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Disappearing Acts

December 14, 2018

Disappearing Acts

We are living in an age of loss: the sixth mass extinction. Following this year’s shocking report that the planet has lost half its wildlife in the past 40 years, and the 2018 Remembrance Day for Lost Species, I wrote this piece on art and disappearance for Dark Mountain’s ‘The Vanishing’ section. Here we look not only to extinction – the deaths of entire species – but to the quieter extirpations and losses that are steadily stripping our world of its complexity and beauty. How do we, as writers and artists, stay human during such times? .

What does it mean to disappear? It’s a cold night and I am shivering outside the Café de Paris in London. I’m standing behind Trevor, hoping that his TV producer status will get me in, when Karen Binns, doorkeeper to this hippest of ’90s dance nights, lets me through. It’s over for you, she laughs, which in her Brooklyn back-to-front street talk, means it’s happening for me. As it turns out it was prophetic both ways. Because the last time I saw her was at a family gathering a year later, as I was about to leave the city.

She’s out of here, she announced to the chattering table. Everyone just carried on talking.
It’s two minutes to twelve, she said.

What does any of this have to do with extinction you might ask? Bear with me. To know how to deal with disappearance, you have to know about your own. To know that when you go, there is a world of difference between being ignored and being seen.

For a few weeks now. I’ve been wondering what to write about extinction. Does the world need another elegant essay on nature in peril, another rant about palm oil deforestation?

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Biological Annihilation: a Planet in Loss Mode

December 13, 2018

Biological Annihilation: a Planet in Loss Mode

If you’ve been paying attention to what’s happening to the nonhuman life forms with which we share this planet, you’ve likely heard the term “the Sixth Extinction.” If not, look it up.  After all, a superb environmental reporter, Elizabeth Kolbert, has already gotten a Pulitzer Prize for writing a book with that title.

Whether the sixth mass species extinction of Earth’s history is already (or not quite yet) underway may still be debatable, but it’s clear enough that something’s going on, something that may prove even more devastating than a mass of species extinctions: the full-scale winnowing of vast populations of the planet’s invertebrates, vertebrates, and plants.  Think of it, to introduce an even broader term, as a wave of “biological annihilation” that includes possible species extinctions on a mass scale, but also massive species die-offs and various kinds of massacres.

Someday, such a planetary winnowing may prove to be the most tragic of all the grim stories of human history now playing out on this planet, even if to date it’s gotten far less attention than the dangers of climate change.  In the end, it may prove more difficult to mitigate than global warming.  Decarbonizing the global economy, however hard, won’t be harder or more improbable than the kind of wholesale restructuring of modern life and institutions that would prevent species annihilation from continuing.

With that in mind, come along with me on a topsy-turvy journey through the animal and plant kingdoms to learn a bit more about the most consequential global challenge of our time.

Insects Are Vanishing

When most of us think of animals that should be saved from annihilation, near the top of any list are likely to be the stars of the animal world: tigers and polar bears, orcas and orangutans, elephants and rhinos, and other similarly charismatic creatures.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

ALERT: Presenter Warns of ‘Ecological Apocalypse’ In Great Britain

June 12, 2018

ALERT: Presenter Warns of ‘Ecological Apocalypse’ In Great Britain

Springwatch presenter Chris Packham is warning Great Britain of an “ecological apocalypse.” On this year’s Springwatch, Packham warns that we are presiding over “an ecological apocalypse” and Britain is increasingly becoming “a green and unpleasant land.”

According to The Guardian, Packham, who is a naturalist and broadcaster, is urging people to join him next month on a10-day “bioblitz.” This would involve visiting road verges, farmland, parks, allotments, and community nature reserves across the country to record what wildlife remains. The wildlife to be looked at would range from butterflies to bryophytes, linnets to lichens. Next week, Britain will become the first country in the world to dedicate a national week to helping swifts. The naturalist hopes his bioblitz will showcase their expertise and inspire newcomers to begin to understand and get involved in nature. Packham also wants to focus on farmers. “There are a lot of good farmers out there and we are going to celebrate their work as well,” he said.

Packham claims that the British people have normalized a “national catastrophe” and only see a wealth of wildlife in nature reserves, with the wider countryside completely devoid of any life. “Nature reserves are becoming natural art installations,” he said. “It’s just like looking at your favorite Constable or Rothko. We go there, muse over it, and feel good because we’ve seen a bittern or some avocets or orchids. But on the journey home there’s nothing – only wood pigeons and non-native pheasants and dead badgers on the side of the road. It’s catastrophic and that’s what we’ve forgotten – our generation is presiding over an ecological apocalypse and we’ve somehow or other normalized it,” added Packham.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Time To Choose

May 12, 2018

kienyke.com

Time To Choose

Will you be an agent of depletion or regeneration?
There’s a vast revolution underway. And it’s time to pick sides.

Your choice couldn’t be more critically important. Quite possibly, the entire fate of the human species hangs in the balance.

It’s time to decide: Will you be an agent of depletion or regeneration?

Bad Choices = Bad Outcomes

For many centuries, humans have consumed the natural resources around them at a rate far faster than the planet can replenish. Until recently this didn’t pose an existential problem, as fresh deposits could be tapped through the discovery of new continents or development of new technologies.

But those days of living beyond our means are now over. No sizeable unexplored territories remain on the globe. Technology is only helping us burn faster through the increasingly dilute deposits that are left. The planet’s population and its demand on key resources is ballooning, causing the natural systems we depend on for life to falter.

Yes, the situation is dire. But it doesn’t have to be this way.

A better future is possible. It’s up to us to make it happen.

There’s plenty of evidence of working real-world models that show exactly how we can improve the planet for future generations. I’ll focus on a few in a moment.

But first, it’s critical to understand that working against adoption of these better practices is our society’s entrenched system of extraction, otherwise known as the Business As Usual (BAU) crowd. This includes every person and entity busy protecting or promoting (usually from a position of profound ignorance) the concept of exponential economic growth as a necessary and good thing.

Complicit are all major parties of our political systems, the mainstream media (MSM), and of course the entire financial system — especially all the world’s central banks and their main clients.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Normalizing Extinction

March 7, 2018

Normalizing Extinction

Photo by Brian Gratwicke | CC BY 2.0

Several years back I had the good fortune of traveling through the rainforest in a remote part of Panama. Along the way I stayed in a small cabin at an ecolodge with the warm waters of the Caribbean Sea just steps away. There were no roads, televisions, or internet access, and no phones or electricity except in the main house. Out back was a trail that meandered through a dense forest brimming with tree frogs, sloths, iguanas, leaf cutter ants, and countless species of birds hopping from branch to branch. Just a couple feet into the water and I counted dozens of bright orange sea stars. And at night the sea shore came alive with biolumeniscent dinoflagellates, who would respond to my flashlight signals in short bursts of blue-green neon and the canopy was a cacophony of countless species in song. The abundance of life in that tiny corner of the world crowded out most signals of modern civilization.

But as with any trip like this, I eventually had to return home where the reality of “The Great Dying” is everywhere. Like climate change, the Sixth Mass Extinction, is not a hyperbolic, political trope. It is in fact the death of most complex forms of life on earth at our own hands. And by all accounts, with mass die offs of bees, coral, salmon, frogs and beyond, it is in full swing. Elizabeth Kolbert, author of The Sixth Extinction makes this plain:

“If we assume, very conservatively, that there are two million species in the tropical rainforests, this means that something like five thousand species are being lost each year. This comes to roughly fourteen species a day, or one every hundred minutes.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Half-Earth or Half Solution? E.O. Wilson’s Solution to Species Loss

February 21, 2018

Half-Earth or Half Solution? E.O. Wilson’s Solution to Species Loss

Credit: David Barnas
Credit: E.O Wilson Biodiversity Foundation
Half-Earth: Our Planet’s Fight for Life. Published by Liveright / W.W. Norton in March 2016 (ISBN 978-1-63149-082-8)

Despite my somewhat snarky title, which is based on my assessment that Half-Earth is missing a key strategic component, E. O. Wilson’s book is engaging and even inspiring. Wilson makes a compelling case that our planet is facing serious and accelerating species loss, that human beings are the primary cause of this phenomenon, and that, most importantly, we are capable of doing something about it.

The first three-quarters of the book describe the problem we are confronting. Wilson provides the reader with a comprehensive and vivid description of the loss of species in general on the planet and moving, vivid descriptions of the loss of particular species such as the rhino. Readers who have not previously been steeped in the fields of ecology or biology will find the writing here not only accessible, but deeply engaging.

Rather than just take on this or that environmental problem, Wilson looks at the whole planet and sees it through the ecosystems that comprise the natural world.  He explains basic but critically important things, such as how complex ecosystems depend upon the interrelationship of a wide variety of plant and animal species. This work is deeply rooted in the scientific literature, and Wilson draws the reader in with vivid descriptions of the natural world.

I was particularly impressed with the way in which he explains his assessment of the extent and pace of species loss, the impact of recent and current conservation efforts, and the basis for optimism in the struggle against species loss. His quantitative reasoning will be accessible to even the math-phobic and his conclusions reinforced by his vivid narrative descriptions of various natural processes.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Major study shows species loss destroys essential ecosystems

December 7, 2017

Major study shows species loss destroys essential ecosystems

Long term research by German ecologists proves that loss of biodiversity has “direct, unpleasant consequences for mankind.”

Two days ago, C&C published a reply to a biology professor who shrugged off species extinction as unimportant because evolution will replace the lost organisms. This report, adapted from a Technical University of Munich news release, thoroughly confirms our view that he was dead wrong.

Due to its breadth, the Jena experiment proves for the first time that a loss of biodiversity has negative consequences for many individual components and processes in ecosystems.

How serious is the loss of species globally? Are material cycles in an ecosystem with few species changed? In order to find this out, the “Jena Experiment” was established in 2002, one of the largest biodiversity experiments worldwide. Professor Wolfgang Weisser from the Technical University of Munich (TUM) reports on two unexpected findings of the long-term study: Biodiversity influences almost half the processes in the ecosystem, and intensive grassland management does not result in higher yields than high biodiversity.

An ecosystem provides humans with natural “services”, such as the fertility of the soil, the quality of the groundwater, the production of food, and pollination by insects, which is essential for many fruits. Hence, intact ecosystems are crucial for the survival of all living things. What functional significance therefore does the extinction of species have? Can the global loss of species ultimately lead to the poorer “functioning” of ecosystems? Professor Weisser from the Chair for Terrestrial Ecology at the TUM has summarized the findings of the long-term “Jena Experiment” in a 70-page article in the journal Basic and Applied Ecology.

“One unique aspect of the Jena Experiment is the fact that we performed our experiments and analyses over 15 years”, explains Prof. Weisser. “Because the influence of biodiversity is only visible after a delay, we were only able to observe certain effects from 2006 or 2007 onwards — i.e. four or five years after the beginning of the project.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Importance Of Knowing

November 28, 2017

The Importance Of Knowing

Without insight, action is useless

At Peak Prosperity, we strive to help people advance in three key areas: Knowing, Doing and Being.

Doing and Being are the resilience-building steps we recommend. Helping folks develop their own personal action plans in these areas is the main focus of the seminars we run.

But Knowing? That’s the essential first part to master. Without sufficient understanding and insight to guide you, any action you take is merely groping in the dark.

That’s why Chris and I spend the majority of our time info-scouting: following the data and analyzing where macro trends are likely to head next given the latest developments.

We dedicate so much time and energy to this because it’s not the domino that’s falling today that matters. What’s much more important is: Which dominoes will fall tomorrow as a result?

And make no mistake, the pace of falling dominoes is accelerating. From the geo-politically destabilizing regime change in Saudi Arabia, to the ending of the central bank liquidity bubble, to the largest species extinction wave in millennia, to the bursting retirement dreams of the Baby Boomer generation, to the fast-worsening net energy predicament — change is afoot. The relative calm of the false ‘recovery’ that the world’s central planners engineered in response to the Great Financial Crisis has reached its terminus.

Now, more than ever in recent years, understanding where events are headed next is critical to preserving your wealth and well-being.

Being keenly aware of this, Chris and I have been working for months on solving the question: How can we better arm people with the insights and answers they need to take informed action in their lives?

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The “Sixth Extinction” Adds Urgency to Habitat and Climate Protection

July 6, 2015

The “Sixth Extinction” Adds Urgency to Habitat and Climate Protection

It’s now unequivocal: the sixth great spasm of species extinctions has begun.   We – homo sapiens – are its cause. And only we can slow it down.

Over the last century, the average rate of loss of vertebrate species — fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals – has been up to 100 times higher than the background extinction rate, according to a new study published last week in the journal Science Advances.

In order to help settle the question of whether a sixth extinction episode has indeed begun, the scientific team chose assumptions that would tend to minimize evidence that it has.  As a result, their calculations almost certainly underestimate the severity of the extinction crisis under way.

“[W]e can confidently conclude that modern extinction rates are exceptionally high, that they are increasing, and that they suggest a mass extinction under way – the sixth of its kind in Earth’s 4.5 billion years of history,” the researchers write.

The study team included scientists from Princeton, Stanford, the University of California-Berkeley, the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, and the University of Florida.

The last episode of mass extinction occurred about 65 million years ago, when the dinosaurs and about half of all species living on Earth at the time were wiped out.

A huge crater off Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula dated to the time of this event suggests an extraterrestrial impact as a leading cause.

But, in a first, the current mass extinction is driven by human activities – deforestation, dam-building, over-harvesting, wetland-draining, pollution and the myriad other ways we destroy the lives and homes of the rich diversity of animals with which we share the planet.

And this will not end in some Darwinian-style victory for we humans.

 

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Olduvai IV: Courage
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Olduvai II: Exodus
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