A New Year

We were asleep when 2022 slipped in.  The old blue sphere made no issue of the event but held fast to its orbit, spinning away in an expanding universe, responding to the changes we bring to it.

We were just a few days beyond the news that Edward Osborne Wilson had died.  E.O., as he was affectionately known, was a man who studied the smallest of ants but was a giant in the field of biology.  He coined the term “biodiversity,” which recognizes how life in all its endless forms works to sustain the whole, how even the tiniest of organisms play a vital role in the grand orchestra of life.  He showed us that sustainable ecosystems require habitats that exist in contiguous tracts, not fragmented patches, and warned that the overpopulation of humans, our unsustainable economic growth, and our general disregard for environmental health has set us on a tenuous course with little time to act.  “Conservation is a discipline with a deadline.” 

The world also lost a champion of civil and human rights, Desmond Tutu, who said “We need to stop just pulling people out of the river.  We need to go upstream and find out why they’re falling in.”  The witty Nobel Peace Prize recipient understood the threat climate change posed to the world, and that people of less developed nations were destined to be impacted first.  He summed up his understanding and the lack of global response almost 15 years ago in a book aptly titled “This Fatal Complacency.”

Sometimes I think about how frustrating it must be for climate scientists, to see the fruits of their labor withstand the scrutiny of peers then be challenged or belittled or ignored by reporters sent by entertainment “news” outlets or hired by corporate elites  whose bottom lines are threatened by a warming world.  Jeffrey Kiehl, a senior scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder has talked about how deflating it can be when attempts to sound a climate change alarm falls on deaf ears.  In an interview with Grist, he asks “How would that make you feel?  You take this information to someone and they say they don’t believe you, as if it’s a question of beliefs.  I’m not talking about religion here, I’m talking about facts.”  Jeffrey is not alone.  Working in climate science is proving to be a psychologically devastating career for some climatologists.  Others have resigned to writing what amounts to survival guides for the future. But a few continue to face the cameras with a message that will not be altered or silenced.

Sylvia Earle is among them.  At 86 years old, the highly acclaimed marine biologist has logged thousands of hours in underwater exploration, contributing mightily to her field.  She has seen first hand the degradation of the world’s oceans (and by default, the planet), and does not mince words when warning we have a scant few years to make things right.  She said, “we can know and choose not to care, but we can’t care if we don’t know”, so she welcomes opportunities to be on the public stage and share her science based perspectives and proven concerns.

For too many of us, science means little. In a recent MSNBC interview, astrophysicist Neil Degrasse Tyson said the problem exists because we were never taught why science works, that it’s not a book of facts but a method of inquiry, “something that empowers you to have some sensitivity to your own biases so you’re not fooled into thinking something is true when it’s not.” It’s cultivating our natural curiosity and wonder of natural systems, to see the world as it really is, without which “we’re on a one way street back to the cave.”  Tyson believes the older generation will not change, and his greatest hope lies in today’s kids who are being raised in an era of electronics and satellites and technologies so advanced that respect and appreciation for science will become innate.

But kids today are two generations behind the boomers, and boomers are largely responsible for the environmental mess we’re in.  We are still heading up corporations, holding positions of political power, often standing in the way of viable solutions.  We’re the ones supporting unsustainable economic growth, defending fossil fuels, and doing little to discourage a throw away society, all the while ignoring a clock that continues to tick.  

My wife and I ended 2021 watching a documentary on plastics. It struck me how often the word “never” was used. “Plastics never go away. They don’t break down, they break apart into smaller and smaller pieces.”  Eventually they’re small enough to enter our lungs and bloodstreams, carrying toxins and disguising themselves as hormones, inviting health issues we’ve yet to fully understand. We’ve produced more plastic in the last 10 years than we did in the prior century, and demand is growing significantly.  Eighty percent of the litter in the Great Lakes is plastic.  Eight million tons of it is dumped in the oceans every year and less than 10 percent is being recycled.  It litters our neighborhoods and roadways and the ocean floor.  It drifts in ocean currents in particles the size of plankton and enters the food chain affecting everything from shrimp to fish to whales.  Pelagic birds stuff the bellies of their young with cigarette lighters and plastic toothbrushes.  Sea turtles can’t distinguish the difference between a jellyfish and a remnant piece of shopping bag.

Water bottles, grocery bags, tableware, packaging, plastic items used only once and briefly, are the biggest problem. It is virtually impossible to live in the 21st century and not support the plastics industry.  We need plastics, but not single use.  We got along just fine without them for hundreds of years and can do it again, or we can learn to effectively recycle every scrap.

And that’s how we brought in the new year.  Actually, we also watched a documentary on Antarctica’s Thwaites Glacier.  You know, the one bigger than the state of Florida, the one holding back a magnitude of arctic ice, the one that’s melting at an incredible rate...

Here’s to 2022, the year we come to our senses.