The "beautiful story" in the title is all about how life began on planet Earth some four billion years ago and how all of her millions of species lived in harmony for billions of years. That story is spectacularly told in a fast-moving, sparsely seen, April 22 video later in this memo.
The "horribly ugly situation" is what we humans have created in just the last few thousand years -- a mere blink in the eye of history. Although we were well on our way to destroying the natural world by the end of the 18th century -- we have inflicted over 95% of the damage since then. Here's an example of our planet stewardship in action:
In just the past two hundred years, a short blink of the eye in geologic time, our population has soared from one billion to almost eight billion -- and we are still adding more than seven million people every month.
As we squeeze out all the other Earthlings to make room for ourselves (plus our food animals and pets) -- we are seriously disrupting the harmony of nature that gives us life.
In a word, the damage we have inflicted on the biodiversity of this planet is now on track to ensure our own extinction possibly before the year 2100.
Can we avoid our likely demise? Consider the information in this chart from Professor Corey Bradshaw at Flinders University in Australia:
Amazing fact! As Illustrated in the above chart, 12,000 years ago, wild animals (in green) comprised 100% of all mammal biomass on Earth. Now, they are just 4%. Our livestock alone now comprise 60% of all of the Earth's mammal biomass -- a staggering statistic about which I became aware just a few weeks ago.
You can learn much more about that statistic from Professor Bradshaw in this 2-minute video:
Click on this Image to view the most concise two minutes of biodiversity emergency I have ever seen.
From
his online bio, we see that Bradshaw's
research is mainly in the area of global-change ecology, and more specifically:
How human endeavour and climate fluctuations have altered past, present and future ecosystems
Featured Video Today. In the ten-minute video later in this memo, you will hear how our troubles on this planet began -- when we humans started telling themselves that we were the creator's chosen species that had been placed in charge of all the other creatures.
Here's an illustration from that video -- with God telling those fig-leaf wearing humans how it was their role to exercise dominion over all the millions of species of "other" Earthlings.
The image above from the video looks a lot like the Garden of Eden from the Old Testament of the Holy Bible of the Christian faith. Of course, there are hundreds of other religions, all of which have different creation stories. Obviously, they can't all be right.
The creation story that I like best is the one that is told by scientists like Harvard's E.O. Wilson, a professor emeritus of biology who has written dozens of books on the subject. This one's my favorite: The Meaning of Human Existence.
I have listened to that book's final chapter, Alone and Free in the Universe -- at least twenty times on Audible in my car since 2013. Click the image of this cover to find it on Amazon.
"The one process now going on, that will take millions of years to correct, is the loss of genetic and species diversity by the destruction of natural habitats. This is the folly our descendants are least likely to forgive us." -- E.O. Wilson
Back to the featured video, The Promise of Planetary Health. It runs just ten minutes and does a magnificent job of telling the compelling scientific story of how we ended up in our current situation.
But it comes up short when describing how we might strive to quickly resolve the many sustainability crises that we have caused.
You really should take time to watch at least the first five minutes of this powerful video. You will find this terrifying statement at the 4-minute mark.
"In pursuit of our ambitions, all of nature has become collateral damage."
Without a doubt, that collateral damage, for which we are responsible, does not bode well for our future -- unless we begin taking extremely urgent, comprehensive action aimed at returning to a harmonious relationship with nature. Considering our lack of progress to date, that is a daunting mountain to climb.
I figure that the more people who watch this video, the more likely enough of us will be prepared to take drastic steps to repair that "collateral damage" before it's too late. It saddens me deeply to say this, but that ship may have already sailed.
As for the video, sadly, it has not been viewed very many times. That's because most folks just don't like hearing the truth about uncomfortable situations. While it is free on YouTube, it has been seen just over 3,000 times worldwide since it was posted 19 days ago -- on the 51st anniversary of Earth Day.
Click on the image below to watch this 10-minute video now -- and/or scroll down for some of the relevant commentary from the video.
Click this Image to watch 10-minute video
The first six minutes convey the essence of the problem in a way that exceeds everything I have ever seen. It is stunningly beautiful -- yet a bit disturbing at the 1:11 mark when the narrator begins to talk about our hubris and how it led to our demise.
Text from the video:
Somewhere along the way, we began to tell ourselves a story of human exceptionalism -- that we are separate from nature, and that the rest of the natural world is ours for the taking.
Individuals and entire cultures with stories and ways of life that emphasized living in harmony with Nature and protecting the web of life tended to be marginalized or destroyed.
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Sad images of the marginalized & destroyed
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Along about the six minute mark in the video, the focus shifts to what we humans can do about the mess we have made with what is most likely the greatest assembly of life in the history of the universe.
They talk about "deep structural change" in the way we live -- ending with a clarion call to action. A few quotes beginning at the 6:27 mark:
6:27 We are waking up to what Martin Luther King once described as the "fierce urgency of now." To safeguard human health and wellbeing -- and to protect the rest of life on Earth -- will require deep, urgent structural change in how we live and a global commitment to reversing our degradation of Earth's natural systems.
7:44 In the world of the future, most of us are living in cities that have been designed to optimize physical, mental and cultural health, while allowing nature to regenerate.
8:10 We have allowed our myth of human exceptionalism to create a rupture between humanity and the natural world we depend on. The reverence and awe that most of us feel toward nature has lost its authority in guiding our decisions.
9:16 The same complex brain that has subjugated much of nature is bringing us news that the state of natural systems and the wellbeing of humanity cannot remain disconnected.
We know that people around the world are suffering across every region and every dimension of health. We have the science, stories, and solutions in front of us.
We know what to do. Will we do it?
Will we do it? That is the question of the ages. And that is the crucial topic that I have been researching, thinking, writing and talking about for the last eight years. My weekly SOS Memos (Save Our Species) were launched two years ago, three days after Earth Day of 2019.
I would like to think that we could come together and leverage our collective brainpower to design, build and populate an entirely new habitat for humanity -- one that will minimize our interference with the natural world.
That SOS Memo featured a new, peer-reviewed scientific paper proving that animal agriculture is, by far the leading cause of climate change. Click this image to check out the paper -- written by my friend and colleague, Dr. Sailesh Rao.
In the Abstract of this paper, he writes:
In this paper, we present the results of a Global Sensitivity Analysis (GSA) proving that Animal Agriculture is the leading cause of climate change,
responsible for 87% of greenhouse gas emissions.
The burning of fossil fuels is currently the leading source of human-made carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. However, climate change is caused by cumulative human-made greenhouse gas and aerosol emissions and not just current CO2 emissions alone.
What prompted me to write about that world changing "What If" Scenario last week? Three things:
One: Our failure to take any meaningful steps toward building a totally-new, ultra-sustainable "system" of living
Two: The fact that our desperate situation continues to worsen at a terrifying rate
Three: The fact that world leaders are primarily focused on the economic recovery after Covid -- as we get right back to our deadly habit of maximizing the consumption of STUFF in a world of finite resources.
Two weeks prior to that, I wrote about Four Simple Steps for Saving Humanity. The key word here is "simple." Those steps are definitely not easy -- and that explains my growing lack of confidence that we will ever get them done.
In the ensuing 33 years, we have generated more greenhouse gases than in the previous 300,000 years of our history combined. Also, during that same period, our global population has grown by 60% -- from five billion to almost eight billion today.
Not surprisingly, since Hansen's warning to Congress, the CO2 parts per million in the atmosphere soared past the safe level of 350 in 1990 and crossed the 420 mark last week. It didn't even slow down when Covid 19 virtually shut down the world economy last year.
Let's face it, we're not making any progress. We're just kicking the can down the road -- pretending to be caring about nature when our world leaders really have no clue that our behavior is tantamount to killing our mother. The world continues to get hotter as we march steadily toward the cliff of extinction.
But, hardly anyone is even talking about it. We all go about our busy lives seemingly oblivious to the fact that we're destroying the biosphere that keeps us alive. Sadly, among the vast majority of the well-heeled citizens in the developed world, there is only SILENCE.
What can we do? If a few million people actually read and digested our 2020 book, Outcry, there might at least be a more robust conversation taking place -- a conversation that might eventually lead to enough urgent action to make a difference.
To our knowledge,
Outcry remains the only book ever published that features an envisioned, totally-green, ultra-sustainable,
super-desirable habitat for humans -- along with steps for how we might get there as soon as possible.
Want to send a link of this memo to a friend? It is #105 on
this list of SOS Memos. Finally, contact me directly at the email address below with any questions you may have.
