Black Ice

One year, the cold came quickly, brutally, and without wind.  The ice that formed in the stillness was black ice, so clear it was as if you stepped out on a layer of glass over the water.  Most ice traps tiny air bubbles as it freezes, causing the transparency of water to transform into translucent gray-blue.  This ice was terrifying in both its slickness and in its transparency.  I stood stiff-legged and looked down between my feet at vegetation on the bottom undulating gently in the slight current that wound through the pond. 

 My dog would not follow me.  She clearly did not like the transparency, and when after much coaxing she put her front paws cautiously on the strange surface, she slipped and fell.  Enough.  If my sixteen-year-old self thought that this strange ice was safe, it was my affair.  She whined and paced from the banks as I slithered carefully around the pond's surface, tracing the underwater pathways of the beaver, studying logs and stumps and drowned debris, the aquatic plants rooted on the mucky bottom.  I skirted the standing snags around which the ice would not be as strong, but otherwise went at will over the translucent surface.  It was a unique and extraordinary look into the inner workings of the pond, and I have never seen such ice since.

 Shoup Glacier, Prince William Sound, Alaska, 1990

I’ve had other extraordinary encounters with ice.  I lived under the cold stare of a tidewater glacier in Alaska one summer, always on edge for a calving that might send up a shock wave of frigid water rocking up the shallow beach into our camp.  We maneuvered zodiacs among the glacial bergs, ever watchful.  Once I sat admiring the graceful stillness of an ice tower floating silently on the calm water when without warning, the ice rolled over.  The tower became a potentially deadly arm striking the water before submerging.  The newly exposed keel bobbed gently for a moment or two, then all motion ceased and the morning continued as if nothing had ever changed.

Two towers calved from the Columbia Glacier, Prince William Sound, Alaska 1990. Note the main berg floating just below the water's surface.

Once we took ice for granted. It still seems cheap and easy, dumped into glasses of water no one intends to drink, casually spilled onto the grass when a cooler is empty of picnic goodies and no longer needed.  Ice on water was also once a given, and the lakes of the Maine of my childhood sprouted small forests of ice-fishing shacks for the winter months.  Frozen ponds and lakes made expedient run-outs from sledding hills, and easy shortcuts on skis if you didn’t mind the wind.

Then the ice began to melt, or never formed at all.  There are now winters when the northern lakes remain as open water.  We’ve already added enough carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to warm the planet’s surface so that the average temperature across the United States in 2012 was over 3 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than the average for the twentieth century. Worldwide, it is enough to melt an average of 142 gigatons of ice from the Greenland ice sheet each year since 1992.  Enough so that there may no longer be Arctic ice in summer by 2050.  Not even one hundred fifty years after the first European reached the North Pole, there may be no ice left there.

I have dozens of slides of glacial ice.  That summer, we fished it out of the shallows and used it in the field-camp coolers, and once we lugged it up to a wood-fired hot tub to cool the too-hot water.  We sat with the ancient ice bobbing around our chins, melting fast as the rain beat down and steam obscured the glacier across the lagoon.  At the time, the permanence of the thick fist of the glacier punching out of the mountain valley was unquestioned.  We marveled at the surreal colors and shapes and sounds, but not at the change that even then was washing away the permanence of ice, and the cultures and biota that depend on it.

I have dozens of slides.  I was young, and broke, and used cheap film.  The images are discolored and fading, as if they are from a much earlier time, yet not even a quarter century has passed since they were taken.  The scenes these images depict have all but disappeared. The glacier is gone, retreating far up the valley and far from the water’s edge.  There is no more ice in the bay or tidal lagoon, and only the recently ice-scoured rock still bare of vegetation gives any hint of how recently things were very different.

How fast does change have to occur before it breaks the illusion of ice-like stillness?  We stand on a lens of black-ice denial, thinking we’re separate from the processes changing the earth right beneath our feet.  It can be a deadly illusion in a world of melting ice.

Groundhog Day on a Bicycle

I've been pretty committed to reducing my carbon footprint for a few years now, spurred by the scientific evidence that suggests that global warming is bringing about severe changes to the planet's climate even faster than we had expected.  I'm not someone who still needs convincing. But I still find that the gap between intention and action can be persistent and pervasive, requiring a large reserve of daily resolve to bridge.

I ride my bicycle to town to my office, and for many of my errands.  I have decided not to be dogmatic about it, allowing trips at night and trips to pick up heavy bags of dog food, livestock feed, or kitty litter to be made in the car. But I continually challenge myself to leave the car in the driveway, and take the bike instead.

I've made it easy on myself by riding a good bicycle, a touring bike outfitted for commuting with fenders, lights, and reflectors.  I've got good bike bags, and a nice rain jacket.  My commute is really a lovely short tour for much of the way if I choose a longer route, and bike lanes or bike paths exist on all but the first three-quarters of a mile of my journey.  The shortest distance to my office is just over five miles, and my office has great secure, dry bicycle parking and a place to hang wet clothing.  In sum, I've got the optimal situation for bicycle commuting.

Still, I find the walk from the front door to the bike shed past the car to be one of the most challenging twenty-five yards I've ever traveled.  The battle goes like this: I'm already behind schedule. It's raining. It's hot. It's cold. I'm really tired today.  I might be coming down with something. If I drove, I could do this errand that is not feasible by bicycle.  Everybody else drives.  Maybe I'm just a freak for caring so much.  Why don't I give myself a break today, and  I'm sure I can come up with a reason why I deserve one.  Meanwhile I'm trudging to the shed, pumping up the tires, and resolutely rolling my bike up the driveway.  Fortunately, I live at the top of a hill, because that easy launch helps overcome the last resistance, and off I go.

I've been surprised at the continual inner battle, despite what I know about the science, the consequences of continuing to carelessly emit carbon into the atmosphere, and the fact that I really do enjoy riding my bicycle.  It helps me realize how much greater the challenge must seem to someone who doesn't have such an ideal commuting situation, or whose job is less amenable to arriving at the office wet or sweaty, and needing to change, can't safely ride at all, or who perhaps doesn't see global warming as an immediate threat.

The daily inner battle has also taught me that I need lots of different arguments to help me push the bike out of the shed.  Sometimes, but not often, pure guilt is a motivator.  It typically doesn't work two days in a row. Who wants to feel guilty?  Of all emotions, I think we're best at managing to avoid this one.  I consider it a tool of last resort.

Sometimes I can get myself going by reminding myself of how much I usually enjoy the ride in to town.  This is true, but  the trouble is that I remember plenty of rides I didn't enjoy, when either bad weather, a negative interaction with a motorist, or too many dead deer carcasses on the side of the road ruined the fun.  Still, on the ride to town and back I have enjoyed some spectacular sunrises, encounters with friends, surprise wildlife sightings, and even fresh blackberries in season.  I almost always feel better after exercising.  This motivator works more often than any other.

I've also found I'm pretty reward motivated, and I'm not above personal bribery.  I keep a package of homemade chocolate biscotti in the freezer at work.  All right, I tell myself, biking burns calories.  Ride in today, carrying all of your gear and with full intention of stopping at the store to buy groceries on the ride home, and you can have TWO cookies on your coffee break.  On a bad day I might need three cookies.  I can always promise myself I'll pedal harder to make up for it.

The final motivator is highly personal, and I don't use this one if I'm already in a difficult mood.  I can remind myself of the latest rash of scientific papers filling in the lines of what we're in for as our atmosphere changes.  The danger here is this can make me angry, and too resentful of other people who don't seem to be spending their free time perusing the latest issue of Nature Climate Change or following Skeptical Science, RealClimate, or Climate Progress, but who might be driving their dog to the forest as I bicycle past them.  This is generally counter-productive.  First, resentment gets you nowhere.  Second, being angry at cars while you're riding a bicycle is very dangerous.

Instead, I have to apply all of this knowledge to view global warming as a direct threat to something I care very deeply about, something I don't want to lose or see destroyed.  I think of the glaciers I've seen that my nieces and nephews never will, or the high mountain forests now under threat from bark beetles and fire.  I think of my nieces' and nephews' future, which won't have the glorious biodiversity and take-it-for-granted planetary life support systems I enjoyed when I was their age.  Most often, I think of a small dune of sand that arcs up just above the waves in the far northwestern Hawaiian Islands.

Hawaiian monk seal and pup, Laysan Island 1991. Photo: J.A. Gervais

It hurts to think of all that is going to be lost, parrotfish and monk seals, tropic birds and albatrosses and sea turtles.  I can at least act to prevent more damage, however mundane and humble and small that action might be.  This will get me on my bicycle even in very cold wind and rain.  However, it is also quite dangerous to ride a bicycle if you are upset.  I try the cookie motivator first. 

The little daily battle in the war on global warming has me thinking that although the action is happening in the atmosphere, the front lines are drawn by our smallest actions, held firm by whatever resolve we can muster. There won't be a conclusive confrontation, some  great climax that once and for all ends the war.  It's going to be a lot more like the movie "Groundhog Day" than D-Day.

I'll continue to engage in the fight with the daily trudge up the driveway, one small act of defiance over and over against too much loss to bear.

************************************************************************
Chocolate Biscotti (origin of recipe unknown)

Mix and set aside:
2 cups flour
0.5 cup cocoa powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt

Cream together 1 cup sugar with 3/4 stick (6 tablespoons) of butter.  Add two large eggs, beat together well.  Add 1/2 cup chocolate chips and 1 cup chopped walnuts.

Combine sugar-butter-egg mix with the flour mix.  Divide the batter and pat each half into a log, roughly 2 inches wide, 1 inch high and 12 inches long.  Bake on greased cookie sheet for 35 minutes at 350 degrees F.  Let cool on wire rack completely.  Cut into 3/4" slices and put back in the oven for another 10 minutes.

Make cookies while baking some other item to get the most from the electricity needed.

Metric version:
240 g flour
55 g cocoa powder
5 ml baking soda
5 ml salt
200 g granulated sugar
100 g butter

Imagine

We were trying to herd the sheep into their small three-sided shelter one evening recently, so we could worm the ewes and trim hooves.  It always amazes me how good animals are at reading human body language; they often seem to know what we're up to before we even know ourselves.  Somehow, when the order of business switches from feeding them to moving them around, the sheep recognize it instantly, and they are not always on board with the agenda. They weren't on board this time, behaving as if we were driving them into a dragon's den.

Part of the problem is that sheep really don't like going from bright light into a dark space where they can't see well.  Individually, they enter this shelter on their own all the time, but being pushed as a group made a significant difference in their willingness to enter when we were pressuring them.  Time and again we almost got the lead ewe through the wooden gate, and at the last second she dodged aside, the younger ewes and the lambs quickly following her lead to the far end of the field.  This went on until the light softened with the setting sun, reducing the contrast of the dark interior of the shed.  The old ewe finally decided that it wasn't so frightening in there after all, and led the flock inside.

Photo: J. A. Gervais

Taking the risk of going forward isn't always easy, even if you're a human.

We're facing an unprecedented global environmental crisis because we've modified the atmospheric chemistry enough to begin raising global temperature.  The science behind this fact is well established; the devil is, as usual, in the details.  We don't know precisely at what point increasing carbon dioxide concentrations may begin to force positive feedback loops, whereby the rate of warming is increased still faster.  We do know that this could happen when the frozen methane hydrates in the high-latitude ocean sediments and in the tundra's permafrost begin to melt, releasing large volumes of methane.  Methane is a potent greenhouse gas.

We know that even the deep ocean is warming rapidly.  We don't understand how exactly that will alter ocean currents, or how quickly warmer water will begin releasing the frozen methane in marine sediments, or breaking the ice dams that have stabilized some of the world's largest ice sheets by slowing their entry into the seas. We don't know at what point melting ice sheets will reach a point of no return, where nothing we do could stop the enormous volume of glacial water from pouring into the oceans.  We know from the paleoclimate record that sea level has risen in the past as much as a meter in a quarter century.  We just don't quite understand the exact conditions that would be needed to trigger an event like that again.

But we can guess that we may be getting close.

These are enormous facts, dark facts, rooted in a past most of us cannot imagine and extending into a future that we cannot see, even though that future may be only a few decades away.  Facts fail to resonate with most of us, leaving them in the realm of simply facts, hard-edged, immutable, and seemingly irrelevant to the impulses and instincts that drive most of our behavior.  What does it take to make these inert facts part of our living consciousness?

I wonder if part of the problem is that we don't run forward into the utter unknown very well.  For the vast majority of our evolutionary history, not launching off into the abyss was probably very wise; you take those sorts of risks only when going back or staying where you are is absolutely untenable.  Pushed hard enough, the unknown ahead is less horrific than what you know is behind you, and then you jump.  The trick is recognizing when you are truly at the point of jumping or being pushed, that instant between having some mastery over your fate and losing any hope of control.

 Photo: Jeff Gervais

We may actually be at one of those tipping points, where we could manage to make our planet's climate very difficult for human civilization to persist, at least as we've known it for the last few centuries.  Are we able to perceive that we may have no choice but to accept the fact that the way of life we know now cannot continue, and we can choose, or not choose, to consciously guide its transformation?

Beyond any other species that has ever existed on Earth, we have the capacity to imagine future states and plan out the actions needed to achieve them.  I wonder if our apparent inertia in the face of an increasingly dire body of scientific evidence isn't rooted in two paradoxes.  The first is that although we are intelligent enough to create civilizations that ultimately threaten our own life-support systems, and even to realize it, we seem unable to emotionally grasp and process the enormity of the danger we collectively face.  Rational choice requires emotional roots.  Can an incipient catastrophe carry sufficient emotional weight, or do we have to live through it first?

The second paradox lies in the fact that despite our technological prowess and extraordinary cultural and social diversity as a species, we  appear unable to imagine any other world, any other set of human societies, than the ones we currently know.  So we are caught, unable to emotionally respond to the danger that our current position threatens, and unable to imagine a future different from the present, one that is worth risking the unknown to achieve.  Both block proactive planning and execution of those plans.

Imagine first the world you would like to live in, or the one you would like to bequeath to those who follow you.  What things and beings, tangible or intangible, would this world have in it?  If you listed them all out, how many of them deal with the roots of survival and of happiness, versus the trappings of our civilized lives that bring as much stress or ambivalence as they do real value?  What aspects of our society are most necessary to achieve those core needs?  If no one steps forward to lead us all, how can each of us fill that leadership void, in our own communities, in our own individual way?  How will we break the impasse, and will we manage to get in front of the wave of changes we've unleashed, or allow it to utterly overwhelm us?

Photo: Jeff Gervais

Leaves in Grass

Our neighbors have gone south for the winter, seeking climates where it does not rain six days out of seven.  They leave by Halloween each year, before the rains have really set in, and return when spring is still early enough that wet cold days are the norm even as the Indian plum sends out graceful arcs of cream-colored flowers.

I've been thinking about communities lately, both ecological and human.  We take it as a given that the natural world is made up of many interconnected pieces, so that no single organism stands by itself.  For some reason, we have a much harder time accepting this view of our own communities, even though it is every bit as true.  This matters, as how we manage the coming enormous upheaval on a planet in rapid climatic transition will depend on how we see each other, and our relationship to both the rest of humanity and to the larger biological community of which we are an indivisible part.

The leaves have fallen in the neighbors' garden, thick enough to smother the grass if they remain there until spring.  I took the dogs and a rake and wheelbarrow and went to work, sweeping up the remnants of last summer's photosynthesis and depositing them in the garden plot.  Leaves are extraordinary.  They do all the work of taking sunlight, which in itself is simply energy, and transforming that energy into actual food- both for the plants, and for nearly all the rest of the non-plant life forms on the planet.  It is a very cool trick.  An even more amazing part of the trick is to shed the biomass when it becomes more of a liability than an asset, first salvaging the good stuff before letting the depleted leaf fall free.  The rest of us get a blaze of colorful glory before the curtain falls and winter takes the stage.

We have an understanding with these neighbors.  In the summer, they allow us to pasture our ewes and lambs on their five-acre pasture, and keep an eye on the water trough.  They've helped us build fences, taught us how to deliver lambs that are too tangled to come out on their own, and loaned us innumerable tools.  They've shared vegetables, gardening knowledge, tips on livestock care, small gifts, and great stories.  They are the sort of neighbors most people only know of through a culture of yesterday. 

In return, we help as we can, share lamb and blueberries and fresh bread, and keep an eye on their place when they go away for the winter.  I rake leaves and I can never quite believe that the summer is really gone, our neighbors are gone, and now there is the winter to be gotten through before we look down the hill and see their lights shining, breaking the darkness with a friendly light that says the neighborhood is as it should be.  The leaves have got to be gathered up first, and given a chance to move through the next stage of the cycle.

Shed leaves are a major component of soil humus, providing food and shelter for all manner of soil organisms.  I leave a fair number of scattered leaves as I rake, so they will provide fodder for the earthworms and enrich the soil that in turn supports the tree.  They'll be long gone by spring, and they are scattered enough so they will not impact the grass.  I use a bamboo rake and a wheelbarrow, because they get the job done while leaving me with the peaceful late fall afternoon, broken by the happy huffing of my dog in hot pursuit of his tennis ball, which I throw between sweeps of the rake, the calls of small flocks of juncos and chickadees, and once the sound of a tree falling in the woods by the creek.  It was wet and windy the day before, and the cycle of renewal incorporates more than just leaves.

I finish before dark, but not before the cold of evening flows in along the creekbed next to the garden, and the sheep start looking expectantly for some alfalfa pellets in their feeder.  Properly done, the afternoon's work will nourish both the human community and the wild one, with no loss to either.  Surely we can find a way forward that truly honors that which we value most.

How many scientists does it take to change a light bulb?

Q: How many scientists does it take to change a light bulb?
A: They won't change it.  It's not their problem.

I noted something in the news a few weeks ago.  Presidential candidate Michelle Bachmann made a statement about the potential side effects of a vaccine for cervical cancer.  The response from the medical and public health communities was swift: the statement had no supporting evidence behind it.  Vaccines may carry some risks and cost money, but they save lives.  The benefits clearly outweigh the risks in most cases (although not all doctors agree whether teenage girls should get the vaccine for various reasons).  The rebuke got plenty of coverage, and the misinformation was effectively countered.

Contrast that with the blatantly false statement by Texas governor Rick Perry recently, that global warming is a hoax.  I heard it repeated over and over on the radio news briefs, with no countering view presented whatsoever.  Maybe some of that stems from the media's own reticence to acknowledge that there really isn't any debate at all in the world of science over the reality of human-induced climate change.  But no news outlet I follow, not even the "liberal" ones, reported on any response at all from the scientific community.  It's possible I missed it.  It's also possible that there was an outcry, but the media didn't report it.  Unfortunately, there is abundant evidence that the media tend to overplay any climate change deniers' claims compared to the overwhelming scientific consensus on the issue.  However, I really don't think that's what happened either, and an example of what makes me feel that way can be found in Hawaii in early November.

The Wildlife Society, the venerable professional society for wildlife ecologists and natural resource managers, is holding its annual meeting on the Big Island of Hawaii.  On their conference web site, the Society states that of all states, Hawaii "spotlights the most-pressing challenges that natural resource managers and conservationists face today—including the rapid spread of invasive species and the impacts of a changing climate."

The plight of the polar bear is probably the most widely publicized outcomes of global climate change.  Photo by Kathy Crane, NOAA Arctic Research Program.

 

Conference attendees won't be out solving those problems on the ground, they'll be attending paper sessions, networking, discussing the various topics of particular focus, and going on field trips.  The vast majority of them are going to have to fly to get there.  That adds up to a tremendous blast of carbon into the atmosphere, another blow to the goal of stabilizing emissions to try to limit the damage already underway.  That won't do much to help the highly endangered native Hawaiian ecosystems. The Wildlife Society meeting in Hawaii doesn't have a session on climate change. Presumably that will be discussed on the side.

Does The Wildlife Society really take climate science seriously?  One has to wonder.  Maybe this is why politicians and other leaders in our society go unchallenged far too often when they make blatantly ignorant statements about climate change.

Yellowstone fire. Photo by NOAA.

Unfortunately, this blind behavior isn't limited to wildlife biologists.  Virtually all of the scientific societies dealing with the biological sciences and even conservation biology hold national meetings and encourage their membership to attend.  Sometimes you can view presentations after the fact on the website, but no society to my knowledge allows members to attend remotely, or to view presentations in real time through skype, webinars, or other streaming technology.  Even the National Science Foundation expects the panelists charged with reviewing grant proposals for funding to fly in for a three-day meeting.  I found this out when I was invited to participate on a review panel.  When I asked if I could attend remotely, because the climate change science is very clear regarding the danger of carbon emissions, my email went unanswered.  Apparently not.

Individuals often do little better.  Most of us have changed our light bulbs, carry reusable grocery bags and coffee mugs, and occasionally carpool or use alternative transportation.  Very few of us have even begun to think about how we need to change the fundamental way we've begun to do business in the last few decades.  When I bring up climate change to another scientist, most often the answer is a shrug and a comment that the public is stupid, politicians are stupid, or we can't do anything about it anyway.  In short, it isn't our problem, we just do the science.

For people who profess to care about ecology and conservation, this is a travesty.  All of us need to recognize that we can either start planning how we are willing to be inconvenienced to limit the damage already in the works, or have far greater inconveniences forced on us without choice.  Not going to scientific meetings or networking in person is inconvenient.  There is a potential cost to a person's career.  But climate change and the horrendous damage that will follow from increased violence of storms, droughts, fires, and the fundamental chemical changes in the ocean and atmosphere will be far worse.

Wreckage of Hurricane Irene. Photo by Christopher Mardoff, FEMA

If we scientists, trained to evaluate evidence and respond accordingly, are unwilling or unable to take climate change seriously enough to alter how we do business, why should the reporter, the member of the general public, or the politician?

First, we have to own the problem, and be willing to recognize that we, too, are responsible both for the problem and its solution.  That is the necessary first step to being able to tackle the serious misinformation being presented by our society's leaders.  Changing a light bulb or restructuring a scientific society's annual meeting to encourage remote attendance won't save the planet all by themselves.  But if you walk your talk, people notice.  And when you also feel strongly enough about your science to call out those who would twist it to their own ends, people are much more likely to take you seriously. 

The Hawaiian honey creepers are counting on us.

'I'iwi, Vestiaria coccinea.  Photo by Jack Jeffry

Unintended Consequences

She kicked hard, flailing her sturdy legs madly, just missing my restraining hands.  She didn't have much of a range of motion because of her shell, but that didn't stop her from trying, stretching her neck around to snap at my fingers.  Once her hind leg kicked my wrist, and I was startled by how strong she was.  I had a good grip, however, and what happened next was my decision, not hers.

The turtle in my hands was a red-eared slider.  Like me, she was a native of the eastern half of the country.  I had come west a quarter-century ago, seeking broader horizons, while she had arrived here thanks to the pet trade. Whether she had once been released by a well-meaning but misguided pet owner who no longer wanted her, or had been born wild herself, I couldn't tell.

Red-eared slider, Trachemys scripta, basking in non-native waters.

It's against the law in many states to release non-native pets, and red-eared sliders are not even legally sold in Oregon in the first place.  But they're here, and they have found Oregon's waters to be enough like home to settle down and raise large families.  We don't really know all the potential consequences of this, although there is evidence that the native turtles don't do well once they're forced to share their space with this new arrival. 

My scientific permits specify that I cannot release any non-native turtles if I catch them.  This is meant to help remove the invaders, and give the native species a better chance of survival.  It isn't about just the individuals, or even individual species, but the sum of all the plants and animals, and the unique communities they form.  These communities can affect how water flows, how frequently and severe wild fires will burn, and whether soil will be swept away before the wind.  These processes are of fundamental importance to our well-being, if not our very survival.

I hold another set of permits, this set from the university.  These specify how I must handle individual animals in order to reduce any pain or suffering.  I have stated exactly how I'll keep any sliders I catch, and for how long, before delivering them to the state veterinarian for what amounts to their execution.  Under those conditions, the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee gave me permission to proceed.  This set of permits is not at all concerned about ecological processes, but it is deeply concerned with the welfare of individuals.

There are very good reasons for both permits.

Turtle trap with red-eared slider inside.

Personally, I happen to really like animals.  I happily share my house with two dogs and a geriatric cat and there would be more if it didn't mean serious strife with my husband.  We raise sheep and goats, and the fact we slaughter our own meat makes us acutely aware that living beings are individuals, each with their own perspective and purpose.  I do not take killing lightly.

As a professional, I am only too aware to how careless introductions have changed everything from the composition of trees in the forests in much of the country to the soil dynamics beneath my feet.  I don't know if red-eared sliders will end up being the biological equivalents of neutron bombs in Oregon's aquatic systems, although they will have impacts.  I suspect probably not, although other invasive species may deserve the comparison.  However, I am not a policy maker, and it is not my call.  The law, and my permits, are clear.

Yet it is amazing how the ancient instructions for life have adapted these turtles to an utterly new place, one dominated by humans.  Sliders are doing fine here, and may do better still as the Pacific Northwest climate shifts to warmer and drier weather.  At some point, we may need to choose based on what can exist in the future, rather than what existed in the past.  The changes we're bringing about on our planet are so great that asking these questions is no longer only the business of theoreticians.  What do we want our future world to look like, given our past actions, and the choices we now have?

That is the big picture.  The small picture is me, holding this turtle, next to a drainage ditch near the airport, on a cool overcast windy day.

It isn't the turtle's fault.  She was only following the instincts that have carried her kind forward for millions of years before she swam into the trap baited with overripe sardines.  I personally didn't bring her here.  All that matters now, however, is that I have caught her, and what happens next is solely my decision.

I do what I must, based on what I know and what I have agreed to do, and she goes in a plastic bin filled with an inch of ditch water.  I wish her a quick and painless death as I look out over the landscape she won't see again.  I lug the sloshing bin to the truck.  It is a good deal heavier than a five-pound turtle, a gallon or so of water, and the container.  I am also weighed down with the ethical costs of undoing what never should have been done in the first place.

Lost in Space?

I was scanning the pages of a scientific journal one evening and fell upon a guest editorial that made me fall out of my chair. Two scientists from a respectable institution suggested, with all apparent sincerity, that the best way to avoid the extinction of humanity would be to colonize outer space. 

This immediately brought to my mind the image of the interstellar community frantically deploying some kind of cosmic germ killer to deal with the infectious blob spinning off from our mortally wounded biosphere.  What have we done here to deserve welcome anywhere out there?  Our record of stewardship is not good.  We have not been kind to any life forms that have had the misfortune to be present when we have colonized new territory- not even members of our own species.  Those of us left behind could only hope that any life forms out there would not have a view of epidemiology that included going after the source of the incipient infection.

Venus bus probes, image from NASA.

 

Humor aside, there are some very troubling aspects to this argument.  I was surprised and disappointed that such a view could be espoused in an ecological journal.  Ecologists, of all people, should appreciate the intricate, invisible bonds that tie us to the biosphere of this planet.  The history of the evolution of this biosphere is inseparably bound within us, from the micro nutrients we need, our bodies' metabolism, and the bacteria that live in our digestive systems to our circadian rhythms, set by the sun as we move around it with our planet Earth.  We have proven we can survive, briefly, out of the context of our world, but do we really have the arrogance and hubris to believe we can recreate everything we need somewhere else, when we have only the shallowest understanding of the interrelationships here that sustain us?  Ecologists should know better.

Home Sweet Home

View of Earth from Apollo 17. Image from NASA

There are even more disturbing aspects to this argument.  Who's going to get to go? There are nearly seven billion people here.  Do we really think there can be a morally justifiable process to pick those few?  What traits would we choose?  There is a saying regarding China- if your talents make you one in a million, there are ten thousand people just like you. That would mean seventy thousand just like you throughout the world. Are we willing to deliberately condemn most people to linger on a dying planet while we pour the last of our scarce resources into flinging those few into space?  How could those few live with that decision?  Even worse, what if they could? What would that say about the values and ethics that we chose to propagate beyond our planet's boundaries?

It would take a tremendous investment of resources, including non-renewable ones, in order to succeed.  Even if we decide that we do not care about the moral implications of allowing billions of individuals of our own species, not to mention all the rest of the life forms, to suffer slow death on a ruined planet, why do we think those condemned masses would allow the chosen few to despoil the remaining resources of the planet in order to make their getaway?  And again, the fact that a few might be willing to ruin the futures of so many also says nothing good about the values and attitudes we would be broadcasting into the cosmos.

Unfortunately, this really isn't a hypothetical situation.  There are a chosen few who are already busy destroying the futures of the many, apparently without a single second ethical thought.  Our goal is not to colonize the final frontier, but simply to espouse a lifestyle that happens to extend far beyond our ecological means.  Ironically, it is a lifestyle that frequently leaves us frenetic, sick, and miserable in addition to creating a tremendous delayed cost that our children will have to bear.  The chemistry of our atmosphere, oceans, and even the soils are changing rapidly.  They are not changing in ways that will enhance our survival.  It is sad indeed that ecologists are not at the forefront of sounding the warning, and leading the way in reinventing our society so that we are not committing an act of genocide whose victims will include all of us and our children.

View of Earth from the moon. Image from NASA.

I can imagine that little space capsule spinning out of the Earth's orbit, carrying the seed of incipient disaster to new worlds blissfully ignorant of the fate that awaits them. Out the little window, a message forms in the clouds over the small planet they leave behind:

Do not enter. Toxic dead zone.

Surely we can do better than that.