Wilderness and Wildlife Conservation

She’s Alive… Beautiful… Finite… Hurting… Worth Dying for. Video on YouTube literally shrieks about our own personal responsibility in the destruction of our natural environment. Beautiful footage, agonizing conclusions.

{ 1 comment }

By Frosty Wooldridge

A book review: Man Swarm and the Killing of Wildlife by Dave Foreman

Part 1 of 5: Humans devastating habitat and poisoning it

The Bible said, “Be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth and subdue it and take dominion over all living things on land and in the seas.”At the time of the Bible’s inception by a desert tribe known as the Jews in the Middle East, less than 100 million human beings walked the planet, give or take a few.  Humans used nets and spears to subdue fish, fowl and beasts. In 2012, as the human race thunders toward adding another three billion of its already prolific numbers to reach 10 billion by mid century—38 scant years from now, thousands of scientists have warned of our impending predicament. Nonetheless, we human earthlings plunder oceans, seas, air, land and water.

At the same time, starvation stalks humans in Somalia, Bangladesh, Mexico, Congo, Sudan and India.  Over 18 million human beings die of starvation annually around the globe. (Source:  World Health Organization, UN Population stats)

© Frosty Wooldridge

But what about the other “earthlings” numbering perhaps 30 million separate species around the globe?   What about their plight as humans maraud this planet by mercilessly killing habitat and poisoning the oceans? How many species suffer extinction daily around the planet?  Dr. Norman Myers, Oxford University, United Kingdom, substantiates 80 to 100 species end their time on this planet every day via human habitat encroachment.  Humans kill species at such a prolific rate that it is deemed the “Sixth Extinction Session.”  The first five sessions arrived as ice ages, meteors and other deadly events.

Harvard University biologist Dr. E.O. Wilson said, “The worst thing that will probably happen—in fact is already well underway—is not energy depletion, economic collapse, conventional war, or the expansion of totalitarian governments. As terrible as these catastrophes would be for us, they can be repaired in a few generations. The one process now going on that will take millions of years to correct is loss of genetic and species diversity by the destruction of natural habitats. This is the folly our descendants are least likely to forgive us.”

Long time conservationist Dave Foreman wrote a penetrating and compelling book: Man Swarm and the Killing of Wildlife. This book cannot be dismissed.  It cannot be ignored.  It cannot be put down once started.  Foreman shows the unraveling the wild world at the hands of humanity.  For anyone that thinks unlimited human growth can continue, this book knocks out all the myths perpetrated by economists, religious leaders and pro-growth advocates.

Foreman dedicates his book to his friend Hugh Iltis, “Whose stout heart and sharp mind has always seen that the population explosion leads to the death of wild things and the loss of wilderness.”

In my own media battles on the population/immigration/environmental front, I have had to contend with big time radio talk show hosts who support unlimited growth, i.e., Ernest Hancock of www.freedomphoenix.com .  Top television news personalities such as Diane Sawyer and Charlie Rose will not touch the subject, but report about the consequences—never making the connection.  Newspapers like the Denver Post’s Vince Carroll remain convinced that unlimited growth is beneficial. The Los Angeles Times encourages as much growth as possible even as California chokes on its toxic air, gridlocked highways and crumbling infrastructure. It adds 1,700 people daily and 400 vehicles.  Even small town newspaper editors like Jonathan Thompson of the High Country News advocate for unlimited growth. Bob Shieffer of “Face the Nation” and David Gregory of “Meet the Press” scamper away from the topic like gazelles. Every National Public Radio host avoids the topic at all costs. Only last year did Thomas Friedman finally write, “The Earth is full.”

Friedman’s commentary didn’t make a dent.  I’ve written 100 similar commentaries.  The USA adds 8,100 people net gain daily while the planet hosts another 240,000 new babies 24/7. Result: an added 78 million humans annually on an already environmentally devastated planet in 2012.

From my own work, I unequivocally state that human overpopulation in America and around the world is the most evaded, avoided, ignored and suppressed issue of our time.  It’s also the most dangerous predicament of our time, but don’t let that stop us from increasing our numbers at breakneck speed.

“We must alert and organize the world’s people to pressure world leaders to take specific steps to solve the two root causes of our environmental crises - exploding population growth and wasteful consumption of irreplaceable resources. Over-consumption and overpopulation underlie every environmental problem we face today.”   Jacques-Yves Cousteau, Oceanographer While you may hear a lot about “carrying capacity”, you never hear about carrying capacity for all the other creatures on our planet.  It’s like they don’t exist or are unimportant.  Foreman loves wild things and I love them, too.

Foreman writes, “We have come on like a swarm of locusts: a wide, thick, darkling cloud settling down like living snowflakes, smothering every stalk, every leaf, eating away every scrap of green down to raw, bare wasting earth. It’s painfully straightforward.  There are too many men for Earth to harbor…we are crippling Earth’s life support system by such a flood of upright apes is bad news for us.”

Dave Foreman’s book will rock your senses. It will affect your children. It will change all life on this planet if humans continue their endless onslaught around the globe.

Frosty Wooldridge has bicycled across six continents – from the Arctic to the South Pole – as well as six times across the USA, coast to coast and border to border. In 2005, he bicycled from the Arctic Circle, Norway to Athens, Greece. He presents “The Coming Population Crisis in America: and what you can do about it” to civic clubs, church groups, high schools and colleges. He works to bring about sensible world population balance at www.frostywooldridge.com He is the author of: America on the Brink: The Next Added 100 Million Americans. Copies available: 1 888 280 7715

{ 1 comment }

Perhaps the two topmost organizing dares before the wilderness and wildlife network today are to grow our web of friends among those who are politically middle-of-the-road or even slightly to the right, and among those in small towns and the hinterlands.  Too often we think the only field where we can gather new backers is the progressive/liberal one, but clubs such as Republicans for Environmental Protection, Backcountry Hunters and Anglers, and Trout Unlimited strongly show that there are more than a few folks caring about wild things who are not progressives, who may even be conservatives.

Desert Marigolds © Dave Foreman

Now, when I write conservative I do not mean so-called “movement conservatives,” shills for big business, or Tea Baggers, but the many folks who still have the values of “traditional conservatism,” which more or less lost its seat in the Republican Party in the Reagan years.  Indeed, some of the bedrock values for traditional conservatives, but not for today’s highly partisan right-wingers, are also bedrock values for wilderness and wildlife conservation—such as piety, prudence, and posterity.

I think that if we wildlovers would talk more about these values, we would find that we could better reach folks we are not reaching now because they think we are all left-wingers.

Dr. John Bliese, formerly Associate Professor of Communication Studies at Texas Tech University in Lubbock, has done more than anyone since the 1970s to show not only that conservatism and conservation can be like-minded, but also that the intellectual leaders of conservatism from the end of World War Two to the Reagan Revolution, most of all Russell Kirk, Richard M. Weaver, and Clinton Rossiter, were foes of landscalping. In 1953, Kirk wrote The Conservative Mind, likely the foremost conservative work of the last hundred years. In a 1996 article for Modern Age, Bliese writes, “If we go back to the ‘Founding Fathers’ of American traditionalist conservatism, we will find a solid philosophical basis that would lead conservatives to be environmentalists.” Conservatives and conservationists alike should read his book, The Greening Of Conservative America.  True conservatism has deep ties to conservation through the following thrusts: Antimaterialism, Piety, Prudence, Posterity, Values, and Responsibility.

I go into all these in my forthcoming book, Take Back Conservation, from which this “Campfire” but I’ll only write here about piety, prudence, and posterity.

Before we look at these principles, however, let’s go to writings by Russell Kirk on conservation and pollution.  Most of the work by Kirk (and Weaver) was before widespread heed was given to how we were wounding Earth.  Nonetheless, Kirk did not shun the land in his syndicated newspaper column in the 1960s and early 1970s.  In 1962, he wrote about pesticides and how they harmed wildlife.  He told his readers to read Rachel Carson’s newly released Silent Spring.  This is a big deal since Carson’s book led to a bitter wrangle among the directors of the Sierra Club, with some pooh-poohing any harm from pesticides. In your wildest dreams, can you see any leading conservative today telling folks to read a book like Silent Spring?

Bliese writes:

In 1965, [Kirk] deplored the fact that “rare, strange and beautiful animals are shrinking toward extinction in much of the world.”  He argued that “preservation of the multitudinous animal species has been enjoined by religion since the dawn of human consciousness,” with specific reference to the story of Noah.  He wrote this piece in South Africa’s Kruger National Park, but added that “we Americans have done our despicable share in decimating the animal kingdom.”

{ 2 comments }

Banned on the Hill (and in Europe!) from Franke James on Vimeo.

Is fear of the “Dirty Oil” label behind Canada’s tarring of Artist’s European tour?

What lengths will the Canadian Government go to ensure that oil from the Alberta Tar Sands is not labelled “dirty”?

Watch this video about Canadian artist Franke James, and how a dream opportunity — a 20-city European artshow to educate youth about climate change — faced behind-the-scenes interference by the Canadian Government.

November 24/11 statement by PEN Canada:

“The government of Canada has no right to determine what is an acceptable opinion for an individual citizen, on climate change or any matter of public interest,” said Charlie Foran, President of PEN Canada, “To do so is clearly not in the spirit of the Charter and the long history of freedom of expression in Canada.”

Greg Hollingshead, Chair of The Writers’ Union of Canada, “The right to freedom of expression includes freedom from official disapproval, including the sort of bureaucratic interference encountered by Franke James.”

Read more including the internal government documents released through an ATIP request.

http://www.frankejames.com/debate/?page_id=8202

Banned on the Hill (and in Europe!) by Franke James is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.Based on a work at www.frankejames.com. Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at www.frankejames.com.

{ 2 comments }