TICK TOCK THE CLIMATE CLOCK PART TWENTY-ONE

TICK TOCK THE CLIMATE CLOCK PART TWENTY-ONE

MEADOWLARKS

In the silver light after a storm,
Under dripping boughs of bright new green,
I take the low path to hear the meadowlarks
Alone and high-hearted as if I were a queen.

What have I to fear in life or death
Who have known three things: the kiss in the night,
The white flying joy when a song is born,
And meadowlarks whistling in silver light.

Sara Teasdale, 1917

There were some things as beautiful as this poem that happened this week, and some not so beautiful.  Let’s start with the birds.

THE SOUNDS OF SILENCE.  According to a study just published in Science, since 1970, North America has lost 2.9 billion of its wild birds--almost one-third.  The main cause is loss of habitat, but other causes include pesticides; collisions with power lines, car windshields, and plate glass windows; as well as hunting by feral and domestic cats.  Climate change also plays a role.  As reported in The New York Times https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/19/opinion/crisis-birds-north-america.html?smtyp=cur:

What makes this study particularly compelling is the trustworthiness of the data. Birds are the best-studied group of wildlife; their populations have been carefully monitored over decades by scientists and citizen scientists alike. And in recent years, scientists have been able to track the volume of nighttime bird migrations through a network of 143 high-resolution weather radars. This study pulls all of that data together, and the results signal an unfolding crisis. More than half our grassland birds have disappeared, 717 million in all. Forests have lost more than one billion birds.

Much of the loss is among common species. The red-winged blackbird population has declined by 92 million. A quarter of all blue jays have disappeared, along with almost half of all Baltimore orioles. These are the birds we know and love, part of the bird life that makes North America lively, colorful and filled with song every spring. While it remains vital to save the most endangered of these birds, the loss of abundance among our most common species represents a different and frankly more ominous crisis.

Birds are indicator species, serving as acutely sensitive barometers of environmental health, and their mass declines signal that the earth’s biological systems are in trouble. Unfortunately, this study is just the latest in a long line of such mounting evidence. 

AND IT’S NOT JUST BIRDS.  Again, per the same New York Times article:

A study in Germany, reported a midsummer decline of 82 percent in the biomass of flying insects over the past quarter century. Forty percent of the world’s amphibians are in danger of extinction, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature. Stocks of bluefin tuna [above] are down to the last 3 percent of their historic population, and the United States’ Atlantic cod fishery recently hit a low. A United Nations report this year warned that about a million animal and plant species face extinction. That’s “more than ever before in human history,” according to the report.

All these statistics together underscore the pervasive character of the Anthropocene, the new geological epoch defined by the planet’s natural systems being altered profoundly by human behavior. How deeply will these losses have to cut before society declares, “Enough!”?

IS TWENTY YEARS ENOUGH?  As reported in The New York Times,45,000 to 50,000 Chinook salmon used to spawn in the Middle Fork of the Salmon River in the 1950s. (https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/16/science/chinook-salmon-columbia.html)  Today, the average is about 1,500 fish, and declining: 

Native fish are in free-fall throughout the Columbia River basin, a situation so dire that many groups are urging the removal of four large dams to keep the fish from being lost.

“The Columbia River was once the most productive wild Chinook habitat in the world,” said Russ Thurow, a fisheries research scientist with the Forest Service’s Rocky Mountain Research Station. “It’s hard to say, but now these fish have maybe four generations left before they are gone,” he said. “Maybe 20 years.”

SOILED AGAIN.  As reported in the Guardian:

Scientists found that worms placed in soil loaded with high density polyethylene (HDPE) – a common plastic used for bags and bottles – for 30 days lost about 3% of their body weight, compared with a control sample of similar worms placed in similar soil without HDPE, which put on 5% in body weight over the same period.  If the presence of microplastics inhibits earthworm growth on a wide scale, it could have implications for soil health and farming, as worms are vital part of the farmland soil ecosystem. Microplastics have now been found in tap water, the seas around the world, human stools, the air, and a wide variety of other environments.

CUTTING SPENDING AND UPENDING OBAMA’S LEGACY.  The USDA no longer tracks bees because “it’s too costly.”  Of course, the cost of not tracking bees could mean the loss of three-quarters of the crops we eat, but hey, big corporations and millionaires needed that ginormous 2017 tax cut and now there’s just not enough federal dough to go around.  Boo hoo!  Per a CNN report from July:

The US Department of Agriculture has suspended data collection for its annual Honey Bee Colonies report, citing cost cuts -- a move that robs researchers and the honeybee industry of a critical tool for understanding honeybee population declines, and comes as the USDA is curtailing other research programs. It's also another step toward undoing President Barack Obama's government-wide focus on protecting pollinators, including bees and butterflies, whose populations have plummeted in recent years.

"The decision to suspend data collection was not made lightly, but was necessary given available fiscal and program resources," according to a notice posted by the USDA's National Agricultural Statistics Survey. The USDA would not provide a figure for how much the agency was saving by discontinuing the survey.

AND NOW, FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY BULL SHIT.  Damien Hirst opened a new show of “paintings” in London.  The “paintings” consist of mandalas created with butterfly wings.  As an art critic for the Guardian unconscionably (and unconsciously) gushed:

Is this this extravagant use of bits of animals unethical? If so, the Natural History Museum is a far worse sinner, with its millions of animal specimens. Ever since he started making art in the late 1980s, Hirst has claimed the same privilege for art that science has taken for granted since the 17th century – to pin the natural world to a table, to dissect and examine it. Except that his specimens are not explained or analysed. At his most imaginative, as he is in this show, Hirst metamorphoses science into sheer wonder. He wants you to feel the awe-inspiring miracles of life. 

This exhibition reminds you what makes Hirst such a special artist: that manic impulse to celebrate, to praise, that in these mystical, ecstatic paintings soars to strange religious heights.

Too bad “such a special artist” either doesn’t actually know how to paint a butterfly wing or can’t be bothered to do so, preferring to pull the wings off desperately needed pollinators.  I’m waiting for Damien IV:  [His Artistic] Awakening. 

But the news wasn’t all obscene.  There were a few bright spots.

CHAIN, CHAIN, CHAIN.  Jeff Bezos pledged that Amazon would meet the Paris Climate Agreement objectives by 2040—10 years ahead of schedule.  Putting his considerable fortune where his mouth is, Bezos committed $440 Million earlier this year to a $700 Million investment in electric delivery vehicles.  According to Endgadget: 

Amazon expects the first vans will be deployed by 2021, 10,000 by 2024 and all 100,000 by 2030.  "It's really something that can only be done in collaboration with other large companies because we're all part of each other's supply chains,"[Bezos] said.

"If a company with as much physical infrastructure as Amazon -- which delivers more than 10 billion items a year -- can meet the Paris Agreement 10 years early, then any company can," he said in a statement. "I've been talking with other CEOs of global companies, and I'm finding a lot of interest in joining the pledge.”

GRETA GOES GLOBAL.  Proving that one person actually can make a difference, 16-year-old Greta Thunberg took her message to New York City on Friday to bring attention to the climate and ecological emergencies her generation is being left to deal with.  From a quiet, one-girl, every-Friday sit-in in front of the Swedish Parliament that began last November, she has motivated thousands of young and not-so-young people around the world to demand immediate climate and ecological action.  Her simple message, written on the sails of the solar-powered sailboat she took to New York:  “Unite behind the science.”

And one sour note….

BLACK BLOC DOESN’T PLAY NICE.  The Black Bloc, a European anarchist group, infiltrated Friday’s peaceful global climate protest in Paris, smashing windows, throwing petrol bombs at police, and generally acting like the a**holes they are.  Way to go, guys, diverting attention away from global climate activism toward your moribund, extreme antics!  So not helpful.

Keep it real!

Marilyn