Requiem for a Planet

Yesterday, it occurred to me to wonder what had happened to the wolves this past winter on Isle Royale, a place I truly love because it is still so wild.  I guess I’d been hoping that Superior’s freezing over would give the wolves the ice bridge they’ve been denied since the mid-80s to either get the hell off the island or allow new wolves to enter into the gene pool.  Unfortunately, not only has the population dwindled to only nine wolves but one animal that did venture onto the mainland was shot by a hunter.

And I was like . . . what?

Think about it.  You survive that long; you leave an island and an evolutionary dead-end . . . you’re wearing a goddamned collar . . . and you get shot.  Hell, you might have been shot because you were wearing a collar.  Or just because, of course, it’s a human’s right to shoot you dead on sight and on general principle.  (It’s shades of Yellowstone, actually; read this and weep.)

So that was upsetting enough.  The rest of the article was no better, but what bothered me most was the National Park Service’s assumption that somehow or other what’s happening on that island is “natural,” part of some cycle in which we humans shouldn’t interfere.

This is nonsense.  It’s hubris.  It’s a convenient go-to because this presupposes that humans have had no part in the wolves’ predicament.  (Hello; remember global warming, anyone?)  Rolf Peterson, who’s been studying that ecosystem for years, is right on the money when he asserts that we’ve been cutting the fingers from Mother Nature for quite some time.  Of course, this is our fault, our shared responsibility, and I won’t trot out all the science and fact we now know.

Normally, I’d probably write something half-way patriotic for Memorial Day, largely because those who die during war deserve our respect just as those who have or continue to serve.  Then, too, there are the veterans who have survived one war only to fight another at home or with themselves.  Not every person in uniform is a hero–and I cringe every time I see that word so easily bandied about because true heroism is rare and perhaps we’d all have a much better appreciation for that if service was mandatory–but they do merit a measure of our consideration because they voluntarily do a job we’d rather not.

But I’m just too . . . upset today, I guess.  I’m not suggesting we shouldn’t memorialize those who die in war.  What I see, though, is there is a lot of death on our planet and no one memorializes this or respects these dead: from animals going extinct at a record pace to deaths from wars we’re not even really fighting because we simply refuse to recognize or deal with the danger or willfully ignore and outright deny, but which we should rather than simply accepting there’s nothing we can do.  Invoking Mother Nature is as much of a cop-out as suggesting that something is God’s will.  None of us are passive bystanders here.

Death–extinction–is a point of no return.  There is no coming back; there will be no do-overs.  When a species is gone, it’s gone.  When Antarctica’s western ice shelf collapses as we now know it will, you will not see its like again in your lifetime, and it will not come back for your children or theirs or theirs . . . and perhaps never.  When an aquifer is polluted or destroyed; when a lake tries up; when the Colorado River is reduced to a trickle . . . these are deaths, too.  Yes, there is Earth Day and Water Day . . . all these days that remind me of people who wear colored ribbons as fashion accessories and think that’s enough . . . but if things keep on the way they’re going–the way we humans are forcing–I wonder if we will recognize this planet in fifty years or a hundred.

Someone recently asked what I thought about the fact that very few YA books these days feature the thrill of space exploration and the discovery of new planets, alien civilizations, and all the fresh-eyed optimism from the Golden Age of SF.  (Sure, there are sf books out there, but you know what I’m saying.)  We’ve become very Earth-centric; so many books deal with threats to us, the annihilation of humanity.

Well, I’ve always said that a culture produces the art it deserves and needs.  So take a look around and think about the fire season that starts earlier and earlier now; that huge swaths of the earth are drying up.  Consider for a second that the Weather Channel now focuses so much of its programming on a planet that’s out of control: Forecasting the End; Strangest Weather on Earth; Full Force Nature; Deadliest Space Weather. The planet’s turned dangerous, into a force to fight; we try to reassure ourselves that we will survive so long as we adapt to things like rising sea levels without thinking, for a second, about what the release of all that fresh water into the sea will really mean; how this will change weather even more; how this may very well bring about new waves of extinction.

A week ago, I was biking along past a marshy area . . . and heard a spring song I hadn’t for years: a chorus of spring peepers.  It was so wonderful and unexpected that I hung out for quite some time, just listening; amphibians are an ecosystem’s canaries, and stupendously sensitive to environmental change.  Hearing them again was great and reminded me of the time when I always heard them in spring.

And it was then I realized that not only hadn’t I really remarked on their absence, I also hadn’t wondered either.  Their silence passed me by.

That really bothered me.  I don’t want to get used to and adapt to absence; it’s not right that the clamor of my own life should drown out the songs of others.

So if we were to memorialize the Earth–if we allowed ourselves to imagine its death and compose its requiem–what would that sound like?  Would it be the ceaseless jabber of people, teeming over this Earth in their billions, drowning out everything else?  Or a world where there is less and less diversity; where there are no lions in the wild, no tigers, no . . . well, pick an endangered species, any species . . . and only cows and pigs and dogs and cats and sparrows?  (And did you know that there are probably more exotic cats and other endangered animals in captivity and private homes than in the wild?  Think about it.)

Or would that requiem be as Rachel Carson feared, and utterly, absolutely silent?

I don’t know.  I don’t want to find out.  I’m so afraid that I just might.