Talks on Sustainability – 5. No Second Chance for the Blue Planet

editors | 03 February, 2009 17:24

by George Marinakis, george@JournalofSustainability.com

I have a theory about the mid-life crisis. Our character is like a foundation on which we build our lives, just like a foundation on which you build your house (Please excuse the architectural metaphor.). But everyone's character eventually develops flaws, just like a foundation might eventually develop cracks. At some point—around age 40---our flawed character can no longer support the weight of our experience, and the foundation gives way and the house collapses. Hence the mid-life crisis.

This is the point where you get fired again from your job because you lost your temper; or you have your third DUI arrest; or your third or fourth divorce; or a heart attack. Up to this point, you always said “oh, that's just me.” You rationalized it. “Everyone has their quirks. That's what gives color to personalities.”

At this point you have two choices: either rebuild your foundation from scratch, or continue to live your life as if nothing happened. Most people choose the latter. They pretend like nothing happened. Most people are tragic characters. They carry their character flaws to their graves. Sometimes they go to their graves early, on account of their character flaws. In any case, they further limit or cut short their careers or their relationships or something else of value in their life. They used up their second chances.

Now that I'm 45, I realize that I don't have many more second chances. When I was younger I knew--knew--I'd always have a second chance at anything and everything. But something happens when you get older. It's not you, because you still have the ability and energy to undertake those second acts. It's society. It closes doors to you. It takes opportunities away from you and your generation, and gives them to the younger generations. As you age, society generally loses interest in you. It makes you invisible. There are exceptions. Society never loses interest in great masters of music and art, or great writers, or great thinkers. But most of society's superstars are youngsters.

Don't get me wrong. I've experienced youth and I've experienced age, but I prefer age because of what comes with it, such as mastery, accomplishments, sureness of step, and that indescribable depth of intellect and emotion that comes with years. I also enjoy young people. I enjoy their potential and their enthusiasm and their genuine emotional generosity. That's why I teach. But this is not what I want to talk about.

What I want to talk about is that there are some things that you might be able to understand intellectually when you are younger, but that you can't appreciate them existentially until you get older and have your own similar experiences to refer to. One of those things that you really can't appreciate until you get older is that at some point you will no longer have second chances.

The human species no longer has a second chance. Until you've experienced the irretrievable loss of opportunity and possibility for yourself, deep in the back of your mind you'll think that there must be another way out; that human ingenuity or technology will rescue us; that the government has a plan. No, no and no. The human species doesn't have a second chance. We have already destroyed so much of the Blue Planet that it won't survive any more abuse. This is it. If we don't act now, we will lose our planet and there will be no way to get it back. We are an isolated blue and white oasis in virtually infinite sea of black. There is no other place for us to go when the planet dies. There is no other source for us to draw upon repopulate the lost species, to draw upon to replenish the atmosphere and the soil and the blue waters. Don't try to tell me we'll move into outer space. All 6.7 billion of us? I doubt technology will advance quickly enough, and I wouldn't want to live there anyway (Can you imagine never experiencing anything other than the interior of a tin can in orbit? Eating blue-green algae?). The only thing that makes outer space beautiful is the view of the Blue Planet.

We are destroying the habitats for ecological communities. Biologists privately call the California Condor a “zombie species” because its habitat no longer exists, but the problem goes much deeper than the loss of individual species. There is an ecological theory [FN1] that suggests that ecological communities (groups of species) create and maintain the biosphere. That means that if we destroy ecological communities and their habitats, we destroy the engines that create and maintain the biosphere. Suppose at some point late in the game, we decide we want to try to save them. The problem is, these communities co-evolved over hundreds of thousands or millions of years, in those particular habitats. You can't substitute new species into those ecological communities. You can't just put those ecological communities into new habitats. It won't work, because those species evolved to recognize signs and signals from each other and from those habitats, and to act together on those signs and signals in those habitats.

How big is the habitat loss? In 56 years, there will be no more tropical rainforests [FN2]. Don't forget all of the animals and plants we lose along with that forest.

Hard to picture? Before the Europeans arrived en masse, in 1600 A.C.E. slightly half of the United States was originally covered with forest, or about 1 billion forested acres out of 2.3 billion acres total [FN3]. We now have about 651 million acres, for a loss of about 35% of our forests [FN4]. That doesn't take into consideration how many of those forests are artificial from silvaculture. That loss of forest may have resulted in the extinction of the passenger pigeon and the Carolina parakeet [FN5], which once were so numerous that their flocks would nearly darken the skies [FN6].

At some point we might turn ourselves into a zombie species. The question is, at what point is there no turning back?

Footnotes

[FN1] Gorshkov et al. 2004.

[FN2] There were originally 16 million square kilometers of tropical rainforest globally. Now there are 9 million square kilometers globally, or 44% loss. Every year we destroy 160,000 square kilometers of tropical rain forest. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habitat_destruction

[FN3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deforestation#United_States, http://www.globalchange.umich.edu/globalchange2/current/lectures/deforest/deforest.html

[FN4] http://www.ers.usda.gov/Publications/EIB14

[FN5] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deforestation#United_States

[FN6] Scott, Chris. 2004. Endangered and Threatened Animals of Florida and Their Habitats. University of Texas Press.