When I consider the vast network of living creatures on earth, it’s clear that “saving the planet” is the wrong goal. Unless earth gets obliterated by an asteroid or experiences some similar catastrophic event, the planet could go on for several billion years. But without the biosphere that makes it possible for us to eat and breathe, humanity could not survive.
The question we should be asking is what caused the precipitous increase in species loss and what can we do to reverse it. To me, it all started when we disconnected from our wild origins. While agricultural and technological revolutions have enabled massive population growth and innovation, they have also instilled the belief that we can control nature, that our planet is an infinite resource to be mined for our advancement, comfort and entertainment.
Today 56 percent of the world population lives in urban areas, a percentage expected to grow to nearly 70 percent by 2050. That means that more than half of us are cut off from reminders that we are still part of nature and utterly dependent on its health. It’s only when something truly devastating happens, like the recent flooding in Dubai, that we remember that even the greatest human advancements can be brought to a standstill by nature’s power.
I am not calling for us to leave all modern comforts behind, just pleading for us to get to know nature better, rather than trying to “save” her.
In the last decade I have taken more than 4,000 dives in the Sea Forest. My encounters with mollusks, sharks and jellyfish there have convinced me that there is much we will lose if we do not value the tremendous abundance of life on earth.
We do this first by protecting biodiversity hot spots and by restoring degraded ecosystems; the enormous regenerative power I see every day in nature is what gives me hope for the future. It also means learning from and supporting Indigenous people who protect 80 percent of the world’s biodiversity and who have, over millenniums, developed many innovative ways to live with the land and sea. One promising example of partnership is a recent grant from the National Science Foundation to support collaboration between Indigenous ecological knowledge and Western science.
Activities that cause long-term destruction of the sea and earth, such as strip mining, deep sea mining and industrial trawling, need to be halted immediately. Farming methods have to change, with greater emphasis on soil recovery and regeneration. We must continue to find alternatives to fossil fuels and push for a worldwide reduction in the production and use of plastics.
But each of us has a role to play, too; it starts with challenging ourselves to reconnect with the wild. So much of our modern world seems designed to tame us: to dull our minds, to separate us from the natural world, to convince us that what will help us survive is more consumption.
Like my octopus friends, we fill our houses with shiny new things. But our piles of stuff are much bigger, and the cost of acquisition much greater.
We can break free of this tame conditioning. When we dedicate even just a few minutes per day to observing wild creatures on their own terms, in their own homes — regardless of where we live — we connect with the concept of biodiversity not simply on an intellectual level but also on an emotional level. We see the world differently — and ourselves, too.
How strange it is that one silly primate can see itself as separate from all those it shares this world with. What might happen if we remembered we are a part of this wild world — and let that understanding and humility guide every choice we make?
Abraham Lincoln’s mother, Nancy Hanks, died in 1818 of “milk fever”, the cause of which was not known by white “settlers” until 1818, when Anna Pierce learned it from a Shawnee Indian woman, and then verified it by experimenting. Even then, since Pierce was a mere female, her claim was not credited until 1906, when tremetol was isolated from the white snakeroot plant and proved to cause the illness in cows, deer, goats, and horses, and was transmitted to humans by eating the meat or milk of infected animals.
As we have “conquered” the natural world we have lost or destroyed much of the knowledge and collective wisdom about living with nature that was accumulated over thousands of years by the actual human settlers, like the Shawnee woman who told Anna PIerce about milk sickness. Any now to save ourselves we have to actually put down our cell phones and pay attention, although since we never noticed what is now gone, we are trying to catch ghosts. Hey, I have an idea for a reality show…
I mispoke in my original comment. Anna Pierce’s claim about white snakeroot was made in 1828, not 1818. I apologize for the typo
Buck Horton