Watching as the World Vanishes

[Clara T]

Watching as the world vanishes

Source: Copyright 2006, Boston Globe
Date: January 1, 2006
Byline:  Roxana Robinson

IT WAS SHAMEFUL, everyone agreed afterward, that no one did anything at the time. Because people knew it was happening. There were reports, early on. People saw things, near where it was happening. They knew. Later, they said they hadn't known, really; they hadn't understood the scale of it. They explained their reasons for doing nothing. They said the government was responsible, there was nothing they could do. Certainly the government was determined to carry out its plans, and maybe people felt overwhelmed and helpless. Maybe this was a place where the curves of ignorance, courage, and survival instinct intersected, to exclude the possibility of action.

<snip>

The news has actually been coming in for decades -- from the field, from eyewitnesses, from relief organizations. We can even see the evidence ourselves -- it's happening near us, wherever we are -- but we don't believe these accounts, even our own. We don't want to, because they are too terrible to consider. We're afraid we won't be able to function. The more tremendous a threat is, the harder it is to comprehend. As Raphael Lemkin said in 1944, ''. . . reports which slip out from behind the frontiers . . . are very often labelled as untrustworthy atrocity stories, because they are so gruesome that people simply refuse to believe them." What we're hearing is too frightening to believe.

<snip>

It may not be evident to us, as we sit in our cubicles, at our laptops, but we need these other species, even those that seem impossibly small and remote. We need the Northern lapwing, the Scottish crossbill, the king protea (South Africa's national flower), the albacore tuna, Boyd's forest dragon (an Australian lizard) -- all of which are in dire straits. We're interconnected to everything. The scrawniest weed in Patagonia absorbs carbon dioxide, which poisons us, and produces oxygen, which we breathe in New York or Houston. Plants provide air, food, and medicine; every living being occupies a niche in the global mosaic. Birds transport seeds and pollen; they destroy insect pests; they clean our harbors and cities and landscapes. All living species perform functions valuable to the ecosystem, to the planet, and to the people who live on it. But species everywhere are being systematically deprived of the possibility of life.

<snip>

Do we not think we need a healthy planet? Do we think that the animals dying all around us means nothing? That this wholesale destruction won't affect us? Where are the birds, most common and vivid form of wildlife? Intensive agriculture destroys hedges, woods, and wetlands that birds need for feeding and nesting; toxic chemicals poison the pests and the seed-bearing wild plants they need for food. Logging destroys whole regions of habitat; industry pollutes air around the globe. The birds can't build nests, they can't find food, they can't feed their young. They're dying off. Migrating birds used to move in flocks of thousands. Now they straggle past in groups of 20 or 30. Remember the passenger pigeons? Once they darkened the entire sky, across the prairies; we wiped them out in a few decades. We're watching life being extinguished all around us.
Whom will we believe, if not these scientists -- experts in the field -- with their gruesome and alarmist facts? How long will we keep denying the evidence? What will we say to our children, and their children, when they learn about the beautiful, rich, and varied life on earth that we were privileged to know? The fields of rippling grasses, the graceful trees, the strange and marvelous wild creatures -- how will we explain that we stood by and watched all this vanish? What kind of courage do we need, to respond to what's happening?

And this time, there's no one else to blame. It's us.

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2006/01/01/watching_as_the_world_vanishes/

[mom cat]

1. The closest most folks come to wildlife

is on Saturday Night. I think that we have strayed too far from Mother Nature to ever find our way back.

[newswolf56]

2. Thanks for posting (and mom cat you are so right!)

[patrice]

3. Story on NPR this morning about what a great opportunity there is for

smaller entrepreneurs now to compete with Factory Farms by going to Brazil and buying up improved land there for about $600. an acre. They interviewed an American who is working 1600 acres there with an enclosed pig farm.

I've been depressed all day.

[blindpig]

4. I heard that.

Yammering on about how the land had been sitting around unused for "millions of years". As though the native peoples, flora and fauna are irrelevent!:grr:

[Uncle Joe]

5. Common sense

tells me, the Earth's environment trumps all other issues. If we do not dramatically change the way humankind relates to our home planet, then making all the money in the world will be equivalent to getting the best luxury cabin on the Titanic.

[tom_paine]

7. Yep. That's about the long & short of it

Such an outcome, say, over the next 2000 years, seems likely from here.

But the future isn't written, and perhaps a technological deus ex machina will save the human species.

(no, I don't buy it either, but is is possible)

[depakid]

9. Welcome to the titanic

According to most of what I've read- in particular the 30 year update to Limits to Growth, Joseph Tainter's excellent analysis of how civilizations collapse- as well as the scientific Peak Oil material (Campbell, Deffeyes, Simmons) we're WELL past overshoot on most every index you want to look at.

The only questions are= what will the collapse look like (how steep will it be) and when will it occur.

I suspect we're in for a perfect storm within the next decade or two.

[patrice]

14. My body has been making me become vegetarian.

The story I referred to moved me several steps further along that road. This is one thing I can do for Earth.

[blindpig]

6. K&R

There's really nothing for me to add.;(

[nicknameless]

8. Got to agree with that.

I posted an environmental thread (click to preserve land for FREE), and didn't get a single reply.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=5481156

I posted another one about preventing the dumping of poisons onto our wild lands. It got three replies.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=364&topic_id=20007

One DUer wrote about having outrage fatigue on another thread. Maybe that's the reason ...
But the fact is, humanity is killing its host. She's worth fighting for, as are our lives.

[neoblues]

10. The changing baseline...

As humans, we have such short individual memories... then again, too, as other's have mentioned--most people have relatively few encounters with nature/wild animals. So just being aware on a personal level of the relatively rapid destruction isn't automatic or even easy to acquire. That's not an excuse, just one part of many by way of explanation.

Clearly, thanks to PBS and other sources we do have access to visual documentation of the problems we face. However, with the current anti-environment political party in charge across the face of the government and considering their incestuous relationship with the major oil companies, our (the "people") main tool for protecting the environment against human encroachment, corruption/pollution etc... has been strangled. The department of the interior, fish and game, the environmental protection agency, etc., have all been suppressed, defunded, made impotent as well as being ignored and prevented from even communicating with the citizens who's environment it is they manage or protect. Under the Bush regime the forces of ignorance, destruction and damage have become so blatant as to actually redact, rewrite and effectively completely falsify the scientific reports provided by the very experts in whom we've invested the care for things like forests, plains, wetlands, lakes, streams, and the wild plants and animals t... and so on...

Should we rely upon our government for these protections? On an individual basis, most of us are either powerless or at least are pretty convinced we are. We're neither experts nor scientists. We wield no authority over anything beyond our own personal actions. This is why we have the governmental organs that we have (had?). It is the most effective method, bar none. However, as discussed, it's been made ineffective by virtue of the political leadership we now suffer.

We must first organize. Then, by virtue of numbers, we can hope to make our concerns heard and apply pressure on the political leadership that has behaved so badly. Democrats, as a group are far more informed and concerned with the environment--thus the environmental organization, such as we create--must needs also seek alliance with and to provide support for the Democratic Party and it's candidates. Simply because, until we can restore not only balance, but a majority of Democrats in Congress and a Democratic President, we can't hope to make a significant difference.

Alas, to protect the most helpless and perhaps most important elements of our world, we must turn to politics. Political activity has rarely, if ever, been of such great importance (to the continuation of our form of government, our rights, freedoms, health and the health and protection of the world we live in). Political involvment is necessary and to a degree that most people have never before experienced or even imagined, if we hope to preserve our future. Even then we face tremendous challenges and one of the most insidious and important obstacles is that of the "Conservative"-biased media. Either we develop/build/create our own fully functioning broadcast and print media for progressive/liberal views, or find an effective alternative (which doesn't appear to exist), or we likely face defeat.

The world, as we have known it and even imagined it, may well end. To be replaced by a world we have not the ability to imagine; it will be unimaginably bad. Much as one can't control the number of bowling pins that will fall once the ball has left the hand, we may have already reached a point at which no action will forestall truly fateful and destructive changes. The best we can do, however, is the best we can do. The question is, though, have we done or are we doing the best we can do.

[AndreiX]

11. "Expand or Die"

This is a great example of how the "expand or die" principle of capitalism ends up destroying our world and sucking up all resources... just yet another reason why we need a new and better world.

[hatrack]

12. Kicking and recommending

Damn.

[ZapaPaine]

13. Great read --The Plague Upon Eden...

This hard hitting piece takes us to task for what we have done to the planet, from deforestation to global warming. Could it be that we are indeed a plague upon the planet? I have nothing further to add, simply enjoy this gem....

The Plague Upon Eden

snip

Humanity must learn to live in harmony with Earth and its living organisms, understanding the balance and synergy inherent in all of the planet’s mechanisms. Our actions must be understood for what they are doing, and a vision of the future must be implemented, choosing to save our children rather than condemning them to a life harsh, dangerous and full of misery. A new human enlightenment must rise from our collective conscious, transforming the way we live and behave, giving birth to an awareness of the interconnectedness of all living energies, whether organic or those mechanisms of the planet. Whether we heed the warnings or alter our destructive path in time to reverse the seemingly irreversible is entirely up to us, of course, yet, given our easily decipherable history and predictable psychology, the odds are not in humanity’s favor. History is the greatest witness to our inabilities, errors, demons and weaknesses.

If world history were a 24-hour clock, human existence would only comprise the last couple of minutes, yet in that minimal amount of time we have unleashed devastation upon the lands and creatures of the planet. In those few minutes we have gutted the lands of a once pristine terrain, claiming for ourselves everything and anything, whether living or not, that lies on or below the surface. Eden was given to us, she was our responsibility, as caretakers and guardians, yet we have somehow managed to place her in her last throes. She birthed, nourished and allowed us to thrive, yet our corrosive actions on her surface for millennia is how we have repaid her.

It has only been in the last 300 years, with the arrival of the Industrial Revolution, that humanity’s acceleration towards complete destruction of both the planet and itself has become easily visible. What man could not accomplish by hand or by beast of burden could be easily performed by machine. The rise of machines greatly increased our devastation of the planet’s environment. More damage has been unleashed upon the lands, waterways and atmosphere of Earth in the last 300 years than has been done since our most primitive rat-like ancestors escaped the mass extinction of dinosaurs 65 million years ago.

We have become a plague upon Earth, a virus that is sickening the planet. She is now hemorrhaging from years of devastation and utter contempt by humanity to her plight. Unfortunately for us, she has decided to purge the cancerous plague from her surface, cleansing Eden of the species causing her sickness. Yet primitive and unwise we remain, reliant on primitive forms of energy and resources, refusing to use our immense talents for the betterment of all. We now find ourselves impotent to the forces, unleashed by us, which in the coming decades will rid Earth of the malignancy afflicting her natural beauty, thereby returning balance and interconnectedness and normalcy back to a most beautiful Garden of Eden.

Read the article in its entirety at: http://valenzuelasveritas.blogspot.com/2005/12/plague-upon-eden.html