Month: June 2007

Way back in the 70s I “predicted” an environmental crisis/catastrophe. Way back when I was still a teen, it was obvious to me.

Over the years, then the decades, I watched the natural world around me change…for the worst. I watched forests leveled, wetlands decimated, natural meadows destroyed, waters polluted. I watched man encroach on nature more and more, pouring cement and asphalt, building wider, spreading out, not higher and consolidating. I watched wilderness and rural land become industrial parks and subdivisions, wild mountains become wastelands of erosion, everything devastated wherever man touched…encroached.

So, now — now that it is too late — suddenly the environment is “big news.”

I’m sorry. Didn’t you notice it before? Didn’t you see, hear, feel, taste and smell it in the air? And not just the complete saturation of herbicides, rodenticides, pesticides, fungicides…that permeate our water, our food, our air — every aspect of our lives. A change has happened. To the biosphere. Life as we know it is on the brink. A new world, a new biosphere, hostile to the present reign of the oxygen revolution dynasty, is about ready to emerge. It has to. Life is endemic to this world. Life will continue. But it won’t be life as we know it. It won’t be life that is comfortable for us…even if some of us adapt and survive.

We’ve got less than ten years. That’s my opinion. Less than ten years. After that, life as we know it on this planet is gone forever. No more cushy lifestyles, no more pleasant afternoon strolls along the beach. You’ll be fighting to survive…if you live through the wars that are bound to rage as people…nations…reach out in desperation to secure the resources they need for them to survive and damn anyone who gets in their way.

A bit extreme in my viewpoint? Maybe. But, all around me, the signs point it out. Trees are dying…for no known cause. When the sun shines, suddenly the temperature spikes from normal to a hundred and more degrees, while when it’s cloudy, we’re at normal temperatures. Winter: a fifty degree difference between sunny daylight and nighttime temperatures. (Now, that’s extreme.) Insects are dying. Birds are dying. Fish are dying. All of them for no known cause. This isn’t disease. This is environment — hostile environment. It’s reached its tipping points long ago, yet the dimwitted, from neocon to SUV Sally, just laugh and deny.

Okay. Yes. I may be wrong. But, you know what? I’m not a proponent of “end of the world” anything. I just have watched all these years. I see it in the animals, the plants, the insects. I see it in the soil and the air. I feel it in the intensity of the sun. And I’m not alone. Others see and feel it, too. We’re just quiet about it now. Because we know that it’s already too late.

I laugh when I hear the scientific community quoted to the media. In 2050..in 2100. How about, “You’ll be lucky (or maybe very unlucky) if you’re still alive in 2015.”

You know, even my “environmentally conscious” friends scoff at my saying this.  They don’t believe it.  They think I’m nuts.  Well, maybe I am.  Maybe I’m wrong.  You know what?  I sincerely hope so.  Truly.  I love this world — not man’s world — but the world of nature  — the sky, the forests, the mountain lakes…the earthworms I rescue from the pavement, the birds that fly the skies…the birds that used to sing the morning and the evening (They haven’t come this year, you know. Neither have the humming birds.  Nor the butterfies.  And the bumble bees, which were here this spring, have vanished too.)

…Yes, I hope I’m wrong.  Let’s hope I’m not dead right.

Received from NRDC today. DO SOMETHING, PEOPLE. 

Dear Dawn,

While the Bush Administration refuses to clamp down on America’s
biggest global warming polluters . . .

. . . there are alarming new reports of POLAR BEARS STARVING in the Arctic and being driven to extremes of survival behavior because of the rapidly changing climate.

I’ll share more about it below. But first, I need you to take
IMMEDIATE ACTION because new global warming bills are being
debated in Congress — and they could be a critical factor in
saving the polar bear from extinction.

In advance of key votes on a global warming bill, we must build
the ranks of concerned Americans who are committed to saving
polar bears by making their voices heard on Capitol Hill.

Go to the Tell-A-Friend page of our Polar Bear SOS website and
send out as many SOS messages as you can to your friends and
family: http://www.polarbearsos.org/tellfriends

That way, when a tough global warming bill is nearing a vote, we
can alert millions of online activists to support it — and win
its passage into law.

Right now, the need for such legislation is distressingly
apparent. The Arctic spring in Greenland is coming two weeks
earlier than it did in 1996 — a rate of climate change that far
outstrips warming trends seen elsewhere in the Northern
Hemisphere.

As the sea ice melts earlier and earlier each year, there have
been more and more reports of starving polar bears being forced
to resort to heart-breaking acts of desperation.

Only last summer, an adult bear — his hip bones visible through
his hide — killed a polar bear cub for food in the first-ever
eyewitness account of polar bear infanticide.

The scientists who observed this never-before-seen behavior
linked the killing of the cub — and other recent reports of
polar bear cannibalism in Alaska’s Beaufort Sea — to
“nutritional stress related to a longer ice-free period.”

They also predicted that as the ice melt continues to
accelerate, tragic incidents like these will become more
frequent. This is the terrible and inexcusable toll that global
warming is taking on the polar bear.

And our very best hope to prevent an even bigger tragedy is to
start cutting our global warming pollution now.

So while you have this message in front of you — please rally
your friends in support of imperiled polar bears by sending SOS
messages to as many people as you can at http://www.polarbearsos.org/tellfriends

Thanks to you, we prevailed in court and forced the Bush
Administration to propose giving the polar bear federal
protection. Then, we deluged the administration with hundreds of
thousands of Citizen Comments in support of that protection.

Now, with your help, we’ll be poised and ready to unleash the
power of one million online activists in support of global
warming legislation that could be a lifeline for the polar bear.
I hope you’ll do your part today. Thank you.

Sincerely,

Frances Beinecke
President
Natural Resources Defense Council

P.S. Want to do more to rush to the aid of the polar bear? Go to
our http://www.polarbearsos.org website now.