AMERICAN BISON: A LESSON IN HUMAN ANIMAL RELATIONSHIPS

Ken Burns' most recent documentary effort is "The American Buffalo" a multipart series on the depletion and reintroduction of the buffalo in the US.  He combines several messages that are relevant to 1) contemporary environmental debates, 2) the place of indigenous peoples in the future of America, and 3) the basis of human relationships to other animal species.

In the Burns style,  narrators are mixed with still and movie footage in a narrative that has a specific direction.  In this series, the narrative describes the hunting of buffalo to near extinction, and then the various efforts to protect them and rebuild the herds.  Many of the narrators are from indigenous tribes historically related to buffalo hunting.  The simplest question of the series is: should the buffalo be preserved? prevented from going extinct?  The narrative poses a strong "yes" but the basis for this is not so clear.  The animal is "symbolic of America", according to who?  The animal is essential to the "preservation of the great plains", which are now mostly plowed and planted with food grasses.  The animal is the basis of the survival of the plains indigenous tribes, who have been displaced and abandoned by their conquerors.   None of these justifications explains the peculiar efforts to prevent the extinction,  and the inconsistent efforts to do so.  The narrative does not give a convincing national or economic explanation for the preservation of this animal, which turns out to be an important point.

The contemporary environmental debate is centered around the role of fossil fuels in producing climate change, and the need to reduce and reverse this effect if possible.  Several pathways exist to enable this goal,  but none involve preserving the buffalo directly.  Other protected species are the justification for preserving and protecting "wilderness" lands from development,  but these rarely involve climate change, and never the buffalo.  Similarly,  concerns about pollution are an environmental issue that does not involve the buffalo.  Is it relevant to environmental concerns?

Indigenous plains tribes hunted buffalo as a major source of food, clothing, housing, and tools for centuries before European arrival.  Despite their intensive hunting,  buffalo herds were counted in the millions at the time of European discovery.  The animals were also a part of their religious observance,  consistent with the importance of them in survival.  The relationship between native peoples and buffalo indicates a clear mutual interdependence,  with humans more dependent on the animal than the reverse.  This is similar to the dependent relationships of other native peoples to their natural environment and resources.  Over hundreds of thousands of years,  indigenous peoples occupied the Americas without exhausting its resources or overpopulating. (Claims that native hunters were responsible for the extinction of other North American species, including horse and camel, are now disputed.)  All this came to an end with the European migration.

Europe was experiencing economic population pressures that made the discovery of new lands an apparent solution.  It did not seem to matter that the lands were sparsely occupied by other humans,  because they had low population densities, did not have modern weapons, and they turned out to be vulnerable to European diseases.  Establishing an invasion on the East Coast of North America,  and in several regions of the Caribbean and South America proved relatively easy.  The migration of poor, indentured, and slave persons for labor,  was gradually followed by others seeking opportunities not available in the European world.  (The migration of Asians was very different.)  The emphasis on farming had no place for range animals,  and Europeans had no knowledge of or interest in consuming buffalo.  Buffalo had no value for the new population.

Like beaver, otter, fox, and other fur animals,  the hunting was initially for specific use in limited applications.  But the buffalo also represented a key vulnerability for the plains peoples who were resisting European expansion.  The narrative strongly suggests that eliminating buffalo was part of the strategy of controlling the native resistance.  After the Civil War a wholesale slaughter began when hides were used for the transfer belts in industrial machines.  And later the remaining bones were ground for fertilizer.  The fundamental understanding is that Europeans viewed the animal species (and plant species like giant redwoods) as PRODUCTS.  They were important only based on market value,  or as obstacles to producing products that were of market value.  This seems obvious to any person of European descent,  but represents a very different conception of human/animal relationships to native peoples.  This issue is not limited to the buffalo,  as depletion of seafood creatures for their market value has also been extensive,  and threatens the loss of sea foods.  The example of the whale is most obvious,  as these enormous creatures were hunted and killed for their fat to make oil for lighting households!  They were saved by the discovery of oil and gas as an alternative lighting source! (Whales are still threatened today when killed as a food source by certain countries.)  The difference between the native view of animals and the European view is the difference between dependence and exploitation.   Native peoples recognized their dependence on Nature and natural substances for survival,  and that these were limited and could be over utilized and lost.  Europeans viewed these new resources as available for exploitation, and so plentiful that they could be consumed without concern for depletion.  It is difficult to know whether this reflects a difference in experiences or a different way of relating to the natural world.  The fact that Europeans were intent on discovering new lands to supplant their dwindling home resources is epitomized in the British efforts to build an extensive colonial empire managed by the East India Company and other corporate interests.  Similar efforts are noted in Spanish, Portuguese, French, and other European colonization.  New lands were viewed as solving the economic problem of scarce resources in the homeland.  So the resources of the new lands were to be exploited as needed.  The buffalo had no place in this scheme.  No Europeans ate buffalo or used its resources until minor uses were discovered.  It is very dangerous for an animal or plant to be of value to Europeans (even more so for certain minerals!),  but even more dangerous to have no value at all!  This is the lesson of the buffalo.

If there is an important role for indigenous culture in the future of American society it is to revise the relationship to the natural world.  The American obsession with fossil fuels, especially oil, has created a society in which pollution, excessive travel at high speeds,  and disregard for local community are consequences.  And the pressure to consume this energy source only speeds toward its depletion.  The pattern of the buffalo is repeated over and over.  "Conservation" is really about people learning to balance their lifestyle with the available resources for an extended future. 

The buffalo narrative also gives a message about the relationship of human and other animal species.  We are not friends.  Some animals can be domesticated to a limited degree and used for labor and food.  Most are wild creatures that require their own habitats that are not suitable for most human occupation.  This requires separating the earth into human-suitable and wild animal-suitable habitats,  with inevitable overlap.  (Zoos were once useful for educating people about animal existence.  They are now just a form of economic exploitation of animals.  The informing can be done better with wild photography.)

The buffalo story is a wonderful example of how to learn about a way of living that has been forgotten in many human cultures.  It does not say that all humans should return to indigenous ways of living.  But it tells us that we cannot view Nature as an inexhaustible resource.  We must learn to live with Nature in a balance of consumption and replenishment.  And this balance may change with changes in climate,  and the number of humans supported at any given time may change dramatically.

ENVIRONMENT: A PERSPECTIVE ON CONSERVATION

The internet and news sources are flooded with messages about environmental disasters and the need for donations to support this or that organization that is helping to solve the problems.  Some are serious organizations,  others scams, and they attempt to address different, sometimes contrasting, solutions to the identified "problems".  It would help to have a common definition of the problem(s) and related sub-problems.  The most general goal is ensuring that earth maintains a physical state suitable for the continuation of life.  As humans we modify this to: conservation means maintaining the earth so that it allows for the survival of humans.  This is more specific than the first as pointed out by Dunn (A Natural History of the Future) who documents the extensive non-human life forms that also inhabit the planet. 

This task has several features:

Managing climate: changes in climate alter the distribution of plants, animals, and humans, and if extreme may cause mass extinctions or severe population loss.  The recent changes in climate are associated with increased carbon dioxide production from extensive combustion of carbon containing fuels, and other sources.  It is impossible to "prove" this association experimentally since monitoring climate change is not a recurring event.  Various indirect measures suggest that the association is valid,  but freon was emphasized in the 1990s ("hole in the ozone layer"), and significant changes in freon and related gasses did not alter the rate of change.  Use of fossil fuels for energy production is associated with a variety of other events that alter the planet in other ways. Changes in climate have recently focused on average temperature increases which change the relative climate zones for plant and animal life,  and also alter weather patterns. The current distribution of climate zones is recent in earth's history with several cycles of ice ages in the past millions of years.  Humans survived the most recent "ice age" but comparable data about survival of high temperature cycles is not known.  Predictions regarding the effects on life of melting of the polar ice caps and other dramatic climate changes are speculative due to a lack of records of previous events.  Reasonable speculations about the impact of the potential rate of climate change are possible, but must be updated with changes in measured effects.  It is tempting to believe that world wide reductions in use of fossil fuel will slow or reverse climate trends, but the data to support this can only occur in conjunction with actual changes.  The extent to which humans can modify earth's climate is unknown. 

Managing pollution: a variety of chemical substances,  and polymer substances (plastics) have increased dramatically  in usage and disposal in the last 100 years.  These substances now clutter large areas of land, buried landfills, and drift in rivers and ocean gyres.  Micro-plastics have entered the food supply as a result of the distribution.  Many of these substances are produced by modifications of fossil carbon sources.  Pollution due to the creation and modification of radioactive materials as weapons or energy sources is another source.  Pollution has toxic effects on life, including humans, that are different from the effects of climate change.  The extent of human pollution is more easily measured and evaluated for impact.  The relative lack of emphasis on the seriousness of pollution reflects the strong economic impact of altering the production of polluting substances, and the change in lifestyle.  Organizations like the Environmental Defense Fund, and Natural Resources Defense Council try to evaluate and monitor more serious pollution events,  and governments identify "toxic superfund sites" retrospectively to remediate.  There is little effort to prospectively evaluate and prevent toxic production.  Each individual has the potential to impact the economics by reducing or refusing the consumption of toxic products.  So far this has not been a powerful effect, partly due to ignorance of the dangers and partly due to the convenience of these products.

Managing Ecology: Everywhere on earth there are places which once had limited or no human development and now are  urban or semi-urban human environments.  Three factors drive this process: 1) the increase in the number of humans, 2) the economic advantage of urban environments, and 3) the potential protective effects of group living.  These factors have been in play since the "dawn of civilization",  but have greatly accelerated with the dramatic increase in human population, especially in under-developed countries, and the economic advantages.  The changes are offset by destruction of the natural ecology, concentrated pollution, and dangers of human proximity.  This issue is rarely understood as an issue of ecology, and  instead is discussed as "extinction of species", lack of water supply, pollution of rivers, homelessness, and etc.  "Civilization" seems to include the failure of every aggregation of humans (and other species) totake into account its needs for living space, water, etc.  The concept of the individual possession and ownership of land interferes with the understanding the ecologic responsibility of the group (called the "tragedy of the commons" in economics). The planner Soleri proposed urban environments that were somewhat attuned to size and ecology, and was largely ignored.  This problem is evident all across the United States,  but has become dramatic and profound in China were the aggregation of a dramatically larger population for increased economic production has created unsustainable urban environments.  There are too many people on earth distributed unevenly in dysfunctional patterns.  Water supply, pollution, crime, and transformation of land into concrete and structures all combine to alter the human experience.  (There is research on the ways in which rats and other animals coexist in these environments.)

The ecology of plants, animals, and foods.  Urbanization and farming create several confusions about ecology.  "Farming" means that the natural distribution of plant life in a region is altered to favor "food plants" with high nutritional value.  Smaller animals are farmed,  and larger ones are hunted or "ranched" to produce food.  The animals are bred to be better food sources,  and reducing their survival in the natural environment, because of protection on the farm.  Agriculture  made urbanization possible.  But the boundary on modifying animals and plants for food production is unknown, and many important genetic features have been lost, except in residual unmodified plants and animals life.  The relationship between humans and other life forms on farms can be conceived as "short survival zoos".  Plants and animals on farms are maintained for human benefit and sacrificed for human needs.  The original concept of hunting animals for food which required a balanced active interchange is lost.  The remaining "hunting" in most countries, including the US, is limited to defined regions and seasons, where hunters with limited experience crowd together to prove their "atavistic integrity" not the appreciation for the sacrifice of the animals.  In this context,  worrying about the "extinction" of wild species,  and preserving them in isolated game preserves disrupts both the human ecology of the region and the animal ecology.  The struggles of the Santa Monica Mtns near Los Angeles to manage its mountain lion population is an example.  Coyotes have successfully preyed on farm animals for centuries, and now have invaded more urban settings where pets and other foods are available.  They represent the dynamic interaction between humans and animals in a dysfunctional competition.

Making decisions about conservation requires involvement of human groups,  and so the conflicting interests of different stakeholders create political conflicts.  This should not be a problem.  The resolution of conflicting goals is necessary to balance different objectives.  However it does not appear that this has been possible in the US, and in much of the rest of the world.  The strong economic and political influence of the producers and refiners of fossil fuels and other commodities constantly opposes the efforts for conservation that address the possible role of fossil fuel combustion in climate change.  This is paradoxical. The perspective of the earth's total resources says that the store of sources of fossil fuels is finite, and many sites are depleted. The convenience of fossil fuels as a portable energy source gives them long term value.  It seems obvious that the current use of fossil fuels should be regulated and limited not just because of pollution, but also because they must be preserved for future generations. This is an obvious world wide need, but it is generally ignored because the businesses extracting and refining fossil fuels is determined to maximize current profits, and because  countries that nationalize oil production are desperate to sustain this revenue.  This perspective has shifted in the Arabian Gulf oil states who recognize the waning value of their deposits, and are trying to build alternative economic resources.  Whether they succeed is unknown, but many other oil producers who are more greedy have less perspective. 

Electric cars provide a related paradox.  Automobiles, and other internal combustion vehicles, contribute a significant contribution to the current carbon dioxide and other pollution that contribute to climate change.  Various estimate about the importance of their role have been calculated.  Trapping this pollution with catalytic converters is the current solution, an expensive and incomplete one because of cost and depletion.  The proposed alternative was producing cars that run on electricity without an internal combustion engine,  and many golf carts already do that,  using a conventional lead acid battery.  To engineer a vehicle with faster speed and longer range required major changes in the electric motor, and in the battery storage.  These engineering problems have been partially solved,  but do they offer a significant improvement in control of pollution?  A Google search on this question produces conflicting answers as it should.  Renewable energy sources do not account for sufficient charging for current vehicles, let alone an electric fleet for the entire country.  The promotion and rapid acceptance of this alternative was not based on calculations reflecting the entire population and energy sources but only on the reduction in vehicle emissions,  which is total.  Intelligent conservation decisions require the political will to make sophisticated calculations, and avoid letting economic decisions drive the process.  California, which suffered the effects of auto pollution earlier than other states, put in more stringent emission controls, and taxed gasoline to reduce driving, which has mildly improved air pollution, and given rise to its image as a "green" state.  But California produces one third of the oil produced in the United States, how green is that?

Several proposals have come forward to address the issue of land and ecology.  The biologist Wilson proposed the "half earth" solution: to maintain half of the earth's land and sea for biodiversity (https://www.half-earthproject.org). Another concept put forward by biologists is the 30x30, to preserve one third of the land by 2030. (https://www.nature.org/en-us/what-we-do/our-insights/perspectives/thirty-percent-protect-best-biodiversity-on-earth/) There are several problems with these proposals, beyond the difficulty in getting them enacted world wide.  The academic biologist's notion that the wild places of the world protect biodiversity ignores the reality that certainly two thirds of the current world (not including the deep seas, except by pollution) has already interacted with humans for thousands of years.  This approach amounts to declaring a third or half of the world as a giant zoo or game preserve, and then encouraging its study by designated humans (biologists).  It is humorous to see how blind these proposals are to the self serving interests of those who propose them.  It makes much more sense to understand the human/nature interface and a complex blended zone with different levels of interaction.  In New York, Mumbai, rural Colorado, and etc animals and humans have coexisted for hundreds of years,  and altered their environments together.  Defining "zones of human engagement" and mapping regions for less human engagement is a solvable task which is already underway and creating its own problems.  The Nature Conservancy has purchase land for protection against  human development in many areas.  How much development should be permitted?  If this is contractual, when is protection more important, and when development? The Conservancy (and other organizations) have struggled with this.  The problem is most acute in National Parks, but is seen in other special places as well.  Every American National Park was once a tourist site-seeing attraction and disrupted in some way.   The National Park designation protected the site, and in many cases reversed some of the damage,  but increased the attraction and demand significantly.  Many National Parks now limit total visitors, require reservations, or create other barriers to use.  The trade off between preserving the environment and allowing the experience is increasingly difficult.  Yet these are the natural jewels of our country, and should be available to visit.  It is a difficult choice.  And state parks, national forests, and other "natural regions" have  less intense but similar demands.  How do we set aside regions of the world to not be overrun by human presence and human development, yet allow human participation and experience?  This dilemma is not easily resolved.  If you travel to a popular and dramatic ski area, or to the outskirts of a major National Park, you will see the expensive vacation homes of wealthy individuals who have acquired and built a chance to reside as near the public land as possible. (Or in ski areas, as near to the privately developed region as possible.)  If this process continues special places will be surrounded by "necklaces" of private development that isolates and destroys the context of the place.  This has already been completed in many areas.  Someone visits a beautiful place, and says I want to have a place to visit here all the time,  buys land and builds the house.  (It started long before the Rockefellers created the places that became RockResorts!)  The tragedy of the commons keeps bumping into real estate development!

There is no one size fits all.  The politics of conservation require balancing difficult trade offs for future generations. This is a maturity and political sophistication lost on many current leaders.  The decisions cannot be based solely on greed, nor can they be based on speculative preservation of what one group decides is best for everyone.  

COYOTES, DEER, BEARS, AND HUMANS

 A current story in LA TIMES explores the struggle to deal with the prevalence of coyotes in the city.

https://www.latimes.com/environment/story/2022-09-20/southern-california-coyotes-population-escalating-war

The many pets which have been eaten by these visitors could all have been protected by not letting them out at night,  so it is hard to see how this is simply an issue of the coyotes.  An occasional child may also be at risk, but then a child walking at night without an adult should either understand the risk, or is too young to be walking alone.

All over the country, cities struggle with the expanding deer population and their consumption of ornamental plantings.  There are plants that deer will not eat,  and there are fences deer cannot cross,  but humans tend to see the issue as a deer problem,  rather than the interaction of humans and deer.

In mountain communities all over the country,  bears are sometime visitors to town garbage sites,  and occasionally to home swimming pools and other human habitations.  Bears see the encroachment of human dwellings as a possible new source of food,  and do not distinguish between natural and artificial watering holes (at least until they try to drink the water).

(And by the way, our house,  and many others are occasionally visited by raccoons looking for food supplies.)

All these stories address the human confusion about the relationship between humans (us) and other animals living in the same space. THIS IS NOT A NEW PROBLEM!!  Humans have always shared the land with other animals!!  As local regions became densely urban, the animal population changed from large mammals, to cockroaches, other insects,  birds,  and rats (small mammals).  People attempt to isolate these smaller pests from their interior spaces by construction, and other methods,  and the illusion that there is a zone of humans and a zone of non-human life is created.  As humans move out into suburbs, and ex-urbs, the interaction with larger mammals returns, the humans are surprised that this occurs,  and write newspaper stories about it.  No one seems to notice that the humans moved into the animal spaces,  not the other way around.

To make the story even more peculiar,  animals like mountain lions in the Santa Monica mountains are now rare and forage across highways to find food and are sometimes killed by cars.  So the region is building an animal crosswalk over the highway to allow them to safely cross!!  This will give them access to more mountain regions,  and also wealthy neighborhoods where they have been tracked visiting on monitors.

Some animals are pests because they intrude into our lives and some are precious and need protection (even though they are more dangerous to humans).  The simple message is that humans have lost the understanding of how to live with other species,  how to set boundaries,  and how the boundaries change when living in different habitats.  Though it is often presented in this way,  it is not a problem of animals (except that human activities have eliminated some of their predators).  It is a problem of humans who became so "urbanized" that we lost the knowledge of how to manage our boundaries with animals.  

Robert Frost: Good fences make good neighbors.  Also applies here.

GETTING "BACK TO NATURE"

I have  been on an "intellectual journey" which I cannot recommend.  I am blogging it here, in case anyone is interested.

When we moved to California, one of the attractions was the proximity of many  beautiful natural landscapes.  I had visited  before and seen a few sights,  which,  along with Sierra Club photo books, only whetted my appetite.  After settling in, we visited many of the places,  enjoyed the views, and I was stimulated to understand more about what I was seeing.

This led to an effort to become an amateur "naturalist".  I read about the geology examples of dramatic local scenery.  I read about, and went to observe, the Fault, and its cousins,  as well as feeling their grunts from time to time.

I tried to get familiar with, and identify, the odd local plants I had never seen in the East,  (some of which were not native, after all),  animals that chose to show themselves, on land and water, and a profusion of birds,   especially shore birds.  There are few places in the US or world,  where you can drive less than two hours to the ocean, the desert, and mountains 8-12000 feet.  For a neophyte naturalist it is truly overwhelming,  but fun.

 Soon I was learning that trees are not "things" but complex communities in which the members communicate and interact.  And there are even unitary communities, like the aspens' "Pando".

And I read books by naturalists like Childs, who gave a dramatic description of going through the local desert, and the effects of water and its absence.  He also wrote about the native people who inhabited and survived in these locations long before John Muir and other Europeans were extolling their beauty.  (Once in Bryce looking at the formations,  another tourist, struck with the beauty, said "I wonder who was the first person to discover this place." To which I answered, "It wasn't a white person.")

You cannot be overwhelmed by the beauty for long before you notice that there are a lot of other people at many of these lovely places.  And you notice that some of the areas around the parks are relatively natural forests, or desert lands,  but  human development is encroaching  everywhere. 

So, of course,  I began to think about how humans are altering the climate,  creating extinctions,  causing the dolphins to come onshore to die---the whole anthropocene mess-- surveyed by Kolbert.  Her book is sensationalist which fits with its mission of advocacy,  but it is also disconnected and seems to lack a core.

This led me to a "real biologist's view" Dunn's NATURAL HISTORY OF THE FUTURE.  (In case you are wondering, I have not written this blog to encourage anyone to read these books.)  Dunn surveys many examples of natural and urban organisms who are "evolving" in dramatic ways,  often only observable in complex studies.  There are "islands" of rats in urban parks,  and the collapse of bee colonies,  and many other examples (not all of them depressing).

When I step back to look at my journey,  I realize that the natural beauty of these places in our world has not gone away,  but my vision of them has changed.  My mind imagines the intricate interdependence of species  and environment (even when I can't see them, or understand the processes).  How easy it is to alter and disrupt the relationships, with the good intention of growing more food,  or eradicating malaria, or some other human  outcome. 

I see the beauty but I also see and feel the ways in which that world and my world are not connected.  And I wonder what to do about it,  and doubt that it is simply about protesting, or driving an electric vehicle.  

If we end up in Mad Max's world,  it will eventually be taken over by insects and microbes.  

But Bryce will still be there with its beautiful formations.

ENVIRONMENT: PARTICIPATING IN THE CHALLENGE

Reality is always distorted by politics,  and the discussion of solutions to the changes in earth's climate are a good example.

The climate is changing.  The overall temperature of the earth is getting warmer,  and rapidly.  This is not happening in a year,  but over decades.  The measurements are statistical but the trend seems clear and dramatic.  

Why is this happening? In the 1970s,  an ozone depletion theory was the proposed answer,  still considered by some  https://ozonedepletiontheory.info/why-warming-stopped/  https://climate.nasa.gov/faq/15/is-the-ozone-hole-causing-climate-change/   This theory has generally been replaced by the proposal that fossil fuel changes in the atmosphere create a "greenhouse effect".    https://climate.nasa.gov/causes/    https://www.nrdc.org/stories/fossil-fuels-dirty-facts    https://www.un.org/en/climatechange/reports   It is important to understand that this is a theory, an explanation of the changes based on observations, correlations, and assumptions.  Are properties of the earth a factor?  Does climate shift in this way due to variations in solar energy,  or cycles of ice formation,  etc?  Opponents can find indications and data that do not support this theory.  That is inevitable in scientific discovery. 

But this is not just about proving a scientific theory.  The changes in the earth's temperature and related changes in climate are altering the distribution of plants and animals,  the location of arable land suitable for growing food,  and the distribution of water supplies.  These are measurable changes in the earth, whether or not they are the consequence of the use of fossil fuels.  The test of the importance of the role of fossil fuels would be the dramatic reduction in atmospheric changes and an associated change in climate.  This is unlikely to be possible.  Use of fossil fuels is directly related to economic development,  and sustained economic advantage.  It does not appear that any country with significant fossil fuel resources will forego use for the sake of the survival of the earth.  Statements by oil companies, etc.  to the contrary are marketing distractions to confuse consumers.  And it may not work!  The climate changes may have progressed too far,  and cyclical shifts are already occurring.  Or the reversals may occur but be much slower to reset the climate.  Human experience is generational roughly 20-40 years,  and so is political thinking.  So these climate changes are too slow for normal human thought processes.  COMMITTING TO THE  CHANGES IN ATMOSPHERE BASED ON FOSSIL FUEL AND OTHER POLLUTION IS A TRANS-GENERATIONAL COMMITMENT.  This is very difficult to accomplish in political terms.

Instead the focus in reporting and promoting is on natural disasters and animal extinction. Problems in the distribution of food and water have already given rise to migrations toward regions with more opportunity (though not always with regard to future climate issues).  Natural disasters are another source of confusion.  Tornadoes, hurricanes, floods, and fires are recurring natural events that may be exaggerated by changes in climate. (The data to assert this is incomplete.)  But the reality is always the same:  When humans build dwellings in regions of high risk for natural disasters the dwellings are damaged or destroyed and the lives are altered.  The location of the disasters is statistically predictable,  yet humans return to the same sites to rebuild despite knowing the damage will return.  The fantasy of owning a piece of the earth interferes with the reality of recurring destruction from natural disasters.  The emphasis on animal extinctions is another example, to be considered in another blog.

Humans have relatively little political or personal control over climate change and natural disasters. By contrast we have a significant ability to manage the pollution of the earth and sea with toxic substances,  avoid living in disaster prone areas, and set aside regions of territory for maintaining some persistence of the previous environmental patterns (i.e. "wilderness" whatever that means).

To participate effectively in the future of the earth,  more thoughtful reflection is needed,  and less poorly thought out, and stupidly motivated political action.  No amount of Tesla production, or other electric vehicle use will offset fossil fuel and the need to generate power to reverse climate change.  It is an example of false marketing of climate change for economic purposes.

ENVIRONMENT: ON THE EXTINCTION OF GRIZZLY BEARS

The earth is in trouble.

There are too many people. 

The earth's population is approaching 8 billion.  And its rate of growth is linear.  There are still many places with very few people,  but the concentration  in giant cities with massive populations is increasing.  Where humans are highly concentrated,  they drive out other life and create changes in the environment which have given rise to the name for the emerging era: anthropocene:  the age of humans.  To address this problem it is necessary to limit the birth rate of the species to some  survivable limit. This is very difficult to accomplish because it involves coordinating across nations  to regulate an activity considered outside the range of legislation in most countries.

It is getting too hot. 

Despite denial by the current American government, most other governments and scientists agree that there is a dramatic warming of the planet.  The evidence for the warming is unequivocal and human activities likely play a significant role in at least accelerating,  if not causing the changes.  The scientific explanation has been that there is increased C02 which allows the heat to stay "trapped" in the atmosphere in a "green house" effect.  Whether this factor or some other astronomical issues are also involved is unknown.  But the evidence is clear that the earth is warming  in the contraction of ice packs in polar regions and changes in ocean water temperature,  and rising average atmospheric temperatures.

The world is becoming toxic and polluted.

This piece in the New Yorker last year describes a so far unsucessful effort

New Yorker: The Widening Gyre to clear-the-great-pacific-garbage-patch

We are running out of drinking water.

The human and animal species depend on non-salinated water for survival,  and this water is not evenly distributed over the earth's surface.  Fresh water depends on rainfall,  snow pack,  location of streams and rivers,  preservation of unpolluted sources,  and a balance between use and replenishment.  All these factors are out of balance in specific regions posing challenges for the human survival in those areas.  Plants also depend on water supply and so crops are lost in the same regions, compromising the food supply.

And animal and plant species are going extinct.

The distinguished biologist E. O. Wilson has written a book about conservation.  His proposal is clear and unachievable:  set aside roughly 50% of the earth as protected,  to be allowed to continue to function without excessive human incursion.  The regions he proposes are ones with some of the highest levels of biodiversity,  and his stated aim is to preserve diversity and present the extensive loss of species through extinction currently in progress.   As a biologist-zoologist,  he has great respect for the genetic store of information in different species and the need to preserve this "information" for future generations.  This includes the genome of plant species as well,  though he gives that less emphasis.  The first 3/4 of the book details the extent to which human development is rapidly depleting regions of the "natural world" and replacing them with human settlements.  These have mostly human genomes,  extinction for most animal species around them,  and has given rise to the term "anthropocene" to describe  the earth's  transformation by human activity.  Why is this happening?  There are two clear reasons:
1) Human reproduction is expanding rapidly,  and human mortality decreasing by various modes,  so the life expectancy is extending,  ergo more people around. 
2) The economic value of extracting natural resources and developing land is clearly defined,  while the economic or other significance of genomic diversity is not.  Economic considerations now dominate all others.

The geologic record suggests that the earth has seen two or three dramatic extinctions of most creatures and out of these new life forms have evolved to populate the remaining earth.  Insects and some plants are especially gifted at survival,  and this suggests that an alternative solution would be to allow the earth to be catastrophically destroyed and repopulated by other species.  This is not likely to be a favorable solution for humans who have a strong attachment to their survival and importance as a species.  Indeed,  one of Wilson's major points is that humans don't know that much about how to live with other species,  apparently because we don't care.  This is less true for "primitive" cultures who did and to some extent do coexist with other species.  But the"developed" world of Eurocentric and American culture is organized around isolation from other creatures and destroying their intrusion into our lives.  Especially insects!

Given the interdependent issues involved,  the issue that gets the most attention is:  Developing Renewable Energy  All human activities require energy,  much of it provided in parts of the world by the energy mechanisms within the body,  food,  and atmospheric oxygen.  But in the increasingly technical world,  the role of energy is to power devices for transportation,  manufacturing,  and communication.

The Real Solution Is  to manage human population growth,  and balance it with the rest of the natural environment.  This requires a major change in the evolutionary view of certain  species.  How to engineer that?