Category Archives: New Attitude to Nature

Dying Planet Report

Anthropocene, Bio-Diversity, Decline of the west, Epidemics/Pandemics, Extinction, New Attitude to Nature

 

The London Zoological Society produced a sensational report called the Living Planet Report. As one pundit said, “It really should have been called the Dying Planet Report.” It’s claims are actually a bit tricky, but anyway you look at it, deeply disturbing.

 

Ed Yong of The Atlantic clarified the findings of this new Living Planet Report that have been widely mischaracterized but they are still very important and unsettling and grim. Yong put it this way: “they found that from 1970 to 2014, the size of vertebrate populations has declined by 60 percent on average. That is absolutely not the same as saying that humans have culled 60 percent of animals” as some commentators have alleged. The word populations here really means “pockets of individuals from a given species that live in distinct geographical areas.”  I won’t go into the distinction further but suffice it to say humans have caused a lot of death. It would be kind to call it death on a massive scale. To call us “the aids virus of the earth” as Professor John Moriarty did is not really an exaggeration.

Professor Johan Rockström, a global sustainability expert at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany put it this way:

“We are rapidly running out of time… Only by addressing both ecosystems and climate do we stand a chance of safeguarding a stable planet for humanity’s future on Earth.”

 

Damian Carrington of The Guardian reported as follows:

 

 

Many scientists believe the world has begun a sixth mass extinction, the first to be caused by a species – Homo sapiens. Other recent analyses have revealed that humankind has destroyed 83% of all mammals and half of plants since the dawn of civilisation and that, even if the destruction were to end now, it would take 5-7 million years for the natural world to recover.

 I believe he should have said “populations” which is not as drastic, but it is certainly drastic.

The Living Planet Report  produced by the London Zoological Society  for the World Wildlife Fund using data from 16,704 populations of mammals, birds, fish, reptiles, and amphibians and found that

“Between 1970 and 2014, the latest data available, populations fell by an average of 60%. Four years ago, the decline was 52%. The “shocking truth”, said Barrett [of the WWF] is that the wildlife crash is continuing unabated.”

 

In other words, previous reports of huge deaths has not turned around human attitudes to nature enough to have a profound effect for the better. The deaths are “continuing unabated.”

Professor Bob Watson one of the world’s most respected environmental scientists and at the time the chair of an intergovernmental panel on biodiversity  said this, “Wildlife and the ecosystems are vital to human life …the destruction of nature is as dangerous as climate change.”

We all know that nature contributes to human well being, physically, culturally, and spiritually. The food it contributes to us and facilitates  as well as the clean water, fertile soil, and energy it provides is of vital significance to everyone on the planet. As Watson said, “The Living Planet report clearly demonstrates that human activities are destroying nature at an unacceptable rate, threatening the wellbeing of current and future generations.”

Mike Barrett, executive director of science and conservation at WWF said this as a result of the continued assault on life on the planet by humans:

“We need a new global deal for nature and people and we have this narrow window of less than two years to get it…This really is the last chance. We have to get it right this time.”

Tanya Steele, the CEO of the WWF summed it up very well: “We are the first generation to know we are destroying our planet and the last one that can do anything about it.”

It is abundantly clear: We need a new attitude to nature. No tricky statistics alter that.

Rushing Toward Mass Extinction

2023 Grand Finale Tour, Anthropocene, Decline of the west, Extinction, New Attitude to Nature

 

Scientists currently recognize that our planet has experienced 5 mass extinctions over its approximate 3.7-billion-year history.

 

Some people think extinction is a not a big deal. After all, 99% of all beings that have ever existed have gone extinct. We will like go extinct too. So what?

Well, what are mass extinction events? As the National Geographic has reported,

“More than 99 percent of all organisms that have ever lived on Earth are extinct. As new species evolve to fit ever changing ecological niches, older species fade away. But the rate of extinction is far from constant. At least a handful of times in the last 500 million years, 75 to more than 90 percent of all species on Earth have disappeared in a geological blink of an eye in catastrophes we call mass extinctions.”

 

Mass extinctions are events where from 75 to 95% of species on the planet have died. In those nearly 4 billion years of its history that has “only” happened 5 times. So far.  Many scientists believe that we are moving towards a 6th mass extinction.

The big difference of course is that the current possible extinction event has been caused by one species—Us—Homo sapiens. To think that we are perhaps causing so much loss of life is stunning. It should stop us dead in our tracks!  But it isn’t. We are stopping the species dead in their tracks.

The reason it is not happening is that our attitude to nature is one of not caring. We just don’t care. We think we have the right to do whatever we want on this planet because no one can stop us. We can do with it as we please.

And that is the problem! Worldwide 60% of vertebrate species have been wiped out since 1970! That does not mean 60% of animals but populations. Nonetheless, that is still carnage on a hellish scale. It is a sure sign of the decline of western civilization, since all of civilization depends directly on nature.

And our species is largely responsible for it. Professor Moriarty was right. Humans are like a virus on the earth.

 

Why do we need a New Attitude to Nature?

2023 Grand Finale Tour, Affinity, New Attitude to Nature, Orchids of Manitoba, Pollution, Wild Flowers, Wild flowers of Manitoba

This is a photograph of one of Manitoba’s lovely little orchids that are blooming right now. I am a wild flower guy. I hate what is happening to flowering plants, and other plants, around the world!

Some people don’t–no make that most people–don’t think we need a new attitude to nature. They are content with the current attitude to nature that is deeply embedded in western thought. Fundamentally, this is the attitude that we humans are not part of nature.  According to the conventional wisdom, we are separate from nature and in fact superior to it, so that we can do with nature as we please. Nature is just a resource. When Europeans arrived in New World, as they called, even though there was nothing new about, they brought this attitude with.  That is a pity because the indigenous people had an entirely different attitude which I will comment on soon.

This is the western attitude to nature in a nutshell which has been with us for millennia and is supported by Christian scripture, though fortunately, some modern Christians are trying with heroic efforts to turn that ship around. I wish them luck.

There is some very recent history to support my contention that current attitudes have got us in big trouble. Recent studies have shown that pollution caused by humans is killing 9 million people a year around the world.

The recent study is based on data from the Global Burden of Disease Project.  That study found that air pollution caused 75% of those deaths. That means that air pollution is responsible for 1 in 6 deaths around the world!

 

The study was published in the journal Lancet Planetary Health and it said that toxic air and contaminated water and soil “is an existential threat to human health and planetary health.” According to the Guardian Weekly review of that research, “The death total dwarfs that from road traffic deaths, HIV/Aids, malaria, and TB combined!”

Of course, pollution is produced by humans the greatest serial killer on the planet. Humans produce it because they don’t care about nature.

Another recent study has shown that 80,000 plant species world-wide are currently categorized as “heading for extinction because people do not need them!” Many of these are flowers which as a flower child I lament of course, with special feeling.

And for those who don’t care about wild flowers or even nature, but care about money, and that includes a lot of people, here are the economics: “The researchers calculated the economic impact of pollution deaths at $4.7 tn., about $9m a minute.”

That should get their attention.

And in a nutshell, that is one reason why we need a new attitude to nature. But there are many.

Pueblo Traditions

2023 Grand Finale Tour, Indigenous People before Contact, New Attitude to Nature

 

Pueblo peoples have lived in the American Southwest for millennia and descend from the ancestral Puebloans.  The ancestral people of the Sonoran Desert are included in this group.  The term Anasazi is sometimes used to refer to ancestral Pueblo people, but it is now largely avoided. Anasazi is a Navajo word that means Ancient Ones or Ancient Enemy. That of course is why they don’t like the word anymore. Just like Inuit people no longer like the name Eskimo.  Many first nations don’t like the names that European settlers imposed on them so we should avoid using them. But it is tricky for us to do that. I know someone who got in trouble for using the name “Eskimo” which is the name she was brought up with. We should all do our best to learn the preferred names. But others should recognize that we are not perfect.

 

Pueblo traditions are different from some Christian traditions. Their traditions tell the Pueblo people that they must honor Mother Earth by taking care of her as their ultimate reference. Would you not take care of your ultimate reference as Paul Tillich suggested? That was how he chose to define “God.”

 

I recognize that in recent times some Christians have emphasized that the instructions in the Bible should not be interpreted to mean that humans have dominion over the earth. Rather they now interpret the prescription in the Bible to mean that they ought to be custodians who nurture the earth. Yet historically Christians interpreted their Holy Book to mean that they had Biblical obligations to subdue the earth, which in the view of many people, like me, was not just a license but instructions to plunder the world.

 

A few years ago I saw an film on PBS called  Native America: From Caves to Cosmosin which a Hopi woman recounted in Hopi the following myth (and I use this word carefully not to reference something that is not true, but rather something that is important, very important):

Massaw told us this world is a gift to us

And we must care for this place

He said, ‘To find your home you must find the center place,’

So we made a covenant to walk to the world’s farthest corners

To learn the earth with our feet

And to become one with this new world

And to find our center place

 

In the origin story of the Pueblo people they are given a sacred quest after they emerged from the earth. They are told to find the center place. Some went clockwise and some counter-clockwise. They built an image in the rock to show where they were. It was a spiral around a center spot. “Finding the right place–the center place–lies at the heart of Pueblo belief. It is more than a physical location. It is about living in balance with the natural world.”

 

I have seen a number of kivas in my travels through the American southwest. A kiva is a space used by Puebloans for sacred ceremonies and sometimes political meetings. Among the modern Hopi and other Pueblo peoples, “kiva” means a large room that is circular and underground, and used for spiritual ceremonies. They are sacred places. According to the film I watched, “The search for the center place is built right in to the kivas.  Every kiva is aligned to the 4 compass directions.” Of course there are 2 more sacred directions, including up and down. When the people climb out of a ladder in a kiva it is symbolic of their journey where they emerged from the earth. The Hopi believe the 6 directions give the Kivas great power.

 

To me, the most important part is the fact that it centers the occupants so that they can become part of the earth, not separate and apart from it. It connects us to the sacred earth. I see that as an essential religious act.

This is ancient ceremony but I think it ought to be a part of a new attitude to nature which we should be willing to learn about from our indigenous peoples.

 

First Masters of the Sonoran Desert

2023 Grand Finale Tour, Arizona, desert, Indigenous People before Contact, New Attitude to Nature

                                                       Sonoran Desert

 

According to one archaeologist the Ancestral People of the Sonora Desert were the “First Masters of the American Desert.” I like that term. It gives them the respect they deserve. They did in fact learn to live and even thrive in the harsh conditions of the Sonoran Desert for more than a thousand years.  They built brush-covered houses in pits that at first were loosely arranged. Later they built more organized villages around courtyards.

The Ancestral people of the Sonoran Desert (formerly called Hohokam) learned to live in harmony with the desert. They harvested the plants and animals of the Sonoran Desert, including saguaro fruit, mesquite beans, mule deer, rabbits, turtles and fish among others.

The climate in the region was hot and dry with very few all-year water sources and very sparse rainfall, and therefore provided very challenging conditions for permanent settlement. That was a challenge that the Ancestral people of the Sonoran Desert were up for during their 1,000 years of occupation here. They were darn good farmers. They grew crops that could withstand the harsh conditions. That included crops such as corn that matured fast enough that the plants were not exposed to the elements for too long. Some of their crops could be grown twice per year. They also planted beans, squash, tobacco, cotton, and agave. In their fields they also encouraged the growth of several local wild plants such as amaranth.

Interestingly, the main cause of death of the Ancestral people of the Sonoran Desert was tooth decay. They chewed corn and the sweetness caused tooth decay that led to many deaths.

In addition to farming, the Ancestral People also gathered food, medicine, and building materials from the surrounding wilderness. They collected wood, fruit, buds, and seed from plants such as Palo Verde, mesquite, ocotillo, ironwood, creosote, Bursage, and saltbush among others. They even ate saguaro, cholla, hedgehog, and prickly pear cactus.

The Ancestral people of the Sonoran Desert culture is thought to have begun at about 300 BCE (Before Common Era) to 300 CE (Common Era). During this period of time, the  Ancestral people of the Sonoran Desert began local agriculture and it is for this that they became most famous–justifiably famous I might add. They established villages with pit houses, storage pits, grading tools, baskets, and pottery. They also drew from the Mesoamerican civilization. It is fairly clear that by about 300 CE in Arizona the Ancestral People lived in permanent settlements along the Salt and Gila Rivers both of which ran permanently during this time before dam construction.

Ancestral farmers saw water as their most precious resource. It was sacred to the Ancestral farmers of the Sonoran Desert and facilitated the diversity of their crops.  Modern farmers plant monocultural crops.  Ancestral farmers often planted what they called “The Three Sisters” on one hill.  That meant that they planted corn, beans, and squash. Each crop helped the others by providing shade, shelter, or nutrients.  The earliest plants then provided shade for late comers, thus improving productivity. They did not believe in tilling the soil to remove competition. They expected their crops to cooperate with each other. A modern Canadian scientist, Suzanne Simard, has tried to make this important point about the ecosystem of the subtropical rainforest in British Columbia. Plants do compete with each other, but they do much more than that. They actually help each other too.  North American foresters had a difficult time understanding this. They assumed trees only competed with each other. She proved they also cooperated with each and even in some cases helped non-kin. The ancestral people of the Sonoran desert understood this 2,000 years ago.

Ancestral farmers concentrated on conserving water. They were not labour efficient, because to them labor was cheap. Water was expensive. As a result, they were very efficient with water, their most critical resource.

Modern farmers employ elaborate modern equipment that mechanizes the work and conserves human energy, thus conserving or minimizing their primary resource. They use huge water systems to bring in massive amounts of water to the desert. As a result, they are inefficient with water and very efficient with human labor. Modern farmers could learn a lot from ancestral farmers and vice versa.

 

My Buddy David Boyd knows the score

2023 Grand Finale Tour, Capitalism, Decline of the west, Ecocide, New Attitude to Nature

 

A few years ago, I listened to a lecture by David Boyd at the University of Manitoba Law School’s Robson Hall.  Boyd is the writer of some excellent books on environmental law and policy.  After that lecture I was talking to him and he mentioned he needed a ride to his hotel so I offered him a ride. We had an interesting chat on . I mentioned to him how much I enjoyed his books. So, I call him “my buddy” even though we only met once.

Recently he has been appointed special rapporteur on human rights and the environment by the UN. According to the Guardian, as part of his new job he has warned of the creation of pollution “sacrifice zones across the world where tens of millions of people are suffering needlessly from strokes, cancers, respiratory problems, and heart disease as a result of toxic contamination of the environment.  Nature is fighting back to the onslaughts inflicted upon us by humans.  There is a war against nature which humans seem to be winning, but I am reminded as the saying goes, that “nature always bats last.” As The Guardian said,  “Nature can strike back at repetitive injuries foisted upon it.”

Boyd also mentioned physical health issues, including cancer, heart disease, respiratory illness, strokes, and reproductive health problems as well as “incredible mental health problems associated with living in these places because people feel exploited, they feel stigmatized.”

Boyd pointed the finger at modern businesses in particular as culprits in this nasty war. He called them “the main culprit, with most willing to overlook social and environmental costs in favour of their bottom line.”

This compliments my claims that capitalism, in many respects is predatory. In fact, I would say, capitalism, or the modern economic system really, is a serial predator. At least is it is left unharnessed.

 

Humans are Sleep walking towards the edge of a cliff

2023 Grand Finale Tour, Anthropocene, Decline of the west, Ecocide, Environment, Environmental Apocalypse, Extinction, New Attitude to Nature

 

It doesn’t take much thought to realize that nature is the basis of all life on the planet. And everything we have constructed is built out of the building blocks of nature. Without nature we are done.

Yet there is little evidence that we understand that. Our actions indicate that we do not understand this simple fact or we just don’t care. Either way it is clear that we are dismally ignorant.

Our current attitude to nature stinks. That’s why we urgently need a new one.

In recent years the World Wildlife Fund (‘WWF’) has reported on the astonishing effect that our species has had on all other species. As reported by Damian Harrington of The Guardian, recent study by the WWF reached this uncomfortable conclusion:

“Humanity has wiped out 60% of mammals, birds, fish and reptiles since 1970, leading the world’s foremost experts to warn that the annihilation of wildlife is now an emergency that threatens civilisation.”

Let that statement sink in please. In other words, since Chris and I met in 1970 humanity has wiped out more than half of all mammals, birds, fish, and reptiles.[1] That conclusion was reached in a major report produced by the WWF and 59 scientists from around the world. They also say the cause is the enormous and growing massacre of wildlife as a result of humans expanding consumption of food and resources that is destroying the web of life that nature took millions of years to produce. We are destroying “the web of life, billions of years in the making, upon which human society ultimately depends for clean air, water and everything else.” We are destroying what we most need!  As Mike Barrett the executive Director of science and conservation at WWF said,

“We are sleepwalking towards the edge of a cliff. If there was a 60% decline in the human population, that would be equivalent to emptying North America, South America, Africa, Europe, China and Oceania. That is the scale of what we have done. This is far more than just being about losing the wonders of nature, desperately sad though that is he said…This is actually now jeopardising the future of people. Nature is not a ‘nice to have’ – it is our life-support system.”

It is astonishing that we are  doing this. But we are.  We could do something about this, but we have chosen to ignore it. This reminds me of the people at Easter Island that kept cutting the trees on their island which they desperately needed for their survival until the trees were all gone. They actually did that. Is that what we are doing on a planetary scale? It sure looks like it. How can we deny that our society is declining? Is it surprising that I call my current tour “the Grand Finale Tour”?

 To say that we need a new attitude to nature seems hopelessly understated.

[1] I should mention that the numbers are little more subtle and not quite as grim than this suggests as Ed Yong demonstrated in a fascinating article for The Atlantic in Oct. 31, 2018

Insects are important pollinators

2023 Grand Finale Tour, Decline of the west, Ecocide, Environmental Apocalypse, Extinction, insects, New Attitude to Nature

 

One of my first bosses,  Al Boily, my supervisor at Manitoba Hydro where I worked while going to university  taught me two very important lessons. First, he taught me how to work. The said the company paid us fairly so we had to work hard to earn that money. Until then, I thought money should fall into my laps just because I was a nice guy. I was as lazy as grass and needed to learn that lesson.

Secondly he taught me that ‘what is bad for insects is bad for people too.’ He was referring to the Vapona No-Pest Strips that caught flying insects on sticky paper and killed them. I thought they were great. I hated biting insects. He taught me differently. Again, a valuable lesson.

I realize that a lot of people have no sympathy for insects. Insects be damned is their attitude. Who cares about insects? Does that really make sense.

Without insects most foods could not grow. How would we survive without foods? Yet many farmers, and citizens too, believe we ought to be destroying as many insects as possible. I know I feel that every time I venture out into the forest or bog on years in which mosquitoes are in abundance. I must remember—as must you—that insects are vital to our food chain. About two thirds of foods require insect pollinators.

We already have a serious problem producing or harvesting enough food to feed the people on the planet/ Do we let 2/3 of them disappear?  Is that a rational solution?

Notwithstanding that, most people and many farmers believe pesticide use is essential for feeding the growing human population. As George Monbiot reported in The Guardian:

“A recent study in Nature Plants reveals that most farms would increase production if they cut their use of pesticides. A study in the journal Arthropod-Plant Interactions shows that the more neonicotinoid pesticides were used to treat rapeseed crops, the more their yield declines. Why? Because the pesticides harm or kill the pollinators on which the crop depends.”

 

Why are so many people so wrong about insects?  Monbiot explains that this way:

“Farmers and governments have been comprehensively conned by the global pesticide industry. It has ensured its products should not be properly regulated or even, in real-world conditions, properly assessed. A massive media onslaught by this industry has bamboozled us all about its utility and its impacts on the health of both human beings and the natural world.

The profits of these companies depend on ecocide. Do we allow them to hold the world to ransom, or do we acknowledge that the survival of the living world is more important than returns to their shareholders? At the moment, shareholder value comes first. And it will count for nothing when we have lost the living systems on which our survival depends.”

 

We should not allow ourselves to be hoodwinked by the pesticide industry. After all, our lives depend on it!

We have declared war on nature. Insects in particular. It is an ugly unjustified war that is leading to our own destruction. As the Indigo Girls said, “we are gluttons for our doom.” That is most unwise. Here is what Monbiot says we should be doing instead:

“To save ourselves and the rest of the living world, here’s what we need to do:

1 We need a global treaty to regulate pesticides, and put the manufacturers back in their box.

2 We need environmental impact assessments for the farming and fishing industries. It is amazing that, while these sectors present the greatest threats to the living world, they are, uniquely in many nations, not subject to such oversight.

3 We need firm rules based on the outcomes of these assessments, obliging those who use the land to protect and restore the ecosystems on which we all depend.

4 We need to reduce the amount of land used by farming, while sustaining the production of food. The most obvious way is greatly to reduce our use of livestock: many of the crops we grow and all of the grazing land we use are deployed to feed them. One study in Britain suggests that, if we stopped using animal products, everyone in Britain could be fed on just 3m of our 18.5m hectares of current farmland (or on 7m hectares if all our farming were organic). This would allow us to create huge wildlife and soil refuges: an investment against a terrifying future.

5 We should stop using land that should be growing food for people to grow maize for biogas and fuel for cars.”

I admit I would have a problem going vegetarian or vegan. I like my burgers.

This is the problem. Humans have declared war on nature, particularly insects,  on the false basis that this is needed to feed the world. This is a crucial mistake. It is time for us to smarten up. We need nature. Even insects! We need to change our attitude to insects. If we don’t give them respite from our assaults we probably won’t get through this century. And in the meantime we will make life here very difficult and dreary.