Climate Crisis a ‘Challenge of Civilization’

“Nature reserves are often islands of biodiversity. If they are cut off from each other, there is little opportunity for wildlife populations to spread. They need connecting corridors . . . Most of us – 83% – live in towns or cities. This has helped foster a sense that nature is what happens elsewhere, in the countryside, so we donʼt recognize wildlife in our own neighbourhood. More species could thrive if we helped; and creating greener, more biodiverse cities would improve our wellbeing too.”

— Caroline Lucas, Green candidate for Brighton Pavilion

We have woken up to the climate emergency — well, most of us, anyway. In an impassioned plea this past week in the Guardian newspaper, Green candidate for Brighton Pavilion and former UK Green Party leader Caroline Lucas argues that the threat to nature and wildlife is equally urgent, and the issues are inextricably intertwined.

That may seem obvious, but on the eve when voters in the UK appear poised to elect a party of right-wing climate deniers and pro-Brexit political agitators — and by substantial majority — that connection can’t be emphasized enough. Climate change and species extinction are linked, as they have been since life has existed on Earth.

A report earlier this year on the state of nature in Britain — and,  by implication, everywhere else in the post-industrial world — paints a bleak picture. Nearly half the plant and animal species assessed showed a decline in numbers over the past decade; fully 15% of the UK’s wild species are threaten with extinction. Birds and animals familiar to today’s parents and grandparents, such as the curlew, water vole, adder and common toad, are now rare sights. The common toad is no longer so common, it would appear.

With less than a week to go, the polls point to a decisive win for Boris Johnson and his like-minded right-leaning partners-in-climate-crime; Johnson himself refused to even turn up at a leaders’ debate focusing on the climate emergency. Those same polls suggest climate change is high on the minds of voters, but it wouldn’t be the first time that hypocrisy — or an unwillingness and/or inability to connect the climate dots — led to an election result that didn’t make sense.

Lucas gave a shoutout to conservation organizations, helped in no small part by committed volunteers, that are doing yeoman work, from the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust to the Marine Conservation Society, but it is not enough. “They have not been able to halt the precipitous decline in our wildlife,” Lucas wrote. (Lucas herself has been an MP in the UK parliament since 2010 and her seat seems safe; in politics, though, especially in these febrile times, nothing is certain.)

The Green Party, much like Green parties across continental Europe and in my own country, Canada, has always laid claim to the most ambitious policies on nature of any of the major parties — no surprise there. The Greens perform best, do the most good and effect the most change, where there is proportional representation; the UK — and Canada’s — first-past-the-post system makes it hard for political parties on the outside to gain electoral traction in real-world terms.

As the climate kids — my label for the youth-driven Fridays for Future movement, and meant in a respectful and hopeful way, with boundless admiration — have shown, the old way of doing politics is no longer good enough, not when a 16-year-year-old Greta Thunberg or 14-year-old Alexandria Villasenõr wake up in the morning and realize that they and their generation’s future is finished.

Lucas commissioned a report earlier this year from half a dozen leading conservationists and environment writers in the UK to produce a blueprint for how best to ensure the survival of what little nature is left in Britain, titled A New Deal for Nature.

The resulting proposals covered the usual basics, though even the usual basics seem beyond the capability of the Boris Johnsons and Jair Bolsonaros of the world to understand: namely, a holistic, connected approach that links farming, biosecurity, food security, the role of wetlands, fishing, the state of the marine environment, fossil fuels v. renewables, you name it.

A refreshing — refreshing both figuratively and literally — add-on this time is a renewed focus on education to do with the outdoors, by giving children access to nature, putting them more in touch with the natural world, to give them a sense of meaning, to be able to feel nature firsthand and understand the need to protect it. (Lucas’ specific recommendations include a GCSE in natural history and setting aside an hour of outdoor learning every day in primary school, even in inner-city neighbourhoods where outdoor learning might seem like a bit of a stretch; with determination and a little creative thinking, such as urban gardens and observation of urban wildlife, anything’s possible.) 

“We need to be pushed out of our comfort zone of weekend walks in the country, occasional visits to national parks, or curling up on the sofa in front of Countryfile — which give the impression that all is well,” Lucas wrote. “It isn’t.”

Lucas has said throughout the UK election campaign that this election is the climate election, and that nature and the climate crisis are tightly linked.

“We need to have a healthy natural world if we are to have any chance of tackling the climate emergency.”

That ship may have sailed, but still. As one commenter noted, if we don’t act soon, sound recordings and David Attenborough documentaries will be all we have left.

©Jeon Sang-O - Pixabay

---

On Narwhals, Tusks and the “Unicorn of the Sea”s Future Survival

“The beauty of narwhals is that they were always these really mysterious creatures. For centuries no one really knew what they were. When they found these tusks they assumed that they were unicorns, and they became these incredible sought-after items.”

— Guy Walters, historian

Using a narwhal tusk as a weapon to keep the public peace, as one passerby did last week during the most recent terror attack in London, may not make the official “8 Fun Facts about Narwhals” list, but it did have the unintended side effect of placing  this little-known Arctic whale in the public spotlight, if only for a moment.

With the rapid ice melt and the effects of climate change increasingly evident to all but the most obstinate climate denier, the more one knows about this strange and yet fascinating creature in one of planet Earth’s most fragile ecosystems, the better its prospects of survival. The narwhal has not gone the way of the vaquita porpoise just yet, but like so many Arctic mammals, it faces an uncertain future.

Narwhals are closely related to the beluga whale; its tusk is not so much a tusk as a tooth, the front left tooth that, through adaptation and natural selection, protrudes from the mammal’s upper lip, while the remaining tooth is small and usually remains in the mouth. A narwhal’s tusk grows throughout its life, and can grow as long as 3 metres (10 feet). Weirdly, as the tusk grows, it spirals to the left. Whether that suggests a narwhal is left-handed or right-handed is anyone’s guess, though there are in all probability research studies that have ascertained exactly that.

If tested, the tusk can bend 30 cms (1 foot) without breaking. It’s not at all like a human tooth: it has a tough core and a soft outer layer. Narwhal tusks are tough — they can cut through inches of wood. They’re sensitive, too: Scientists have determined that narwhal tusks can have up to 10 million nerve endings. 

Unlike belugas, narwhals do not fare well in captivity, which could eventually affect their future chances of survival as a species; for many endangered species in the looming Sixth Mass Extinction, captivity is increasingly the only way a viable gene pool can be maintained. (Even captivity offers no surety, as the extinction of the Tasmanian tiger, or thylacine, in 1933 proves, not to mention the northern white rhino, more recently.)

Narwhals live in the Arctic waters off Greenland, Russia and Canada — the very region most at risk from climate change. Every spring they migrate from coastal bays into the deep ocean.

Their summer diet consists of Arctic cod and Greenland halibut, but fish stocks are increasingly vulnerable, given the dramatic changes in sea currents and water temperatures caused by climate change, particularly in the world’s polar regions.

Narwhals make some of the deepest winter dives recorded by a marine mammal; they’ve been known to dive as deep as 800 metres (2,600 feet) in midwinter, up to 12 or more times a day, in search of food. Some narwhals have been known to dive as deep as 1,500 metres (4,900 feet), though not as often as the more routine dives.

According to one indigenous legend, the Inuit believe the narwhal’s tusk was created after a hunter harpooned a large whale and was dragged out to sea by the harpoon’s rope tied around her waist. Her hair, which she wore in a twisted knot, was transformed into a hardened tusk, and the legend of the narwhal was born.

The International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) lists the narwhal officially as “near threatened,” which means that, while not threatened exactly, means the species may be threatened in the near future. “Near threatened” includes species that are officially defined as being “vulnerable.”

During last weekend’s terror attack in London near London Bridge, a Polish chef, identified only as Lukasz, witnessed the stabbings, in which two people died. He pulled a 1.5 metre (5 foot) narwhal tusk from the wall in nearby Fishmongers’ Hall, and helped subdue the attacker, later identified as Usman Khan, 28, who had been attending an Islamic  deradicalisation program at the time at Fishmongers Hall, sponsored by Cambridge University. The narwhal tusk became a prominent feature in news stories about the incident, because it was such an unusual detail.

Crazily, the publicity touched off a social-media craze about narwhals in general, and narwhal tusks in particular.

“The narwhal tusk has a wondrous and mystical history,” the Washington Post reported, only partly tongue-in-cheek. “A new chapter was added on London Bridge.”

“There’s something very British about fighting a terrorist with something as surreal as a narwhal tusk,” English historian Guy Walters told the Post. “We don’t carry weapons in this country. But we do have narwhal tusks around.”

Narwhals themselves are under threat, though, as climate change is causing the ice cover they rely on for shelter and food to dissipate.

Losing them would be a crying shame.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2019/11/30/narwhal-tusk-has-wondrous-mystical-history-new-chapter-was-added-london-bridge/

---

Wildebeest Migrations in Trouble

“Our planet is changing. It’s indisputable that migrations are heavily informed by climate and by wildlife corridors and the landscapes that are available. Every migration that we filmed and many we didn’t film is informed and challenged by the air-space, land-space and water corridors that are available to these animals.”

— David Hamlin, Great Migrations series producer

The annual wildebeest migration in Tanzania and Kenya’s Serengeti ecosystem is under threat.

And for once the rapidly emerging climate emergency isn’t entirely to blame, though it doesn’t help.

Instead its human population growth, habitat destruction and the constant encroachment of ever-expanding human  settlements, in the form of fences, farms, roads, railway lines, bridges and highways that are the primary cause.

Conservationists have made the case for wildlife corridors and, in some cases, highway overpasses, such as those that have provided a Bandaid solution in populated, urban areas in Southern California.

A recent study analyzed the movement of East Africa’s migratory wildebeest in five separate ecosystems, incorporating data from aerial surveys collected over some 60 years (1957-2015) in Kenya and Tanzania. The study found that four of the five migrations have virtually collapsed.

The world famous Serengeti-Mara ecosystem covers some 40,000 km² (15,400 square miles) and straddles Kenya and Tanzania. Researchers determined that since 1977, the total number of wildebeest in the area has stayed at roughly 1.3 million animals — but — the number of wildebeest making the annual crossing from Serengeti National Park in Tanzania to the Maasai Mara National Reserve in Kenya has fallen some 73% during that time — 157,000 wildebeest in 2016, down from 588,000 in 1979.

Over that same period of time, the number of migrating wildebeest crashed 95% in Athi-Kaputiei, near the Kenyan capital Nairobi, from 27,000 wildebeest in 1977 to fewer than 3,000 in 2014. 

Migrating wildebeest are down some 85% in the Greater Amboseli region, an area of roughly 7,700 km² (3,000 square miles) that, like the Serengeti-Mara ecosystem, straddles Kenya and Tanzania.

Migratory populations have fallen some 81% in Mara-Loita, in south-western Kenya, and 72% in the self-contained Tarangire-Manyara ecosystem, in northern Tanzania.

The threats vary from area to area — evidence, perhaps, that climate change is not entirely to blame.

Poorly planned agricultural expansion, poaching, illegal hunting for bushmeat, competition with livestock for grazing grounds, and unpredictable, ever-changing water points all come into play. Droughts are more prevalent, and unpredictable — that part is down to climate change.

The way land is used is changing, too, from pastoral herding to subsistence farming, with former grazing areas being turned into farmland.

This increases the likelihood of human-wildlife

conflict. Elephants for example raid villagers’ crops, instead of staying close the acacia tree cover and plains of protected areas like Amboseli National Park, and hungry lions roam outside park boundaries for the easier — and more plentiful — pickings of domestic livestock.

Kenya’s conservation policy focuses on protected areas, which is only natural, especially for a country that relies so heavily on tourism. The problem is that protected areas encompass just 8% of the country’s land surface, and contain 35% of the country’s total wildlife.

The other 65% ekes out a precarious existence on privately owned land, which wildebeest migrations cross at some point in their route.

Unlike Southern Africa, where privately owned game reserves outnumber national parks by a wide margin, there are relatively few privately owned game reserves in East Africa, and little incentive for private landowners to look after wildlife. Tourists tend to stick to a handful of well-known, heavily promoted areas, so other land uses — agriculture and livestock — have more appeal to the landowner trying to make a living off the land.

The study suggested a number of potential solutions to what will, if left unchecked, become an existential problem. “Saving the migrations means more regulation, securing more land, partnering with local communities and, ultimately, reducing human population growth,” the study authors noted,“regulation of livestock numbers, fences, settlements, farms and roads. 

“Land must be restored, settlements cleared and cultivation on migration routes stopped, and key rivers (like the Mara River, which could be dammed) must be protected.

“Major roads that cut across migratory routes should include underpasses and/or overpasses for migrating wildlife. And robust law enforcement is needed to reduce the illegal hunting of animals for bushmeat.”

The consequences of not acting will  be dire, Joseph Ogutu, University of Hohenheim statistician and one of the study’s lead authors, concluded. “Migrations of zebra and Thomsonʼs gazelle in Kenyaʼs Rift Valley and elephants in Kenya have already been lost. Wildebeest could go the same way.”

As mzee Jomo Kenyatta, founding president of the Republic of Kenya once said, “The natural resources of this country, its wildlife which offers such an attraction to visitors from over the world, the beautiful places in which these animals live, the mighty forests which guard the water catchment areas so vital to the survival of man and beast, are a priceless heritage for the future.”

Losing that would be a shame indeed.

©Gekko Digital Media-Pixabay

Coldplay’s ‘Everyday Life’: A Vow To Go Carbon Neutral.

“Our next tour will be the best possible version of a tour like that environmentally. We would be disappointed it it’s not carbon neutral. We’ve done a lot of tours at this point. How do we turn it around so it’s not so much taking as giving?”

— Chris Martin, Coldplay

Preach about sustainability and the environment to the unwashed masses, then stage a massive rock concert in the middle of San Francisco, drawing enough electricity — generated by hydroelectric dams and fossil fuels, no doubt — to power a small moon: That was the unflattering picture the cartoon South Park painted of Bono and U2 in a typically acerbic episode a number of years back. San Francisco, South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone noted, is shrouded in an impenetrable cloud of “smug” that hangs over the city year-round and permeates every waking moment of every liberal being in that famously liberal city.

That’s not the reason Coldplay frontman Chris Martin recently confirmed that Coldplay will not tour in the coming year until they find a way to go completely green. Coldplay have the means and wherewithal to pass on a lucrative world tour — they have sold more 90 million records worldwide, after all — even though they have just released a new album, Everyday Life. Normally bands go on tour to publicize a new album. Record companies reap the lion’s share of profits from album sales; touring is often the only way a band can make money for themselves and themselves alone, despite the expense involved.  

Coldplay, who have supported the NGO Oxfam for a number of years now, have vowed not to tour this time until they’ve figured out a way to make touring as environmentally friendly as possible — “actively beneficial” to the environment, as frontman Martin told BBC News late last week. In other words: carbon neutral.

One can imagine the South Park creators may be conceiving a sequel to their U2 episode as you read — they may call it, in an homage to Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit, “The Desolation of Smug” — but there’s every indication Coldplay mean what they say.

The band Funkasy.com dubbed “the biggest pop band of this era” have famously staged the biggest ight shows this side of Pink Floyd,

but that time has passed, Martin told BBC, and not just because of Greta Thunberg.  Concert tours are often mounted on a scale that requires dozens of trucks, just to transport equipment.

Coldplay have already managed to grab headlines with an impromptu, unannounced unplugged concert in Amman, Jordan just days ago; a 28-minute video of the concert, filmed against a backdrop of one of the oldest, longest established cities in the history of humankind, has gone viral on YouTube, with 1.6 million view at last count. 

They topped that off Monday with a one-off concert at London’s Natural History Museum, with all proceeds going to the environmental law charity ClientEarth.

Music critics are dismissive toward Coldplay as a band — unfairly, to my mind — but there’s no question Martin and his bandmates Jon Champion, and touch the popular nerve.

Just witness this comment by musician and self-confessed Coldplay fan Mo Sharkawi on YouTube:

This is not just an album release — this is a mark in the history of music.

First live full album launch.

Millions around (the world) were there.

State of the art live videography.

State of the art life sound quality.

First album launch for a major band from one of the most misrepresented regions on the planet — the beautiful, historic Middle East. Super grateful to witness this incredible moment.

Coldplay have talked the talk on climate justice and sustainability throughout the band’s 23-year history. They’ve talked the talk, but now they appear determined to put words into action.

Climate Emergency: What’s In a Word? Plenty, Judging by Oxford Dictionaries

“When we were looking through the evidence, it was clear that issues relating to the climate were running through all the different lexical items we were working with. It reflects a real preoccupation of the English-speaking world in 2019.”

— Katherine Connor Martin, Oxford Dictionaries

The word(s) “climate change” has morphed into “climate crisis” and again into “climate emergency” in a remarkably short period of time, so much so that Oxford Dictionaries has named ‘climate emergency’ Word of the Year for 2019.

‘Climate emergency’ earned pride-of-place, if that’s the right way to describe it, from an all-environmental shortlist that also included ‘eco-anxiety,’ ‘flight shame’ — aka flyjskam in Sweden, where the movement started in response to the growing feeling of shame felt in that country, birthplace of the environmental activist Great Thunberg, by frequent flyers — ‘climate action’ and this site’s bugaboo word, ‘climate denial.’

Climate emergency joins “youthquake,” “toxic,” “post-truth,” and “fake news” in the Oxford lexicon of recent words or expressions “shown through usage evidence to reflect the ethos, mood, or preoccupations [note use of the Oxford comma] of the passing year, and have a lasting potential as a term of cultural significance.” An editor at Oxford Dictionaries told the New York Times that the selection panel’s unusual decision to focus on climate-related expressions reflects the demonstrable escalation in the public conversation during the past year about fast-accelerating climate events.

The Oxford Corpus, a database that includes hundreds of millions of words written in English — which on the face of it would appear to disqualify flygskam — showed that use of the term climate emergency has increased more than a hundredfold since 2018, with a month still to go in the present calendar year. Climate emergency is now the most common compound using the word ‘emergency,’ appearing more than three times as often as the next most-used, health emergency.

In part, this was because a handful of respected, high-profile mainstream news organizations like The Guardian have decided to prioritize use of the term climate emergency to describe what was until recently called climate change or climate crisis. The Guardian made a conscious decision to use the term climate emergency to better convey urgency of the situation.

Oxford Word of the Year choices are often

politically inflected, Martin told the Times, but that does not mean the selection panel made a deliberately political calculation when examining the cultural impact of words.

“When we were looking through the evidence, it was clear that issues relating to the climate were running through all the lexical items we were working with,” Martin said. “It reflects a real pre-occupation of the English-speaking world in 2019.”

The Chinese-speaking world, too, one would like to think, though the jury is still out on that one.

The selection panel’s decision to narrow the final choice down to an all-environmental shortlist was not a deliberate decision to focus people’s attention on the rapidly changing climate but rather a strict — if admittedly subjective — reading of the public conversation, based on “lexicographical evidence.”

If nothing else, Martin might have added, Oxford Dictionaries’ choice simply reflects the greater immediacy in the way we talk about the climate.

In just 12 months — or 11, if you want to be calendar-specific about it —  the term climate emergency, defined as “a situation in which urgent action is required to reduce or halt climate change and avoid potentially irreversible environmental damage resulting from it,” soared from relative obscurity to, in the panel’s words, “one of the most prominent — and prominently debated — terms of 2019.”

Humour can be an effective way to raise climate awareness, some argue — at least among those who haven’t been directly affected by climate events themselves — as the German climate site Die Klimashutz-Baustelle noted in a compendium of climate-related quips and witticisms. To wit:

Two planets meet. The first one asks: ‘How are you?’

‘Not so well,’ the second answers. ‘I’ve got the Homo Sapiens.’

‘Don’t worry,’ the other replies, ‘I had the same. That won’t last long.’

Touché.

©Niklas Pntk-Pixabay

---