In testimony before Congress in 1981, the Reagan administration’s Secretary of the Interior, James Watt, said “I do not know how many future generations we on count on before the Lord returns; whatever it is we have to manage with a skill to leave the resources needed for future generations.” Many wondered what exactly Watt meant by that, and he “clarified” his views a few months later in the Washington Post: “My responsibility is to follow Scriptures which call upon us to occupy the land until Jesus returns.”
I’m not sure what Jesus’ views on the environment actually were, but I’m sure they didn’t include the following: “If the troubles from environmentalists cannot be solved in the jury box or the ballot box, perhaps the cartridge box should be used.” Watt was finally forced to resign when he “joked” about the composition of a federal commission on coal leasing: “We have every mixture you can have. I have a black, a woman, two Jews and a cripple.” And there are those who have the gall to wonder why fewer and fewer people in this country call themselves “Christians.”
So we know that “conservatives” have no respect for the environment, see the land as being in existence only to be plundered and exploited, and regard climate change as a ”hoax.” What isn’t a “hoax” is that as discussed by the environmental group Footprint Foundation, there are five massive “patches” of plastic garbage floating about in the oceans today, one the size of Texas. With a garbage truck’s load of plastics dumped into the ocean every minute, it is estimated that 12 billion metric tons will be polluting the world’s oceans by 2050. Every year, this waste has been killing as much as 1 million sea birds, 100,000 sea mammals and turtles, and “countless” fish, according to the foundation.
But as they say, out of sight, out of mind. Perhaps many of us were fascinated by animals in our youth, especially if you lived in rural areas surrounded by creeks, meadows and forested areas. But we put away “childish” things, yet as “adults” we seem to become less “mature” about these things. The 2020 World Wildlife Fund Living Planet Report tells us that “The global Living Planet Index continues to decline. It shows an average 68 percent decrease in the population sizes of mammals, birds, amphibians, reptiles and fishes between 1970 and 2016. A 94 percent decline for the tropical subregions of the Americas is the largest fall observed in any part of the world.”
The WWF asks us why does this “matter”? It matters “because biodiversity is fundamental to human life on Earth, and the evidence is unequivocal—it is being destroyed by us at a rate unprecedented in history. Since the industrial revolution, human activities have increasingly destroyed and degraded forests, grasslands, wetlands and other important ecosystems, threatening human well-being…most of the oceans are polluted, and more than 85 percent of the area of wetlands has been lost.”
Of course, some people may be “concerned” about this on a surface level, but again, since most of this is “out of sight,” it is mainly “out of mind.” Few people actually “see” how this affects them, so it is not a “big deal” for the moment. But the report tells us that “Species population trends are important because they are a measure of overall ecosystem health.” It notes the explosive changes in the past 50 years in global trade and population growth, especially in urban areas. Until 1970, the planet’s regeneration processes were able to keep up with the human footprint, but no longer: “To feed and fuel our 21st century lifestyles, we are overusing the Earth’s biocapacity by at least 56 percent."
The report notes that the threat to biodiversity does have severe consequences on human life. We may look at just one of the variables that effects sea food; besides the destruction of habitat by pollution, the warming of sea water that potentially kills off phytoplankton that absorbs carbon dioxide, produces 50 percent of the Earth's oxygen, feeds anything from the next level of plankton to young fry to whales just starts getting the “ball” rolling. There has been some disagreement about how global warming effects phytoplankton, but the “bad” scenario is that warm water forces it to migrate to colder water in northern and southernmost regions, leading not just to the slow death of fisheries in temperate and tropical regions, but decreasing oxygen content in the oceans while increasing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere due to the decrease of phytoplankton in those parts of the ocean to absorb it.
On land, the apparent significant decline in insect populations which serve as sustenance
for many “higher” species of life is also a matter of concern, as is the
population of pollinating insects (bees). Because insect populations are effected by the weather, populations often see "boom and bust" cycles. But ecologist David Wagner has called the apparent decrease in insect populations and the near extinction of many species "a death by a thousand cuts," mainly from human activity that effects habitat and the use of pesticides that kill more than their intended targets.
Furthermore, the world’s “natural capital”—i.e. natural resources—has “declined by nearly 40 percent since the early 1990s, while produced capital has doubled and human capital has increased by 13 percent. This basically means that whatever has been taken from the earth is simply not being replaced. What are we doing to reverse the trend? We talk big about “recycling,” but it is more wishful thinking than fact. The report notes that policy makers do not seem to know how to “interpret” all of the information—or worse, “they choose not to tune in at all. A key problem is the mismatch between the artificial ‘economic grammar’ which drives public and private policy and ‘nature’s syntax’ which determines how the real world operates. Together this evidence shows that biodiversity conservation is more than an ethical commitment for humanity: it is a non-negotiable and strategic investment to preserve our health wealth and security.”
Of course it all sounds “simple” to deal with, but naturally it isn’t because it means that human beings have to change their habits. For example, how many people actually reuse those “reusable” bags that some retail stores occasionally provide? Hardly anyone does, right? Me personally, I do keep all such bags, but usually for purposes other than “reusing” them on shopping trips. In any case, the answer to the question of reversing current trends does, as usual, require “urgent and unprecedented conservation action, and make transformational changes in the way we produce and consume.” Unfortunately, “decades of words and warnings have not changed modern human society’s business-as-usual trajectory.”
The reports goes on, and on, about the usual warnings: 1 million plant and animal species threatened with extinction in the coming decades, the continuing destruction of terrestrial habitat for human use, reducing human impacts on climate change and pollution, reducing the overexploitation of sea life and endangered land animals, stopping the importation of invasive species that destroy native species—you know the drill. Even the deepest parts of the ocean are affected by human waste; in fact, today only 13 percent of the world’s oceans is regarded as “pristine.”
The current pandemic can also be blamed in part on the human destruction of habitat, if in fact it is true that the coronavirus originated in bats. Humans should not be interacting with bats at all unless they have either invaded their habitat, and destroyed their habitat and forced them to “introduce” themselves to human habitat.
The report concludes with the question of “What kind of future world do we want?” It can’t just be one where “we” thrive—but where “nature also survives and thrives.” It is all so “simple”—yet so hard.
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