Call it critical mass, or a tipping point, but suddenly, after years of very little news on issues that are of greatest concern to me (including those that I think should be of greatest concern to all humanity), the past few weeks I have been flooded by numerous sources and news services with articles, technical papers, opinion pieces, blogs, letters to editors, and so on about climate change. And, these have coincided with major reports on a massive decline in numbers of birds in North America, something I have talked about literally for decades, and in marine life, which causes me to flash back to 1967, when I read The Frail Ocean, by Wesley Marx, which, according to its jacket blurb, “…sounds an urgent warning…”” for the protection of our oceans. Urgent? That was more than half a century ago, and the alarms are still being sounded, to little avail.
And, all of this has coincided with massive demonstrations, often led by young people, and the entirely deserved focus on the indomitable Swedish teenager, Greta Thunberg, with much mainstream news and commentary focused on her brief but remarkable speech to the United Nations.
No less informative, if depressing, are the counter arguments by climate change deniers. Since the past predictions by the experts sounding the warnings are unfolding all around us (and remember, in Canada, where I live, climate change has been deemed twice as evident as in other countries) one wonders what will get through to them.
From an animal welfare perspective, the threats of climate change are twofold. Obviously wildlife and domestic animals are, like people, directly hurt and killed by droughts, wildfires, massive storms, floods, and so on, all linked under the rubric of climate change. But, by far my greater concern is about a future people of my senior generation will, at most, live only to see the beginning of, underway now, when desperation drives increasing numbers of people to displace what remains of wild, and, ultimately, all other, animals directly. Most truly starving people facing death will eat, not pet, the cat.
If I could somehow compel every intelligent person to read but one document, it would be this one. William Rees is a “cyberfriend” with whom I’ve corresponded for years, and he draws upon great wisdom, knowledge, and, most importantly, analytical skill, to get to the heart of issues. Put as simply as I can, the crises is greater than even Thunberg, bless her, seems to realize, with climate change a symptom of, well, us.
The sudden shift of popular media, pundits, commentators, and the like to stop ignoring it is welcome, but I fear it is too little and far, far too late, and still not directed at where the real problem most fundamentally arises. And yet, to despair, to give up, to do nothing, would be idiotic. Read Rees’s commentary, if you read nothing else.
Keep Wildlife in the Wild,
Barry
