[Mb-civic] MUST READ: Watching as the world vanishes - Roxana Robinson - Boston Globe Op-Ed

[William Swiggard]

  Watching as the world vanishes

By Roxana Robinson  |  January 1, 2006  |  The Boston Globe

IT WAS SHAMEFUL, everyone agreed afterward, that no one did anything at 
the time. Because people knew it was happening. There were reports, 
early on. People saw things, near where it was happening. They knew. 
Later, they said they hadn't known, really; they hadn't understood the 
scale of it. They explained their reasons for doing nothing. They said 
the government was responsible, there was nothing they could do. 
Certainly the government was determined to carry out its plans, and 
maybe people felt overwhelmed and helpless. Maybe this was a place where 
the curves of ignorance, courage, and survival instinct intersected, to 
exclude the possibility of action.

The affected population knew about it, of course, but they had no 
political power, no voice. As they diminished in number, they became 
increasingly less important, which seemed to validate what was 
happening. How could they be important if they were gone?

Even the people who were distanced from it, and not in danger, knew 
about it, but they did nothing either. Maybe they didn't believe what 
they heard. Maybe they felt it did not threaten them, it was too far 
away and too terrible. There are things too terrible to consider. If you 
acknowledged their reality, you would be unable to function. And where 
would we be, if we couldn't function?

The news has actually been coming in for decades -- from the field, from 
eyewitnesses, from relief organizations. We can even see the evidence 
ourselves -- it's happening near us, wherever we are -- but we don't 
believe these accounts, even our own. We don't want to, because they are 
too terrible to consider. We're afraid we won't be able to function. The 
more tremendous a threat is, the harder it is to comprehend. As Raphael 
Lemkin said in 1944, ''. . . reports which slip out from behind the 
frontiers . . . are very often labelled as untrustworthy atrocity 
stories, because they are so gruesome that people simply refuse to 
believe them." What we're hearing is too frightening to believe.

The evidence is still growing, and growing worse, but we're still 
resisting it. When the scientists grew more serious and more impassioned 
about the situation, when they began giving numbers, offering proof, 
asking for action, we decided that we no longer believed in science. We 
distanced ourselves; we hoped we wouldn't be affected. The population at 
risk is not our population, at least not right now, so we needn't do 
anything right now. We might do something later. The government can do 
something if there's a real crisis. We trust the government to take care 
of us, to act responsibly. Believing this is easier than taking drastic 
steps to stop what's happening, particularly since this government is 
very much opposed to stopping what's happening. This government is very 
much intent on pursuing its present course, which results, as a side 
effect -- though the government would not acknowledge this, or even 
comment on the fact that it is taking place -- in the complete 
destruction of the affected population. The affected population is 
one-half of all the species presently living on earth.

Fanaticism is a driving force here, as it often is behind great crimes. 
This is a crime against nature, and this fanaticism is economic -- the 
belief that money and profit should outweigh all other considerations, 
including survival of the species. If we maintain our current rates of 
consumption and environmental strategies, by the end of this century, 
one-half of the species now alive on earth may be extinct. We don't know 
what the specific effects will be, but we know they'll be extreme. We're 
presiding over the greatest extermination of living species since the 
end of the dinosaurs. We're eliminating habitat, reliable climate, fresh 
water, clean air, and nourishment. We're imposing intolerable living 
conditions on thousands of species. The current rate of extinctions is 
thought to be at least 1,000 times higher than the natural level. Right 
now, one-quarter of all mammals are endangered with extinction; 
one-third of all species, animal and vegetable, may be gone by 2050.

It may not be evident to us, as we sit in our cubicles, at our laptops, 
but we need these other species, even those that seem impossibly small 
and remote. We need the Northern lapwing, the Scottish crossbill, the 
king protea (South Africa's national flower), the albacore tuna, Boyd's 
forest dragon (an Australian lizard) -- all of which are in dire 
straits. We're interconnected to everything. The scrawniest weed in 
Patagonia absorbs carbon dioxide, which poisons us, and produces oxygen, 
which we breathe in New York or Houston. Plants provide air, food, and 
medicine; every living being occupies a niche in the global mosaic. 
Birds transport seeds and pollen; they destroy insect pests; they clean 
our harbors and cities and landscapes. All living species perform 
functions valuable to the ecosystem, to the planet, and to the people 
who live on it. But species everywhere are being systematically deprived 
of the possibility of life.

We know what we're doing. We hear the reports, the gruesome stories, but 
we've decided just to wait and see. We think the scientists -- all of 
them -- could be wrong. Maybe we'll just do nothing. Short-term 
self-interest suggests that we do nothing right now. Why should we drive 
slower cars because of the Scottish crossbill?

Cutting fossil fuels and reducing greenhouse gases would save many 
species from vanishing, but we're not committing ourselves to that 
strategy. One hundred eighty-two nations ratified the Convention on 
Biological Diversity; the United States -- largest producer of 
greenhouse gases -- is the only industrial country that refused. We 
didn't want to be subject to any regulation over our destruction of the 
air, the water, the habitat, and the voiceless inhabitants of the earth. 
Others agree. Many developing countries wanted nothing in the treaty 
that might limit their freedom to exploit -- and destroy -- their 
natural resources. So the treaty is neither very powerful or effective, 
since almost everyone involved places short-term economic goals ahead of 
the long-term health of the planet. Similar issues affect the Kyoto 
Agreement. It seems we're all in this together, this destruction of 
species. This is an international effort.

Do we not think we need a healthy planet? Do we think that the animals 
dying all around us means nothing? That this wholesale destruction won't 
affect us? Where are the birds, most common and vivid form of wildlife? 
Intensive agriculture destroys hedges, woods, and wetlands that birds 
need for feeding and nesting; toxic chemicals poison the pests and the 
seed-bearing wild plants they need for food. Logging destroys whole 
regions of habitat; industry pollutes air around the globe. The birds 
can't build nests, they can't find food, they can't feed their young. 
They're dying off. Migrating birds used to move in flocks of thousands. 
Now they straggle past in groups of 20 or 30. Remember the passenger 
pigeons? Once they darkened the entire sky, across the prairies; we 
wiped them out in a few decades. We're watching life being extinguished 
all around us.

The use of fossil fuels, and the resulting climate change, is wreaking 
havoc everywhere. Monster storms, temperature spikes, and erratic, 
destructive weather all take their toll on agriculture, construction, 
transportation, and communication, as well as wildlife. Do we still 
think we don't belong to the affected population? What if the group 
we're destroying turns out to include our own? Don't we remember the 
canary in the coal mine? The canaries are dropping like flies. Why are 
we standing here, holding the cage?

Whom will we believe, if not these scientists -- experts in the field -- 
with their gruesome and alarmist facts? How long will we keep denying 
the evidence? What will we say to our children, and their children, when 
they learn about the beautiful, rich, and varied life on earth that we 
were privileged to know? The fields of rippling grasses, the graceful 
trees, the strange and marvelous wild creatures -- how will we explain 
that we stood by and watched all this vanish? What kind of courage do we 
need, to respond to what's happening?

And this time, there's no one else to blame. It's us.

Roxana Robinson is a novelist, most recently of ''A Perfect Stranger." 

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2006/01/01/watching_as_the_world_vanishes/
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