Atilla's big back yard

It's a grey, overcast day in western Kentucky.  The air is a wee bit cooler than last week but still almost eighty degrees. The humidity is so high that it is hard to tell whether or not it might be raining.  The other evening I thought it was raining but it wasn't.  The next morning the humidity transitioned into a downpour.  Back home in Montana they are having the first snow.  I don't think we'll see snow here. At least, we're hoping that we won't.  As much as my family loves Montana we do skip out in September before the snow flies. My parents are just not snow people. They seem to like snow well enough because we often stay places where it snows. They're just not into skiing or snowshoeing. One time last April we were traveling from Boise, ID toward home in northwestern Montana. There was a line of very bad storms.  To avoid the storms Mom and Dad decided to stay in the Hemingway-Boulder wilderness near Sun Valley, ID.  It was snowing.  But they figured that was better than getting blown away.  Our camper trailer home, Nitsitapiisinni, is always nice and warm no matter how cold it gets outside, but I don't think it's made for spending any long time in snow. Besides, snow makes my feet and butt cold, and I'm getting too old for that.  I'll be fourteen in December.  

Oh. Guess I didn't introduce myself.  My name is Atilla . . . . Atilla the Honey.  My human mom gave me that name because she says I conqueror the world with my sweetness.  Okay. Make the jokes now and let's get it over.  You can call me 'Tilla.  That's what my human family usually does.  I'm a Yorkie.  I'm the last of three - two Pom brothers and myself - who lives the nomadic life with our human parents.  I don't mind being an only-dog but we all miss Cubby and Teddy.  I'm okay with being carried around the campground, but Teddy always loved to prance along ahead of Mom and Dad like a big black mountain dog. He wasn't any bigger than me, but you'd never know to watch him. Cubby liked to stay in the trailer but he loved it when we traveled and would sit on Dad's lap acting like he was driving.  He just wasn't much for the outdoors. 

In any case, here we are in Hopkinsville, Kentucky.  Hopkinsville is the birth and burial place of Edgar Casey, and only five miles from Kelly, KY which was invaded by aliens in 1955.  On a more prestigious note, Hopkinsville is also home to award winning author, Bell Hooks, and journalist, Ted Poston (1906-1974).  Both are black Americans.  Ms. Hooks is an author, feminist and social activist who was inducted into the Kentucky Writers Hall of Fame in 2018.  Mr Poston was a celebrated journalist who wrote for the New York Post and was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in 1949.  We have lots of family here in the east.  Our new house in western Kentucky is pretty close to being in the middle.  It also just happens to be in the same town as one of Mom's new grand-daughters and really close to the other.  That makes her happy.     

The sun hasn't really come out today. It lightens the sky occasionally but, for the most part, it is like twilight.  The tops of the tall oaks, sycamore, ash and sugar maples are swaying in the breeze.  The ground is very rocky with large, flat shelves of limestone. Many of them are almost worn smooth.  This is typical of the geology of southern Christian County.  That's why there are so many caves including the nearby world famous Mammoth Cave, which is the world's longest cave.  The land slopes down from the western boundary of the property to a low lying grove.  That's where you find the sycamores.  The trees are large and the only vegetation under them is  English ivy, common violet down where there's more water, and a few grasses that most humans call weeds. There are some shrubs as well, near the house. We have Corral Berry (Indian Currant) and some other shrubs Mom and Dad have yet to identify. We also have some large tree-size Juniper. Most of our time is spent around evergreen trees like Hemlock, Cedar, Ponderosa Pine, Douglas Fir, and White Pine.  Out west Mom and Dad can tell the elevation by the trees. It is quite a bit different having all of these deciduous trees around us, but they are beautiful.      

We are actually in a large town, but you'd never know it looking around.  There's over an acre of woods inside the fence and more outside.  You have to look hard to see another house unless you're standing at the front door.  Actually, if you're outside you have to look carefully to see the house. People drive right by looking for us. We have a room that Mom and Dad call the sun room and a deck that goes half the way around the house.  Since it's been so hot, we spend a lot of time in the sun room looking at the woods through the big windows.  We're not accustomed to this heat and humidity.  I like to go out occasionally, do my business and find a nice big flat rock to sit on and enjoy outside.  I'm old and tired, but, like Mom and Dad, I still like being outside.  I'm happy just sitting here enjoying the nature around me.  I don't have to move.  Despite the heat and humidity, the smells and gentle breeze through the trees are all I need. I can sense life around me and that makes me happy.  

Oh, my!  The skies just opened and it is pouring. Time to head inside.  

This is a wee bit different than our home in Glacier.  There  we live in our twenty foot camper trailer and the Hemlock and Cedar forest canopy is so heavy that it can be raining for almost an hour before the ground gets wet.  When Mom and Dad had to do campground rounds in the rain they would stand up against a giant Cedar to do paperwork so that they didn't get the paper wet.  Here the canopy is pretty heavy, but the rain passes easily to the ground.  Still these wonderful trees do make it more gentle under their protection.  Mom and Dad say that the Kentucky forest looks much greener this year.  They were told that western Kentucky has had a lot of rain.  It is almost the end of September and there are almost no signs of leaves changing colors.  

Wow, what a storm. We can see the wind really blowing the trees along the edge of the woods about a hundred yards south of our house. Nevertheless it is almost calm in the middle of our woods.  It is like our trees have created a haven for us and a refuge for birds and animals. The big trees shade us from the hot sun and shelter us from the wind. They come together to make a conclave of peace and serenity.  We have all sorts of birds. There are Nuthatches, Black-capped Chickadees, Purple Finches, Downy Woodpecker, Hummingbirds and a variety of Wrens. Besides dogs who have come to visit, there is a squirrel named Chester, who visits frequently.  He's rather pudgy and quite shy.  He likes to sit in one of the white ash trees that is next to the house and look in the window.  We've seen deer on the other side of the fence.  We have a salt lick for them.  In Montana you don't dare feed the deer because it makes them dependent and they are likely to die during the winter.  Here there is very little cold and snow so there is always food for them.     

Well, the storm has passed and the sun has come out for the first time today.  The leaves shimmer in the breeze making the water on them sparkle.  Chester and a couple of his friends are chasing around the woods.  The birds are back out in force and fighting over the sunflower feeder.  The humidity is so high - 93% - that it is steamy outside.  Don't know about Mom or Dad, but I'm staying inside and going to cuddle up for a nap with my buddy, George.  

Have a great evening!  I'll talk to you later.   

George and me.  

Insidious Invasive Species

People who know me well know that I love to pick a geological formation in the distance, or pick a compass direction, and strike out cross country off trail. Doing so challenges many of my wilderness skills like path-finding, compass and map reading, and reading the land; i.e. understanding what I am seeing around me, knowing which direction it is telling me to go, giving me clues as to what lies ahead and with what animals I am sharing the area. 

Hemingway-Boulder Wilderness,  Sun Valley, ID

     For me these are valuable, important and exciting skills.  They mean a lot to me. Most of all they enable me to have marvelous adventures. Last spring I decided to challenge myself in rather deep snow in the Hemingway-Boulder wilderness (i) in the Sawtooth Mountains of south central Idaho. I was having great fun tracking bear paw prints the size of saucers. I wasn't worried about catching up with the bear. As I got up the mountain the snow finally became too deep to continue without snow shoes. I grudgingly turned back and followed the two sets of prints in the snow; the bears and mine. I stepped in my own prints to make travel easier. About a half mile or so back I realized that there were three sets of tracks; one bear, one human and one cat.  You can't have adventures like this without learning the wilderness.

     It was a marvelous time. Like most such adventures, which include living in Nitsitapiisinni (ii) in a snow covered forest miles from the nearest "civilization" as we were this day, much of the joy of the moment is feeling totally removed from the troubled, torment society hardly more than out of sight. Sadly I did not go long without being reminded. There, along the beautiful mountain stream I was following, partially hidden by the snow, was human trash not only spoiling the scenery but polluting an otherwise pristine stream that had carried pure, life-giving water down this valley before my ancestors climbed down from the trees. 

Puerto Blanco,  Organ Pipe Nat'l Park, AZ 

     The desert probably offers more opportunity to get off the trail than does heavy forest.  Many of my favorite places to go in the desert do not have trails. We were staying in Organ Pipe National Park near the Mexican border. I picked out a mountain peak a few miles north of Nitsitapiisinni, found it on my topo, and headed toward the summit. It didn't have a name on the map. That's one reason I picked it. No trails. I would have to figure out how to get to the top. That was a big part of the fun. 

     The climb was about 2,000 feet. I crossed two lower peaks, each offering a tantalizing view of my goal.  The geological formations as I approached the summit were superb. The rock was definitely volcanic and looked like gigantic cinders. The view was amazing. I could see into Mexico well past the unsightly wall. I watched carrion and raptors circling high above the desert floor looking for food. I could see a road to my east, so I kept my attention in other directions and quickly got lost in the fabulous nature around me. For a while I could actually forget politicians, other nasty people, run-amuck corporations, climate change, polluted water and air and the plethora of problems created by my species.

     I had come up the south side of the mountain. As I was enjoying my surroundings I noticed what seemed to be an easier route down by going north to a saddle and then back south along the western flank of the mountain. 

     Thanking the mountain for being such a generous host I headed north. I had not gone twenty yards when I saw a pair of mens underwear lying on a rock. At the base of the rock was a part of a tent and some trash. Most people would have blamed those horrible illegal immigrants, but people who climb the wall don't generally wear Jockey brand, have a tent and carry canned foods. They also don't go over the top of a mountain where they can easily be spotted when they can follow an easy route west of the mountain that has natural cover. No, this was just someone being a slob and not caring about the land. I see this behavior in many places and a great percentage are people out hunting, fishing or prospecting who just don't care. This is not implying that a hunter or fisher is, by nature, a care-less slob. That's just the reason some slobs are out here.

     The first time that we went to Quartzsite, AZ we didn't know that that was where gold was first discovered in Arizona and that Dome Rock was the  center of prospecting activity even today.  I was out exploring in my usual fashion.  I had noticed how many washes were filled with debris like tents, tires, and cans.  When I was on top of Dome Rock I could see Nitsitapiisinni and noticed that I could follow a dry wash to within a hundred yards of home.  As I walked along the wash it became deeper.  In one of the deepest spots I noticed tarps and tools along with the usual collection of trash. The side of the wash was dug up. I could see a large hole under the tarp.  Then I noticed that there was an old camper trailer, Class-C and pick-up truck just above me on the other side of the wash from the trash.  A woman sat outside the trailer. She just looked at me.  I waved and said "hello".  She just looked. I asked "what are you looking for?"  Since I had seen phenomenal quartz outcroppings, I assumed that they were rockhounds. Before I could say anything further a man, wearing jeans and a wife-beater, emerged from the trailer. The woman looked up at him and then back at me. "Gold," she said almost in monotone. "Well, good luck," I said waving and heading on toward home, all the time thinking 'please don't shoot me in the back. I don't want your gold mine.'   I had been educated. The horrible mess and destruction I had witnessed in the area was prospecting.  

     This past year we joined a group called Boondockers United to go with BLM (Bureau of Land Management) officers into the Dome Rock area to spend an afternoon hauling out trash.  We filled enough trash bags to load three large flatbed trailers, and that didn't count the two camps and two mines we discovered.  Discouraged prospectors had just walked away from camps leaving tents, mattresses, old tires, and a mountain of trash.  Both Pamela and I discovered deep mine shafts that we partially filled with trash. The BLM officer told us that they would have to get special teams to see if they could empty the shafts and then collapse the mines, but most likely they would have to treat the trash like bio-hazardous waste and backfill the shaft with rock and soil.  

     At Glacier we live right by the trailhead for one of our favorite hikes - Avalanche Lake.  It is a marvelous hike following a rushing, cascading mountain stream with magnificent falls and gorges, through a dense cedar and hemlock forest which is the last of the rainforest this far east.  You climb up a narrow valley between three mountains; Cannon, Bearhat and Brown. It culminates in a beautiful cirque with a lake and waterfalls all around you. The chances of seeing bears and deer are quite good.  The five mile round trip Avalanche Lake Trail is one of the most popular in the park.  We hike it often and each time we carry a trash bag to pick up the trash and litter dropped by thoughtless visitors.  Trash and litter are not only unsightly but pollutants and dangerous for the wildlife.  People laugh when we tell them that human feces and little boys peeing against a tree are some of the top animal attractants.  It actually isn't a laughing matter.  One of the reasons we started carrying trash bags is that Pamela ended up carrying a dirty nappie (baby diaper) for three miles because some family didn't care. 

     Grandson, Kieran, has spent anywhere from a couple of weeks to over a month with us while we're working as volunteers at Glacier National Park.  Our primary job is as campground hosts, which means managing a campground, helping visitors be safe and have a good time while abiding by the rules.  I also did some work doing trail patrol to run interference so visitors don't bother the animals and protect delicate sub-alpine and alpine vegetation from human trampling.  Kieran quickly became a valuable help accumulating many volunteer hours.  By thirteen years old he was the person that thoughtless visitors were glad couldn't give them an educational coupon (what we call citations and tickets). He always enjoyed going up the mountain climbers access to Mount Oberlin because we frequently got caught in the snow. How many Alabama boys can tell his classmates that he spent July in a snow storm?   We had been up on Mt Oberlin and were headed back toward the visitor center.  We were still a couple of miles up when we saw visitors below.  It was a group of twenty people.  Several things made the scenario strange but the biggest thing was that we were on a climber's access trail. It isn't even on a park map and, while not closed to the general public, not encouraged. That means that they were being led by someone who knows the park. Suddenly the group left the trail and walked through a sub-alpine meadow, along a stream to look over a steep escarpment at Oberlin Bend several hundred feet below.  Kieran was fuming as he hurried toward the place where the group left the trail.  From a spot on the side of the mountain above them I called for them to return to the trail. I have never had any problem making myself heard. That's a polite way to say I have a really big mouth. By the time we got the group back on the trail, Kieran was livid.  He did, however, let me do the talking.  I found out that the group was being led by a paid guide. That person was suppose to have a permit and definitely not be breaking serious rules. The guide became defensive. It had to have been embarrassing being caught breaking the rules, so the guide tried to say they didn't hurt anything. That was all Kieran could handle.  He was polite but he proceeded to explain the results of the Glacier trampling study and how this was sub-alpine vegetation which means that it takes up to a hundred years to recover from one of their foot prints.  I didn't make the group go back. It was not the visitor's fault. They had paid to be guided and I figured that, having been publicly corrected by a thirteen-year-old boy, that guide was going to go by the book from then on. I was right.  Kieran laughed the rest of the way down the mountain and for days thereafter about, as they were proceeding up the trail, hearing the guide admonishing the group to watch their step. 

      I know that there are people; whether family, friends, acquaintances or others; who get annoyed when I refer to homo sapiens as an invasive species. I know it isn't an easy thing to accept since we can't quit being homo sapiens, but facts do not lie.  Invasive species are destructive to their surroundings.  We are unbelievably destructive.  Invasive species are generally not a problem in the area to which they are indigenous because when on home turf the species has natural controls - environment, predators, etc. - to control them.  If we had stayed in northeastern Africa where we were indigenous we probably would be extinct by now but moving into new areas and losing the natural means by which the population and danger of our species was controlled turned us invasive.  The only difference between homo sapiens as invasive and other species that become an invasive species because they have been moved, often by humans, to a location where they are not indigenous, is that the other invasive species do not knowingly destroy.  An invasive fish does not kill the indigenous species on purpose but as a result of their own efforts to survive. We know that we are destroying other species and the environment and we do not do it to survive. We do it for comfort or pleasure.  In general, we really don't care about the world around us unless it is making us richer or more comfortable. 

     We are an insidious invasive species.  We try to deny it, but we know the truth.   Now what is needed is to do something about it.  

FOOTNOTES:

(i)  Hemingway-Boulder Wilderness is a recently designated wilderness area in the Sawtooth National Forest near Sun Valley, ID.  We stayed in a campground on  forest service road 137.  We were alone since it was snowing.  We had actually come to this area to avoid heavy rain, wind, etc., that was crossing the path we had planned. We figured we'd rather be out in the snow.  This is typical of our nomadic life-style that I love so much.   

(ii)  Nitsitapiisinni, nick-named Sinni, is the name of our twenty-foot camper trailer in which we live.  The name means "our way of life" in the Blackfeet language. 

Old Man on the Mountain

     There's an old man sitting on the side of the mountain over there with his back to me. He's just sitting and silently looking off into the distance. I know he is alive because he occasionally moves. Sometimes he will look up as though in supplication and other times he will drop his head. 

     I wondered what he is thinking. He is looking out over a beautiful panoramic vista with forests and rivers, a meadow and mountains.  It is beautiful. The mountains are high, rugged and magnificent, with snow capped peaks and large permanent ice fields. The forests are Douglas and Mountain Fir with patches of Aspen up high. Cottonwood can be seen marking the path of the stream along with the occasional Sycamore.  You can always spot the water here in the west. Just look for the Willow, Cottonwood and Sycamore. In more arid areas just look for the green.  But this is a lush valley.  At the far end you can make out a large meadow filled with wildflowers and Huckleberry creating a carpet of bright colors.  The Purple Asters dominate an area around the Aspen groves while Northern Eyebright, False Alphodel and Three-flowered Rush, leftovers from the ice age, are seen closer to the ice-fields.  The bright red of the Indian Paintbrush and the almost florescent yellow of the Arrowleaf Balsamroot, sometimes called Oregon Sunflower, round out the colors.  There is also White Rhododendrom, Pink Heather and close to a thousand other species to overload your pleasure sensory receptors. White water can be seen on the turquoise stream where the water cascades over boulders left by receding glaciers.  It is paradise. 

     But paradise has been invaded.  In what had once been a magnificent sub-alpine meadow right below the old man sat several oil rigs like a giant scar on the landscape. The ground around them had been scraped down to the bare soil and at the edge you could see where the carcasses of the once vibrant wildflowers had been pushed aside. As my gaze moves from the marvelous panorama to the devastation below I become aware of the smell of oil dominating the air rising from the pumping mechanism, the storage tanks and the numerous places where the ground is black.  The smell of oil is mixed with the noxious smell of the the gases which are being burned at the top of tall pipes like giant torches.  A rutted dirt road leads up to the wells. At least twice it fords the stream; the stream which is now a ditch filled with dirty brown-black liquid.  The land around the stream is dead. Piles of dead trees lay along the road.  Aspen, which may well have been 5,000 to 10,000 years old, have been uprooted and burned. The fires still smolders.  The land is dead.  The water is toxic. Ab hominibus morti!  

     The old man stands up.  For a long time he continues to stare at the scene below him.  Slowly he turns toward me and begins to head away from the depressing scene.  His eyes are red.  Tears are running down his face.  I look at him.  Then I look again.  The old man is me.    

     

POSTSCRIPT: 

In late March 2017,  Mr Trump (flagellum Americae) signed his 19th executive order entitled "Promoting Energy Independence and Economic Growth". The order directs the Secretary of the Interior to review rules which regulate oil and gas drilling in national parks and to "repeal, suspend or rescind them if they are found inconsistent with the president's energy goals".  (www.motherjones.com)   

The environment is a crisis, not an issue

      The environment is not an issue. It is a crisis. Yes, there are those who do not want to accept this reality. If the subject must be considered, they would prefer that it be merely an issue.  In the 1960s civil rights was a crisis for minorities while those who benefited from the lack of civil rights legislation wanted to treat it as an issue. Issues are easily overlooked. There is no sense of urgency with an issue and an issue can easily be ignored by those who do not feel the issue is important. To the contrary a crisis demands immediate action.

     Anyone with a bit of common sense, minimal observational skills and the ability to read soon realizes that we have an environmental crisis. However, having the ability to see and understand the signs and symptoms of a crisis doesn't mean that you will admit that there is a crisis. 

    There are two groups of people who will deny an environmental crisis. The first group are the leaders of denial. This group consists predominantly of super-wealthy people who own or are heavily invested in businesses that are major contributors to the problem. These people stand to lose a great deal of money if they admit that a problem, nevertheless a crisis, exists. Consequently, they deny a crisis and insist that it is merely an issue or an opinion. Also a part of this group are the politicians who belong to those super-wealthy.  By "belong to" I simply mean that the super-wealthy gave them the money they needed to get elected and therefore the rich person/corporation "own" the politician.  It is totally undeniable. If I give you money to act in a certain way and you don't act in the prescribed way, I'm not going to give you more money. If you feel dependent upon my money, you will act as I instruct. I own you. Since the Citizens United decision most politicians are owned. Holding a public office has become a lucrative career, as opposed to 'public service', so politicians are not going to admit that there is a crisis if it is contrary to their owner's interest.  Then there are others who stand to lose significantly if they were to admit that there is a problem. To admit a problem, for them, would demand action contrary to their financial interest. Wealth is more important than life.

     The second group are the followers. They tend to be uneducated which makes them an easy mark for the wealthy leaders of denial. These people may follow one of the politicians who is a denier and believe what they say, or they work in a threatened industry and believe what the owners tell them. These people tend to be gullible and easily duped. After all, anyone who would believe the biggest swam rat of them all when he said he was going to "drain the swamp" is obviously incredibly gullible.  

     Before I go any further I need to make it quite clear that being uneducated does not mean that I believe the uneducated person does not have any intelligence.  It means that while they may have the innate intelligence to build a microchip they are incapable of building a microchip because they do not have the skills which come from education.  Anti-intellectualism has been strong in the United States for a very long time. Perhaps from the beginning. I have, however, noticed during my adult lifetime that the super-wealthy, corporate CEO, et al., are quite willing to promote anti-intellectualism to further their own interests. Throughout world history you will notice that the first group a would-be dictator controls or eliminates is the educated population. 

      The currently most open manipulator of this anti-intellectualism is, again, the one who claimed he was going to "drain the swamp" and "make American great again".  He championed the 'my ignorance is as good as your education' attitude to manipulate the uneducated.  It is the same political tactic that Lyndon Johnson described when he said "If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you."  (Pres. Lyndon B. Johnson to staffer, Bill Moyers, the night after a Tennessee motorcade where they had encountered blatant racism.)  Johnson had cut his political teeth on the manipulation of southern racism.  He knew.  

     Looking back in history we have seen this manipulation of the uneducated every time there was a major change. When cars started replacing carriages those who had a financial interest in the horse and carriage industry convinced the gullible workers in the industry that cars were an attack on their way of life and would put them out of work. They would starve. As we all know just the opposite happened. Workers not only applied their skills to the new industry but they learned new skills and developed entire support industries with more jobs.  Today solar, wind and other energy industries are growing and creating more job/career opportunities than we had actually anticipated.  I don't think that proponents of solar energy anticipated the number of small solar installation shops and individuals.  Just in southwestern Arizona, where millions of retired Americans winter,  there is a preponderance of small solar supply and installation companies, along with individuals who will install solar on your RV. Some of these people live out in the desert and work out of their own RV.    

     These two group of environmental crisis deniers is, in large part, why we have a crisis.  In this case they are creating and making the crisis greater by their denial because they are in political power.  The super-rich one percent who own the politicians are pushing for and getting a roll back of legislation that provided some environmental protection. The politicians are getting the uneducated on board by telling them that protecting the environment is contrary to their interests. They don't realize that that is backwards.  It reminds me of an old saying - 'the more things change the more they stay the same.'  

     Some months ago I was talking about this crisis with friends my age.  Most of us had actually participated in  civil rights marches or other activities.  One of them commented that perhaps we need to go into the streets again, as we did in the 1960s. I voiced my opinion that that wasn't going to work this time. In the 1960s politicians still at least pretended to cared what voters thought. Political office was just beginning to turn into a college major where young people decided in their late teens that they wanted to be politicians and large corporations and their rich owners weren't allowed to buy elections.  My opinion was, and continues to be, that attorneys are going to be our salvation.  The only thing which makes an impression on the super-rich who control our Congress and the members of Congress themselves is to be sued. As our environmental attorneys win more and more cases, the pressure will hopefully bring about some change. Even if it doesn't bring change, the success in the courtroom may safeguard our environment or at least forestall damage until 'we the people' can actually regain control of our government.  

     The environment is in crisis because we can not replace wilderness and life-giving trees that are being destroyed in the name of profit and progress.  The environment is in crisis because once we destroy a water source there is no going back.  Once we cause the extinction of animal species that play important roles in ecological balance, there is no getting them back. We know that our technology is dependent upon nature. If we destroy nature there is no technology that can replace it.  We have a crisis, not an issue. 

     You can stand looking at a tree and deny that it is a tree. No one can stop you, but that doesn't change the fact that it is a tree.  You can stand and look at a factory destroying precious water and deny that the factory is causing irreparable damage, but that doesn't change reality.  You can look at  factory belching toxins into the air or a feed lot with mountains of cattle waste and deny that they are contributing to global warming and the toxification of our air, but that doesn't change reality.  2.4 billion tons of carbon dioxide goes into the atmosphere every second and if we aren't the direct contributor we are often indirect by our behavior such as cutting trees and destroying sea life as well as our over-population. You can deny that I exist, but that doesn't make me go away. 

     The environment is not an issue. Deny it or not, it is a crisis.  

The Sféars Experiment

I can only assume that this is (c) Columbia Pictures. 

It was a lovely morning.  The stillness was only disturbed by the hum of the purificator and the flooph, flooph, flooph of the wind generators majestically turning in the morning light. 

Two young boys set at the back of the amphitheater waiting for class to start.  Wearing the traditional youth or student eadaigh,  basically a sleeveless shirt worn over the tunic that hangs to the knees and is belted at the waist, Darvid and Chrisman had not reached puberty but were both strong, energetic and quite intelligent.  Young men didn't wear full-length eadaigh until they had finished school. The hem of their eadaigh were trimmed with a line of purple above a line of gold to indicate that both young men were advanced students of the bio-philosophy of alien species. They sat looking, in a conspiratorial manner, at two sféars sitting on the stone bench between them. They were engaged in a very serious discussion. The sféars were clear globes. In this case one was filled with green plants while the other appears to be filled with dead sticks and debris.

Maíre, Darvid’s big sister, strolled up. The boys had been so engrossed in their discussion that they didn’t hear her.

“Told you so,” she said, almost sing-songie.

Quickly the boys pushed the sféars under the hem of their eadaigh and looked up.

“It’s just me,” Maíre laughed. “You’re going to be in so much trouble when you get caught with those things.”   It was true. Students were forbidden to create Sféars. The globes contained planets on which a variety of life had been placed. They were originally created to study a species, help it survive or re-establish it after its extinction or the death of its own planet.  Unfortunately there were those who created Sféars for amusement causing the entire process to be highly debated. The Council of Elders were seriously considering making their creation illegal.  This reality was not lost on Chrisman and Darvid.  

“You put us up to it,” Chrisman snapped.

“Oh, like you couldn’t say ‘no’?”  The older girl, who was tall and beginning to show the blossom of maturity, laughed again as she sat next to her little brother.  She spread the skirt of her full-length eadaigh. The hem of her garment had three bands - gold, purple, gold - indicating that she was about to graduate with honors in bio-philosophy.  “Let me see.”  

“I don’t know what happened,” complained Chrisman as he pushed his dead sféars toward his friend’s sister.

“I know what happened,” Maíre said studying the two sféars.  “You didn’t listen to me. I told you …”

Before she could finish her sentence, a deep voice interrupted, “You told them what, Miss Maíre?” There was a pause as a large man in a full-length eadaigh and bright red cloak approached. “What are you three young déithe up to now?” he asked.

The three young déithe moved quickly to face the man. Again the boys pulled the sféars under the hems of their eadaigh. That wasn’t much cover. 

“Nothing, Headmaster Decius” offered Maíre, standing up. “I was just telling these two juveniles that they had transition all wrong and that the velocity of the mass is not a constant.”

“That’s very clever of you, Miss Maíre,” said the Headmaster, still looking suspiciously at the youth.  He had been headmaster of the school when the parents of these three children were themselves students. Their parents were cunning and mischievous and he expected nothing less from their children.  That’s when he noticed the lumps under the boys eadaigh. Besides, they had not jumped up in respect as had Maíre.  They were hiding something and he had a good idea what it was.  “But what is the relationship of the quantum transition to ecological balance?”

“What?!” exclaimed Maíre.  “Ecological balance?”

“You heard me,” Decius actually enjoyed it when his students pushed the limits of exploration, although he had no choice but to remind them that there are reasons not to go too far beyond those limits.  “Stand up, young masters.” 

The boys stood, as instructed, exposing the two sféars. 

“Now tell me again about the velocity of the mass?” queried Decius calmly reaching down and taking the two globes.  He held each, in turn, up to the light and studied its contents as he awaited an answer to his question. 

“I, uh, we were . . . well, we . . .” the boys stammered looking for words of explanation but none came out.

“It was my fault, sir.”  Big sister to the rescue. 

“And how is that, since I don’t see you with a sféar?”  The headmaster looked over the top of the two sféars at the young woman who was now stand as though a soldier at attention. 

“After the lecture on ecological balance and the introduction of the Daoine, these two brainiacs got into an argument,” she indicated the two boys who were now looking at their feet to avoid eye contact. “Chrisman was arguing that the daoine, with sufficient latitude and resources, would not only survive in an environment, but flourish.  Darvid claimed that they would only survive if they could develop beyond the environment.”

“That’s interesting,” said the Headmaster, keeping a stern face but admiring the intellectual efforts of his students. “Go on. How did that lead to sféars?”

“That’s where it became my fault,” confessed Maíre.  “I told them that they were both wrong. They were both trying to account for the very invasive nature of the Daoine and its seeming inability to cooperate within its own species nevertheless within an ecosystem. They were missing several variables, most importantly population.”

“Good point,” the Headmaster was intrigued. “So how does that make this your fault?”

“I told them that if we had two sféars; one set up as they proposed and one with population controls and developmental limitations; we would soon see that Daoine cannot be turned loose in an environment but must be strictly controlled.”

“So you three made the two sféars and proceeded to experiment on these Daoine and other species.”

“Yes, sir,” Maíre hung her head. “I know it was wrong, but look at the results.”

The four déithe stood looking at the two sféars. Decius pulled out a magnifying glass and studied the sféars.  In the lush, green sféar he could easily identify a number of species and untold vegetation. He had to look hard to find the Daoine.  The dead sféar looked like a desert ant-hill covered with Daoine. The small creatures had devoured everything. There was almost no vegetation left and no signs of other species. The Daoine were fighting among themselves for what few resources were left in the sféar. 

“That is cruel,” commented the Headmaster, looking at the dead sféar. 

“Yes, sir,” agreed the two boys.  “But we introduced them into an environment with everything all of the species needed to survive. We don’t know what happened?”

“I do,” Maíre interrupted.

“You knew before they started the experiment, didn’t you?” scolded the Headmaster.  This was where his job became hardest.  Maíre was one of the most brilliant bio-philosophy students he had ever taught.  She probably had a better understanding of Daoine than most seasoned scholars.  There was no way that she didn't know the outcome before she put the boys up to their experiment.  To put them up to the experiment created a serious ethical dilemma.  

“Yes, sir. But seeing the evidence was the only way these two smart butt déithe were going to believe me,” Maíre rebuttaled. Decius wondered if he didn’t see almost a gleam of defiance in Maíre’s eyes.  “In the prospering sféar the Daoine know the real rules of nature,” Maíre continued. “They were no less nasty and invasive when introduced into the sféar’s environment than the other group, but these Daoine soon learned.  I didn’t let them become so powerful that they had no natural predator.  My premise was that uncontrolled population, combined with the species’ natural invasive nature, was why they could not be introduced into new environments. With predators and a few other population controls, the Daoine showed that they aren’t as stupid as we thought. They soon began to learn to kill only what they needed for food and how to cooperate with other species and with nature for survival. As a result, they actually prospered albeit in much fewer numbers, as you see in this sféar.” 

“Conclusions?”  the Headmaster turned his attention again to the two young déithe.  

“Daoine are a very dangerous species,” Chrisman offered. “Perhaps we should eradicate them completely.”

“They are trainable,” countered Darvid, “but we can’t find any purpose to introduce them into any environment. They are unproductive and very invasive.”

“Good observations,” agreed the Headmaster turning his attention back to Maíre. “And?”

“And,” Maíre concluded, “while they can be trained to co-exist in an environment as small as a sféar, it probably takes controls, checks and balances beyond our ability to make it safe to introduce them into a global community.”

“So, I should punish the three of you for this stunt,” Headmaster Decius frowned. “But you have learned something very important and, as your punishment, the three of you will present this experiment to your classmates.”

By this time most of their class had arrived and gathered around listening to the discussion and looking at the two sféar.  Headmaster Decius smiled to himself as he walked away from the group of students. Sometimes you have to turn breaking the rules into a learning situation. 

The fact that they were not going to be severely punished for their experiment was not lost on the boys, but, being young déithe, they were soon a bit puffed up with pride as their classmates asked questions and admired their work. 

Maíre stood looking after their teacher. She appreciated that the Headmaster did not arbitrarily punish them because they broke a rule.  She had stood her ground and made her point. That felt good.  Nevertheless, as she looked back at the dead sféar being scrutinized by their classmates, she realized that it had been a cruel experiment.

She sat down next to her brother as the Headmaster called the class to order and began the day’s lecture. 

What price luxury?

"What price would we pay ... what irreplaceable treasure would we forfeit for profit or greater comfort during our short stay on this earth?"

What price would we pay for greater comfort during our life-time? I would imagine that most people would be willing to pay a great deal since people in the United States spent 179 billion dollars on luxury items in 2017.  Investopedia  defines a luxury item as "an item that is not necessary for living, but is deemed as highly desired …." At an annual cost of $2,641/person for food , the amount of money Americans alone spend on luxury items could feed 67,777,357 people for a year. That's the entire population of Thailand.

As shocking and interesting as this is, the second half of the question gets to the real guts of the issue; viz. what irreplaceable treasure would we forfeit? The answer to the first question - what price would we pay? – seems evident from the dollars we spend. The answer to the second question – what treasures would we forfeit? – is answered by our behavior.

Based on the world population, 60,800,000,000 trees are needed each day to provide enough oxygen  (population x8) for the Earth's human population. This doesn't count any other life form requiring oxygen.  Humans have a strong tendency to forgot that there are other living things on the earth. I didn't include there numbers here because they are not readily available since humans don't seem to think they matter.  We currently cut down 41,095,890 trees a day, much of it just clearing land for "progress".   What price would we pay?  What treasure are we willing to forfeit?

EcoWatch  reports that there are garbage patches, consisting mostly of plastic and some the size of the State of Texas, floating in our oceans. The Los Angeles area dumps ten metric tons of plastic fragments into the ocean each day. Water is more than a treasure, it is life! Yet we seem willing to forfeit clean water for comfort and convenience. We do the same thing with our air, our consumption of minerals, and our destruction of the land, just for starters.

The thing is . . . I'm not telling you anything you haven't heard many times. This really is common knowledge.  We are killing our oceans. We are destroying our forests. We are sterilizing our soil. We are making our air unbreathable. And that's just the top four!  For what?  Comfort, convenience and luxury.

It is like telling a smoker that they are killing themselves and everyone around them. They know it is true, but what does it take to make them stop?  I had a patient, who was dying of lung cancer, insist that we take him outside to smoke just hours before he died.  We know we are killing our world and ourselves by our excessive consumption of unnecessary products. What price are we willing to pay for our luxury? The price we will pay will be our future and that of our children.  There are obviously plenty of people who have the attitude that, since they're not going to be alive to reap the benefits of any austerity, why should they bother to participate in any attempt to fix the problem.  Perhaps they don't have family.  Who would knowingly cause their children, grandchildren and all future generations to suffer when there is something we can do?  

  

Nature, clean water and air, pure soil are the irreplaceable treasure we are forfeiting?  Sadly, it is going to be our children and grandchildren who are going to pay the ultimate price and face a gruesome reality.  What price is too much?  What treasure is too precious?  Or does everything go? 

We are not different, separate or other than nature

Humans; at least those of European ancestry; like to speak as though nature is "other".  I seriously think that it is a part of our delusional superiority complex.  If a visitor from another planet were to listen to us they would be sure that nature was something very foreign, different and significantly separate from humans. Nothing could be further from the truth. We are not different, separate or other than nature. We are a part of nature and totally dependent upon the rests of nature for our survival.

Horror of horrors!  I've spilled the beans.  That just can't be, can it?

'Oh, but look at us,' someone might say. 'We live in houses, drive cars, use computers, build skyscrapers. We're not like nature. We don't need nature.' Wrong! We are not different, separate or other than nature. Everything in the house you build comes from the nature around you. Everything needed to make your computer is dependent upon nature. There is absolutely nothing that humans have that is not dependent upon the rest of nature.

This includes we ourselves. We are animals. No amount of religious rhetoric will change this reality. We're actually the new species on the block because we haven't been around nearly as long as most other species.  While it is an on-going study, current evidence is that homo sapiens sapiens (that's us) began to colonize the world outside of Africa as long ago as 125,000 years.  In 2010 evidence was discovered that we (homo sapiens sapiens) were mating with Neanderthals and Neanderthais. (i)(ii)  We are not nearly as unique as we think. There is only a 1.2% difference genetically between humans, chimpanzees (genus: Pan) and gorillas (genus: Gorilla). The three of us are all members of the Hominini tribe and Hominidae family.  (iii)(iv)(v)  The skeleton of every animal is amazingly similar and all work the same. Actually every living thing has DNA, including plants, and science is even thinking that they might need a new system of classification. We humans share 25% of our genes with a grain of rice. We are, like it or not, a part of nature. We are not different, separate or other than nature.

One of the most important ramifications of this reality is that whatever hurts nature, hurts us, because we are not other than nature. We share the same genes. If a chemical fertilizer kills plants, it will probably kill animals. We are an animal. Therefore, it will probably kill us. We are all a part of an interdependence; a symbiotic relationship. For example, thinking that we are smarter than nature, we killed all the wolves in Yellowstone National Park. The park began to die. When the wolf was returned to the park, environmental balance returned. Some try to deny it, but when you destroy all predators the ungulates over-populate (like people). They over-graze on vegetation which chases away birds and small animals which were the prey of predators like hawks. The loss of vegetation also changed rivers and streams. You have an environmental death spiral. The wolves returned, reduced the ungulate population, the vegetation returned, the small animals returned and the other predators returned. Ecological balance.

We are a part of this same type of action-reaction on a global basis. When we destroy other species, pollute the air and water, and cut vegetation essential to life on the planet, we are also destroying ourselves, because we are not different, separate or other than nature. Our technology is not going to keep us alive if we destroy nature, because our technology is totally dependent upon nature.

We will never get humans to give up luxuries, comforts and conveniences. Harsh reality. Harsher reality; viz. if we don't do something we are going to die. Doesn't it make sense to look for alternative ways of producing the energy and reducing our carbon footprint? Doesn't it make sense to accept our place as a part of nature and work to be a productive part of the whole instead of a destructive invasive species?

We are not different, separate or other than nature. One would not purposely violate or destroy themselves, but we do. We are killing ourselves along with everything around us.  If we are to survive as a species we must accept our place in nature and put all of our cleverness into becoming a productive member of the world. 

FOOTNOTES

(i)     Brown, Terence A. (8 April 2010). "Human evolution: Stranger from Siberia". Nature. 464 (7290): 838–39. Bibcode:2010Natur.464..838B. doi:10.1038/464838a. PMID 20376137.     

(ii)    Reich, David; Patterson, Nick; Kircher, Martin; Delfin, Frederick; Nandineni, Madhusudan R.; Pugach, Irina; Ko, Albert Min-Shan; Ko, Ying-Chin; Jinam, Timothy A.; Phipps, Maude E.; Saitou, Naruya; Wollstein, Andreas; Kayser, Manfred; Pääbo, Svante; Stoneking, Mark (2011). "Denisova Admixture and the First Modern Human Dispersals into Southeast Asia and Oceania". The American Journal of Human Genetics. 89 (4): 516–28. doi:10.1016/j.ajhg.2011.09.005. PMC 3188841 . PMID 21944045. Hebsgaard MB, Wiuf C, Gilbert MT, Glenner H, Willerslev E (2007). "Evaluating Neanderthal genetics and phylogeny". J. Mol. Evol. 64 (1): 50–60. doi:10.1007/s00239-006-0017-y. PMID 17146600.

(iii)   Wood, Bernard; Richmond, Brian G. (2000). "Human evolution: taxonomy and paleobiology". Journal of Anatomy. 197 (1): 19–60. doi:10.1046/j.1469-7580.2000.19710019.x. PMC 1468107 . PMID 10999270.

(iv)      Ajit, Varki and David L. Nelson. 2007. "Genomic Comparisons of Humans and Chimpanzees". Annu. Rev. Anthropol. 2007. 36: 191–209: "Sequence differences from the human genome were confirmed to be ∼1% in areas that can be precisely aligned, representing ∼35 million single base-pair differences. Some 45 million nucleotides of insertions and deletions unique to each lineage were also discovered, making the actual difference between the two genomes ∼4%."

(v)   Ken Sayers, Mary Ann Raghanti, and C. Owen Lovejoy. 2012 (forthcoming, october) Human Evolution and the Chimpanzee Referential Doctrine. Annual Review of Anthropology, Vol. 41