRC is rich in natural resources that could vastly improve the well being of its people.

In the DRC, the resultant instability and economic fallout has created anarchy, as rival militias composed of M23, Hutus, Tutsis and Congolese Revolutionary Army deserters roam the country, raping, plundering and killing.

Virunga National Park has, unfortunately, turned into a quagmire of lawlessness as a hideaway for militants, who use the Park’s wildlife and forest for subsistence.

Additionally, nearly 100,000 refugees live on the Park’s fringes, leading to deforestation and poaching.

In 2004, 1,500 hectares of prime mountain gorilla habitat were cleared by illegal settlers in Virunga National Park, according to evidence uncovered by the Congolese Institute for the Conservation of Nature.

What we know is that at least 40 mountain gorillas have been killed in the last several years.

As is, only 480 mountain gorillas remain in the Park’s confines, with no place to go.

Now the oil interests have moved in.

It’s a tragedy in the making.

Gorillas are gentle herbivores, who seek isolation.

As you might suspect, they have a lot in common with you and me.

Gestation is 8.5 months, approximating our own.

Births are nearly always singular.

Mating, unlike that of many animals, can take place anytime.

Helpless at birth, gorillas crawl at two months and walk at about nine months.

They are very intelligent and live in organized troops, governed by a dominant male known as a Silverback.

Diseases like ebola and those acquired from proximity to humans increasingly pose an additional threat.

In northern Gabon, for example, the entire protected population of gorillas and chimpanzees succumbed to ebola in 1994.

There’s also the bush meat trade along with lustful trophy seekers.

While international wildlife groups have contributed funding to shore up anti-poaching patrols, there are simply too few rangers, given the park’s vastness. Inadequately equipped, they’re no match for the often superior armed militia factions. Sadly, 140 rangers have lost their lives defending wildlife.

Their great champion, Dian Fossey, the world’s preeminent primatologist, was brutally murdered in 1985.

As a child I’d lie at night, thinking of Africa, teeming with wildlife, vast herds of elephants, rhino, hippopotami, zebras, antelopes, wildebeests, giraffes and, of course, isolated savannas and mountains abundant in gorillas, chimps and monkeys.

But that was a child’s imagining.

The adult vista, on the contrary, confronts us with vanishing wildlife and the likely soon extinction of these gentle creatures, our human cousins,

When I think of today’s Democratic Republic of Congo, flashes of Joseph Conrad’s The Heart of Darkness with its rampant savagery flood my thoughts and of Kurtz’s agonized lament when confronted with human culpability, “The horror! The horror!”

–rj

Expanding the energy portfolio: Utilities awaken

Every month our local power cooperstive, Blue Grass Energy, sends us its superbly put together magazine, Kentucky Living, filled with helpful tips on home maintenance, gardening, recipes, recommended books, regional activities, events, etc.

With all its feel good staples, it’s easy to lose sight of its primary purpose as a public relations gimmick to elicit the public’s support. Your power company is on your side, helping you enjoy the good life, offering some of the lowest energy costs in the nation, largely through the state’s substantial coal reserves.

Its editorials, however, consistently make clear that this good life is under a black cloud via the EPA’s increasingly heavy hand, encouraged by Obama’s executive decisions restricting power plant emissions at heavy local cost and marginalization of its coal resources. In its use of coal as their primary energy source, states like Kentucky, not wealthy by any yardstick, will bear a larger cost burden than other states, which they simply can’t afford, the utilities say.

Tuesday is election day and according to the latest polls, Mitch McConnell. is poised to be reelected to yet another term and possibly become senate majority leader, meaning still more congressional gridlock.

Mitch says, “I strongly oppose the EPA’s efforts to shut down Kentucky’s coal industry. I will fight to ensure the future of existing coal-fired power plants.”

He has announced that one his priorities will be to defund the EPA.

His main opponent, Alison Lundergan Grimes, touted as the Democrats’ best shot at ending McConnell’s perennial reign, has simply been a mirror to McConnell on coal issues and climate change. She has even resorted to ludicrously painting McConnell as unfriendly to the state’s coal industry, including miners, even though they’ve repeatedly come to his defense.

As for Libertarian candidate, David Patterson, he tells us that “CO2 is not a pollutant in the quantities seen today.”

Fortunately, aside from the usual debacle of politics, Kentucky utilities are starting to get the message, with movement underway to harvest clean, alternative technologies. The East Kentucky Power Cooperative, for example (which affects our household) has invested $1.7 billion to help clean-up carbon emissions at its coal-fired power plants.

With the hand-writing on the wall, Kentucky’s utilities are pursuing a diverse energy grid, including not only natural gas, but solar, wind, hydro and landfill gas.

All of this will impose increased costs, but the alternative in the context of the exponential menace of climate change makes these efforts of acquiring a diverse energy portfolio least costly in the long term.

–rj

May I recommend?

I confess to being an omnivorous reader and that my iPad has only abetted my hunger for new turf, now so easily accessed with the likes of Publisher’s Weekly, Goodreads, and the Huffington Post. On occasion, I’ve drawn on Fareed Zacharia’s recommendations on his GPS weekly telecast. I maintain links to all the nation’s foremost bookstores like Powell’s as well. And, of course, there is always that behemoth, Amazon.

This past week I was delighted to see two authors among those on the 2014 Long List for the National Book Award for Nonfiction.
The first is Evan Osnos, whose Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth, and Faith in the New China I read several months ago following upon Zacharia’s counsel. It’s not my intent, however, to give a lengthy book review here. Besides, you can access copious online reviews with Google or at the Amazon site.

Anyway, Osnos is presently with The New Yorker after having been a roving correspondent in China for eight years. He went everywhere, interviewing citizens across the social-political-economic spectrum.

What amazes me is that he did so speaking fluent Chinese, acquired as a major at Harvard, obviously increasing his access enormously.

He’s also a polished writer exhibiting a lucid style along with cogent analysis.

I hadn’t done any sustained reading on China until Osnos, which–sadly– probably includes the vast lot of us, though China rivals the USA on the world stage.

Certainly, Osnos has his hands on that nation’s pulse. Essentially, its communist government hasn’t changed in its dedication to controlling all aspects of daily life and maintaining its privileged status despite its seeming anomaly of encouraging a market economy so contrary to the legacy of Mao.

It does so, of course, to keep in check any democratic impulses among its citizenry. Let them eat cake and they’ll overlook pressing for governmental reform. So far, it seems to have kept the lid on, though Osnos notes that many of the populace seethe underneath, as materialism cannot assuage their desire to be free to think and choose. Accordingly, a revival of interest in religion is also taking place, proving again “that man cannot live by bread alone.”

As a consequence, it’s a fine-balancing act for many Chinese, especially among its entrepreneurial classes, intellectuals, and artisans. The thought police are everywhere monitoring, especially the Internet.

The regime even goes so far as to downplay natural disasters that may point to government malfeasance.

Of course, the Chinese know this well to the point of using code terminology to circumvent the censors.

Osnos doesn’t neglect the full picture, however, as there is a growing emergence of rabid nationalism among some that could ultimately pose a danger on the world stage. In the short term, these zealots pose an additional threat to the cadre of brave dissidents at home.

I went away admiring the quiet heroism of many of the Chinese, and sadly, the hard lot of dissidents who have chosen to articulate their concerns for a more liberal China very openly, risking long imprisonment under harsh conditions and sometimes torture.

If you want to take China’s measure, then this is a book you’ll want to read.

The second name among others in the 2014 Long List for Nonfiction is that of the renowned etymologist Edward O. Wilson for his The Meaning of Human Existence. I’m familiar with Wilson’s nimble acuity to persuasively and eloquently deliver a manifesto for nature and its myriad creatures under the duress of both man and global warming in his other books.

I’ve also just recently read his In Search of Nature, surely an environmental classic that explains in layman’s terms the complicated interplay between genetics and environment. Like all sociobiologists, Wilson seeks to unlock the biological origins behind human behavior.

In the Meaning of Human Existence, Wilson boldly asserts that no transcendental design is responsible for our existence. On the contrary, “Our species was created not by a supernatural intelligence, but by chance and necessity out of millions of species in Earth’s biosphere.”

No destiny or purpose is assigned to us, and no afterlife awaits us. Our human moment originates in “the epic of the species, begun in biological evolution and prehistory, passed into recorded history, and urgently now, day by day, faster and faster into the indefinite future.”

Creatures with a social intelligence predisposed for social action enhanced by natural selection, we require the humanities even more than the sciences to define the human condition and guide it into effectual relationships, not only among ourselves, but with earth’s other creatures, for surely our future, and our safety, depends upon biodiversity and its preservation.

Wilson’s view is a brave one, given that the religious instinct along with “tribalism” remain rampant with all their insularity and intolerance:

Human existence may be simpler than we thought. There is no predestination, no unfathomed mystery of life….We are self-made, independent, alone, and fragile, a biological species adapted to live in a biological world.

Accordingly, Wilson movingly pleads that humans in their unique social intelligence extend their embrace to include nature:

We alone among all species have grasped the reality of the living world…. We alone have measured the quality of mercy among our own kind. Might we now extend the same concern to the living world that gave us birth?

As always, Wilson writes a reasoned, yet passionate prose, acute in its honesty, telling in its empathy for both man and his beleaguered companions.

–rj

After we Murder Nature, then What?

After we murder Nature, then what? I know some of you may think this a dubious assumption as to possibility, and I would be among you–that is, until recently.

As is, Nature has atrophied and we live increasingly in asphalt environments, with Nature relegated to a few urban parks and, even then, they tend not to be passive parks given over to Nature, but to ball fields, children’s playgrounds, etc.

As evidence of our increasing sequestering of Nature, consider that more of us in the USA and Canada visit local zoos than attend professional sports events combined!

The pity is that Man is himself the evolutionary outcome of millions of years of a once teeming biodiversity. The question then follows as to what happens to us when we marginalize the very sources of our being and our future.

I’ve seen science estimates of the number of species of existing plants and animals as somewhere between 5 and 100 million. We know that invertebrates vastly outnumber vertebrates like ourselves, perhaps some 10 million, of which only a million have been identified.

Zoologist Edward O. Wilson tells us that if humans were to suddenly disappear, all would still be well on earth; conversely, were the invertebrates to disappear, life would soon revert to its initial state a billion years ago of myriad algae, bacteria, and a few multi-celled organisms (In Search of Nature, 153).

In short, we are intertwined with nature right down to the tiniest organism.

Our mistake is to think that even the smallest entities of Nature, so staggering in numbers, cannot be vulnerable to human excesses:

When a valley in Peru or an island in the Pacific is stripped of the last of its vegetation, the result is likely to be the extinction of several kinds of birds and some dozens of plant species. Whereas we are painfully aware of that tragedy, we fail to perceive that hundreds of vertebrates will also vanish (Wilson, 145).

As is, humans from their earliest beginnings up to the last century had already wiped out an estimated 10% of flora and fauna species. Alarmingly, bird population is declining rapidly, with a drop of 25% in bird species. Presently, the drop-off in all species, not only birds, is occurring 100 to 1000 times higher than in pre-human times.

Consider the continuing decimation of the Amazonian rainforest, the world’s foremost repository of biodiversity with huge implications for pharmaceuticals, agriculture and oil substitutes and, of course, climate change. Each year, we lose to chainsaws an area approximating half the size of Florida!

Unfortunately, we’ve inherited a primordial disposition that prioritizes personal safety, followed by family, tribe, then outsiders ((Wilson 186), a selfishness that unless it gives way to altruism expressed in environmental regard, is likely to doom us.

Today, we’re hearing a lot about climate change, and it certainly can’t be minimized, since we are largely responsible for it. But it’s not just a matter of carbon, but our burgeoning numbers, with corresponding exponential demands on limited resources. The more population increases, the more decimation, with habitats reduced and species extinguished, many of unknown importance to our survival. Consider Nigeria with its present population of 175 million (2013). PEW research estimates it will reach 440 million by 2050, exceeding the USA population.

Although population rates are declining, the world’s population will be just under 10 billion by 2050, with sub-Saharan Africa experiencing explosive growth, an area already confronted by widespread poverty, disease, and ethnic conflict. Unfortunately, in many places, cultural traditions and religious beliefs continue to dominate.

We can still save the day, but it’s unlikely that we care enough to act meaningfully and quickly.

Take where I live, Kentucky, where we have two senate candidates, Democrat and Republican, trying to shout down each other in denouncing President Obama’s policies affecting environment, especially coal. Accordingly, reducing the powers of the EPA is a foremost goal for both.

Unfortunately, evolution gave homo sapiens a well-developed brain, but pulled up short in maximizing a moral prowess vital to its long term survival.

–rj

Jung, Archetypes, and A Parrot: The Legacy of Nature’s Genius

I’ve just finished Joanna Burger’s The Parrot That Owns Me: The Story of a Relationship. Funny, I had this book sitting on my shelf, unread, for twelve years. Looking for something to read while eating my breakfast, I pulled it down and started what turned out to be a fun read.

I also learned a great deal about birds and, especially about parrots, surely one of the most intelligent of animal species, though we normally think of primates (gorillas, chimps, orangutans, etc.), dolphins, elephants and pigs as honorary Mensa candidates among our animal kin.

Burger, one of the world’s leading ornithologists and Rutgers University prof with over twenty books to her credit, tells how Tiko, her Red-lored Amazon, practices a repertoire of tonal warnings to distinguish varied predators, most notably, hawks, cats, and snakes.

She writes that “when Tiko gave his hawk call, Mike (her husband) and I would invariably spot a Red-tailed, Sharp-shinned, or Cooper’s Hawk flying overhead or perched in a nearby tree. Tiko’s response was so consistent that there was no question that he recognized hawkdom” (167).

Likewise, Tiko doesn’t like snakes, one of which Burger kept for a while, much to Tiko’s dismay. Only when the snake went into hibernation could he be content in the same room.

But how does Tiko pull this off? After all, he seems to possess a genetic memory of jungle predators, even though he’s been totally reared in captivity and has never had any interaction with hawks or snakes?

Years ago I had started reading Jung, who has impressed me more than Freud as being on the mark when its comes to the seminal sources lurking behind human behavior. Jung proposed the theory of archetypes, or “primordial images” (Man and his Symbols, 67), reflecting instinctual urges of unknown origins. They can arise in our consciousness suddenly and anywhere apart from cultural influence or personal experience. Often they take shape in our consciousness through fantasy, symbol, or situational pattern.

And so with Tiko as well as ourselves, the instinctual responses perpetuating survival have become wired in the brains of sentient creatures. Untaught, they’re automatic.

Today, science overwhelmingly confirms the accuracy of Jung’s prescience. Take, for example, the eminent biologist Edward O. Wilson, who attests that monkeys “raised in the laboratory without previous exposure to snakes show the same response to them as those brought in from the wild, though in weaker form (In Search of Nature, 19).

The explanation, of course, lies in evolution’s conferring differential survival value through natural selection. Those who learn to respond to fear quickly simply pass on more of their offspring with their response mechanisms.

Wilson goes further, arguing that human culture itself is considerably biological in origin, or genetically prescribed, supported by analytical models (123-24).

A Jungian at heart, I found Tiko’s innate capacity to respond to elements of danger another in a long line of evidence supporting Jung’s pioneering perspective; on this occasion, by way of one of the world’s most astute animal behaviorists, Joanna Burger.

Nature never ceases to amaze me!

–rj

Places to see before they disappear

The other day I perused the well-stocked magazine rack at my local Kroger and surprisingly came across a special Newsweek issue intriguingly entitled, “100 Places to Explore Before They Disappear.” Teeming with stunning photography you’re accustomed to seeing in magazines like National Geographic, it whets your appetite to get about and see some of these places, six of them right here in the USA. But the rub is that, given the rapidly accumulating consequences of climate change, you’d better do it soon.

As Christiana Figueres, United Nations Climate Chief, cautions, “There is no doubt, if elevated climate is not addressed, it presents a huge risk to many geographic regions around the world, particularly to low-lying islands and to coastal cities.”

As I see it, the catalyst behind these impending geographic upheavals comes down to water, either too much of it (e.g., rising sea levels) or too little (drought).

Let’s start with the USA: If there’s one place I absolutely adore above all of California’s myriad tapestry of exotic beauty, it’s Big Sur, hugging the central California coast for 90 miles between Carmel and Ragged Point. For me, it’s a sacred place in its remoteness, adored by one of our most articulate poets on the environment, the late Robinson Jeffers, whose home is there. Severe drought conditions have converted this once verdant mountain area into a virtual tinder box. Just last year, a devastating forest burned 1000 acres and destroyed 34 homes. It happened in December, not in summer. Last year was California’s hottest year ever recorded. Severe drought and record temperature highs are continuing this year.

Other American vistas in danger:

The Florida Keys from Key Largo to Key West has experienced a sea-level rise of nine inches over the last century, threatening its ground water supply. In the next fifty years, experts are predicting that figure will double.

New Orleans, devastated by Katrina a decade ago, continues to struggle to find ways to protect itself from future storm surges, while concurrently sinking six feet below sea level.

New York City, much like New Orleans, faces a future onslaught of rising sea levels, something hurricane Sandy made very apparent.

The New Jersey shore, stretching 130 miles, has increasingly been exposed to flooding and erosion. Experts predict worse flooding over the next several decades.

Hawaii’s island gem, Kauai, with tourist meccas like Koloa, are now threatened by torrential rain.

The Newsweek issue doesn’t mention other American places under siege like Miami, Boston, Las Vegas and Los Angeles, the latter two running out of water.

It doesn’t get better anywhere else: In fact, it gets worse, especially in Africa with its already burgeoning population confronted not only by poverty, but political, religious and ethnic instability. Its once teeming wildlife, increasingly encroached upon by poachers, will in all probability disappear into memory, given the added stress of climate change with diminished rain and rising temperatures.

Meanwhile, in a throwback to Nero, Congress fiddles while America–and the world– burns in a costly game of partisan politics and subservience to fossil fuel lobbyists. Some not only deny the human contribution to climate change, but climate change itself, ludicrously placing themselves on equal footing with credentialed scientists.

I think again of Robinson Jeffers and his prescient poem, “Shine Perishing Republic,” with its theme of the American dream settling into “the mould of its vulgarity, heavily thickening to empire/And protest, only a bubble in the Molten Mass, pops/And sighs out, and the mass hardens.

It doesn’t have to be this way. While we aren’t able to halt climate change, the consequence of our dependency on fossil fuels, we can mitigate its effects. The lesson of evolution is the necessity of adaptation for an entity to survive. Thus far, we’re not doing very well at that.

–rj

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