Surviving Despair in the Great Extinction

One million species of plants and animals are heading toward annihilation, and it’s our fault. How can we possibly live with that truth?
By Margaret Renkl
May 13, 2019 nyt

NASHVILLE — The gift of springtime is the panoply of new life: gray buds breaking open into bright flowers, gray branches sprouting leaves in a thousand shades of green to make a bower of our common lives. In the treetops, birds throw back their heads to sing their full-throated, body-shuddering songs. An ordinary suburban yard becomes a carpet of wildflowers, each one visited by tiny, iridescent bees which seem to materialize overnight out of nothing but the mild springtime air.

But it’s not all flowers and bird song; springtime is also deadly. All the new mouths must be fed. The bluebirds in my nest box are catching those tiny bees for their four hungry nestlings. Somewhere in this yard a large rat snake is hunting, and I can’t be sure if the baffle I’ve mounted on the nest-box pole is large enough to keep the snake out. Even if it does, a house wren with murder on his mind is scooting around in the underbrush with a dagger of a beak, and he will kill those bluebird nestlings in an instant if their father isn’t vigilant enough to protect them.

I worry. Every year I worry about the bluebird babies, and every year I remind myself that house wrens and snakes have their own purposes for springtime, each as urgent as the bluebird’s. This is just the way the natural world works. Pay attention, and it will break your heart a dozen times before dinner.

Last week, the United Nations released the summary of an enormous report that broke my heart in more ways than any backyard-nature observations ever have. The Times article about the report, “Humans Are Speeding Extinction and Altering the Natural World at an ‘Unprecedented’ Pace,” called it “the most exhaustive look yet at the decline in biodiversity across the globe and the dangers that creates for human civilization.” The story opens with the picture of an olive ridley sea turtle washed up on an Indian beach. The turtle is dead, apparently strangled: Fishing rope is looped around its neck, cutting into its throat.

That photo undid me. All week long I found myself coming back to it until I had it committed to memory, the shapes and the colors, though part of me would prefer never to think about that image again. I kept being struck anew by the sorrow of that one lost creature, that one preventable tragedy. The turtle’s great head is bowed, resting on the sand. Its eyes are closed; its ancient face is drawn back in a mask of grief. The turtle’s whole body signals resignation, surrender. In the background, children play in the surf.

If the photo is traumatizing, the story is worse. Because of human activity — both direct activity, like fishing and farming, and indirect activity, like the fossil fuels that accelerate climate change — up to one million species of plants and animals are headed for extinction if we don’t take immediate measures to halt the devastation.

That’s one million species. Every individual creature in a species — times one million. We can’t possibly conceive of such a thing. We can hold in mind, however uncomfortably, the image of a single animal who died a terrible death. Devastation on this scale is beyond the reach of imagination. How could we hold in mind a destruction so vast it would take not just one sea turtle but all that animal’s kind, as well as all the kind of 999,999 other species?

Whole expanses of the natural world are disappearing. It’s not just poster animals like polar bears, tigers and elephants; it’s life on earth as we know it.

I hear a truth like that and succumb to despair. I look around at all the ways I’ve tried to help — at the reusable grocery bags and the solar-field subscription, at the pollinator garden and the little meadow of wildflowers, at the lawn mower blades set high enough to harm no snakes or nesting cottontails, at the recycle bins and the worm composter, at the nest box for the bluebirds and the nest box for the house wrens and the nest box claimed this year by a red wasp — and it all strikes me as puny, laughable, at best a way to feel better about myself. How is any of this a solution? Or even the path to a solution?

I asked myself those questions even as I filled the bird feeders and cleaned the birdbaths, even as I planted more milkweed seeds and watered the new cedar and serviceberry trees we planted this spring to feed wildlife in the years to come. What’s the point? How will any of this matter?

And then I noticed that I hadn’t seen any activity in the bluebird box for some time. Over and over again I’d get up from my desk, stand at the front window and watch — but there was no sign of either parent. In midafternoon, just as I’d made up my mind to check on the nestlings that I was sure were dead, the male bluebird flew up with a caterpillar in his beak and climbed into the box. Relief whooshed through my body; all the muscles I didn’t know I was tensing relaxed.

I don’t have the power to reclaim soil degraded by industrial farming practices. I can’t persuade equatorial countries to protect their rain forests. I’m not able to affect in any way the irresponsible decisions of my own country’s president — decisions that will unquestionably hasten the great extinction — much less those made by the leaders of other nations. But I can put up boxes for cavity-nesting birds and roosting boxes for bats. I can cultivate the host plants of butterflies, knowing that some of their caterpillars will feed baby birds. I can make my yard a haven for insects, including the red wasp, an important pollinator which is too quickly maligned. I can keep my yard free from chemicals and let the wildflowers go to seed.

And I can remind myself, all day long every day, that there’s a difference between doing something and doing nothing. That “something,” small as it might seem, is not “nothing.” The space between them is far apart, limitless stretching distances apart. It’s the difference between a heartbeat and silence.

UN Report: unprecedented human impact is accelerating extinction

Civilization Is Accelerating Extinction and Altering the Natural World at a Pace ‘Unprecedented in Human History’

WASHINGTON — Humans are transforming Earth’s natural landscapes so dramatically that as many as one million plant and animal species are now at risk of extinction, posing a dire threat to ecosystems that people all over the world depend on for their survival, a sweeping new United Nations assessment has concluded.

The 1,500-page report, compiled by hundreds of international experts and based on thousands of scientific studies, is the most exhaustive look yet at the decline in biodiversity across the globe and the dangers that creates for human civilization. A summary of its findings, which was approved by representatives from the United States and 131 other countries, was released Monday in Paris. The full report is set to be published this year.

Its conclusions are stark. In most major land habitats, from the savannas of Africa to the rain forests of South America, the average abundance of native plant and animal life has fallen by 20 percent or more, mainly over the past century. With the human population passing 7 billion, activities like farming, logging, poaching, fishing and mining are altering the natural world at a rate “unprecedented in human history.”

At the same time, a new threat has emerged: Global warming has become a major driver of wildlife decline, the assessment found, by shifting or shrinking the local climates that many mammals, birds, insects, fish and plants evolved to survive in... (continues)
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	Bill McKibben (@billmckibben)
5/7/19, 10:52 AM I literally wrote a book called "The End of Nature" and I still can't really wrap my head around yesterday's extinction report vox.com/science-and-he…

The UN biodiversity report states that a million species are on the verge of extinction. So confident are we that humans are not among them that we’re spending the week obsessing about Met Gala costumes and whether the new royal baby will  be named Arthur.

— Barbara Ehrenreich (@B_Ehrenreich) May 7, 2019

Final: We still have time!

Before enrolling into Environmental Ethics, I always understood the impact that humans had on the environment, but I always just looked at this situation from my point of view, I never searched for different ideas from credible environmentalist; after this course, I am glad I did. I got to learn so much more about global situations from the assigned readings. I look at the world much differently now, and I have a completely different opinion on the correlation of global warming and humans.

Each reading gave me more clearer views on our world today. Not only did the readings help, but analyzing and commenting my colleagues posts really helped me to understand that there are more opinions just as good as mine. Some of their post shared the same view as mine, but overall, both they both had points that made me open my eyes to new realizations.

The reading that had the most impact on me this semester is "The Vegetarian Myth". After watching the Netflix show "What The Health?". It was really confusing because the author was an ex-vegetarian, so there must've been a really good reason for a switch of life style and to write a novel on why it is bad for the environment. I understand that some plants may be bad for earth, but the Netflix show gave credible reasons from experience medical professionals on why they are still good for our bodies and how livestocks has a more destructive effect on earth and it's atmosphere. From this, I plan on researching deeper into this situation to understand it enough and choose which side O think is better for human health and earth's existence.

The main text that got me to search further into environmental issues is "Anthropocene: A Very Short Introduction by Erle Ellis". I say this because throughout this semester, I fervently believed that humans are causing negative impacts on earth. He made me want to search more in depth why the climate is changing so drastically. This is because of the many practices that are conducted by humans, or capitalist as what I would call them. The mindset of humans now are only to cater to themselves and to make money for their enjoyment. Many of them ignore the fact that Earth is a gift given to us and it must be taken care off. If we look at all of the oil disasters, pollution in the Pacific Ocean, deforestation, heavy air pollution, and over-consumption of resources, the only factor causing this are Humans. After reading about the Anthropocene, I realized that it grew on me and I began to discuss it more with different colleagues of the same major. Many were clueless about this epoch, so it only made sense for me to explain it more to them. Also, I have been able to speak about this situation on social media to people that have no clue on how our environmental is reacting to human actions.*see image below* With my major, I want to help create systems to make human impact on the environment less harsh and to implement more clean energy for major industrial companies. When I continue to research more on the Anthropocene epoch, it would make me more than credible when I present different ideas on why it should be changed. This is because our world is ending because of us and change has to start somewhere. I want that changed to start with me.

In conclusion, as said before, this class made me look into a new venue of different realizations. I learned so much more about the environment that I ever had before. It is so vital that we all know more about it because this is the only way that we can save OUR planet. We are in control on whether we want to stay here for the rest of our time and have it wither away before our eyes. We, as environmentalist, should continue to share the knowledge of what practices should be put in place. This would be such a hard battle for us but I know within my heart this can be done.

I most definitely enjoyed this course, Professor Oliver, and what I've learned is that "We still have time!"