The Earth Hearing

by Daniel Plonix

  “When plants detect the freely available minerals about them, they turn off the carbon spigot. Why expand away precious carbon energy to support fungi and microorganisms for what they can obtain directly, without the surcharge of symbiosis? Alas, without carbon fueling soil biology, the underground world starves and wanes. So synthetic fertilizers are another pathway to a gradual ecosystem collapse, even in the absence of tillage.

  “Dousing the field with nitrogen serves to increase the number of weeds. For that matter, leaving the soil bare is an open invitation for pioneer plants to come and make a groundcover. This is of course where herbicides come into play. Another fix for a problem of their creation.

  “Their modern-day herbicides are potent chelators: they bind trace metals and other essential nutrients, limiting their bioavailability to plants. Subsequently, plant immunity goes down, making them more susceptible to diseases, and, in addition, the nutrient density of the produce is lower.”

  “And undoubtedly they have devised fixes for all of those things,” said one of the commissioners dryly.

  “Undoubtedly, Your Grace. Albeit, there is always a new fire to put out. In the last three months, the Nature Survey Group has monitored the situation in the state of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil. Four hundred million bees have died.” Hagar bit her lips in dismay. “The bees were exposed to insecticides containing neonicotinoids and fipronil.” She added, “In Japan, after the introduction of neonicotinoid pesticides to rice paddies, there was an immediate sharp decline in zooplankton and the water flies populations around Lake Shinji. This was followed by a population crash of smelt fish and eels.”

  “I believe the commission has heard enough.”

  The chair peered down at some of the papers in front of him and then at the gathered Earth people. “I must say, for people fixated with the ‘bottom line,’ it is remarkable how much money your farm operators are spending on inputs.”

  “If I may, Your Grace,” interjected Aratta. “It is true that farms barely turn a profit. But this is not where most of the action is. Enormous sums are funneled to agricultural machinery and fertilizer manufacturers, oil and gas companies, herbicide and pesticide makers,” he said. “This aside, their economic system—and for that matter, government programs— thrives on endless ripples of breakdowns with corresponding stopgap measures that just keep on cascading outward.”

  The chair laughed. “True! How true!” He looked over at Aratta. “More to say, Lord Aratta?”

  “One more point, Your Grace.”

  “In the 1990s, the way was paved with a few hefty campaign contributions. Thereafter, the US government went ahead and mandated that an ever-increasing amount of ethanol is to be blended into gasoline and diesel fuels,” said Aratta and gestured with his pipe. “This created a guaranteed market for ethanol. And many have jumped on the bandwagon of ethano-dollars.

  “Tens of thousands of square miles of tallgrass prairie have been obliterated in the United States and been replaced with corn that in turn is harvested, dried, distilled into ethanol—then primarily burned up as fuel.

  “The amount of energy needed to grow, harvest, and distill the corn in the first place is significant. Factoring this in, had they dedicated all of the existing cropland in the United States to growing corn for the production of ethanol, they would have been able to supply enough fuel but for a third of current domestic motor gasoline consumption needs.”

  Aratta bowed. Then nodded to Hagar.

  “Your Graces,” declared Hagar and bowed. “I am ready to proceed with my recom­mendation.”

  A few commissioners exclaimed softly. By pronouncing those ritualistic words, Hagar was telling them she has reached a conclusion. That was expected. They just didn’t expect her to do so before the hearing was at an end. By stating her conclusion, she was also announcing that her involvement at the hearing was coming to an end.

  “Your Graces,” she said. “I offer that this food-production system is the brainchild of buffoons and monkeys with wrenches. With its chemical spraying, it is demented. With the growth of grain expressly to feed animals, it is deranged. With its crowding of animals into giant closed buildings, it is monstrous.”

  Her eyes blazed with indignation.

  “Considering these thoroughly devastating practices and the underlying mindset,” Hagar stated, “I feel I have no choice but to recommend to the commission to approve the immediate relocation of the human population from Earth.”

  Cries of shock and outrage greeted her words as most of the Earth people sprung to their feet. No one had said anything about the possibility of relocation. The presiding chair sighed. The cat was out of the bag.

  The audience was in an uproar. In vain, the master of ceremonies banged his large staff on the floor, attempting to restore order. The mood was turning ugly. And eventually three dozen armed security men filed in, marching down the aisles in lockstep.

  “Terraneans!” bellowed the presiding chair. He waited until the angry voices fell silent and all eyes were on him. “Terraneans,” he repeated in a softer voice, “these guards will escort you. And you’ll learn for yourself what is to befall your people if our verdict will not go in your favor.” He motioned to the captain of the guards.

  In short order, all the Earth people were ushered out of the chamber, muttering and grumbling. Minutes later, they found themselves crowded into three large freight elevators.

  The elevator doors closed with a hiss. There was a jolt, and the slow, mile-long ascent to the surface got underway.

  Chapter 43

  Salt Flats of Lake Eyre, South Australia, the Netherworld of Earth

  It was the control center of the Nature Survey Group. The millions of hidden sensors and video cameras placed throughout Earth streamed data in real time to this vast underground facility. The gigantic hall had batteries of projection platforms, a great many computer terminals, and hundreds of technicians.

  Various holographic images and digital maps filled the cavernous hall. “We are actively monitoring every square mile of the planet,” the deputy director of the Nature Survey Group told the seven commissioners and Aratta.

  He continued, “Most of the ecosystems are at varying levels of degradation or have been entirely obliterated. Just in the last decade and a half, the combined wilderness area lost to human settlement, farming, and mining is about the size of Western Europe. The planetary ecosystem has been undergoing death by a thousand cuts.”

  “What ecoregions are still intact?”

  “Intact, Your Grace?”

  “I mean, areas with no significant human activity and big enough to sustain all native biodiversity.”

  The deputy reflected for a moment then made a distinct gesture. Thereby, all maps and images displayed on the dome above them disappeared and were replaced with an all-encompassing holographic projection with a view of a forest from high above. “As you can see, intact tropical rainforests cover much of Amazonia.” He repeated the gesture, and the holographic video feed was swapped with another. “Intact tropical rainforests also cover much of the Congo Basin, though with a higher degree of fragmentation.” The video blurred away and a new one materialized. “There are also cloud rainforests on the island of Borneo and a patchwork of an intact tropical rainforest throughout the island of New Guinea. When it comes to intact tropical rainforests, that’s about it,” the deputy said.

  “What’s the rate of tropical rainforest loss?”

  “In a typical year, they destroy an old-growth tropical forest area along the size of Switzerland.”

  The video feed rapidly zoomed in on one section. “They have just bulldozed a route that cuts through the rainforest and is a part of the new forty-three hundred kilometers Trans-Papua Highway. It penet­rates the heart of the New Guinea’s rainforests—providing access to fossil fuel extraction, mineral mining, and timber harvesting.” He zoomed back out. “We
found a similar situation in the Congo Basin; in the last fifteen years they have added over eighty-thousand kilometers of roads cutting through and crisscrossing the rainforest. By now, the apes and elephants have virtually nowhere to hide from poachers.”

  “I thought I saw something,” said one of the commissioners. “Please, take us back to Borneo. There! What are those clouds of smoke drifting up from the lowlands?”

  The deputy directed the holographic video-feed to the lower regions of the island. Now he realized what it was. “Fire, Your Grace. They are burning swathes of the lowland rainforests, clearing the area for oil palm plantations.” He zoomed in, and now they could see it clearly.

  For a few moments, the commission members watched, aghast, as one of the most ancient rainforests in the world was put to the torch.

  “Oil palm plantations?” one of the commissioners demanded.

  “From processed food to cosmetics, they use this oil in many things. One of which is biodiesel fuel.”

  “Why would they do that? Do they fancy the supply of fossil-based fuel is growing constricted?”

  “No, Your Grace. It is but a repeat of the ethanol story Lord Aratta re­counted earlier. To avert climate change, various governments have mandated the usage of vegetable oil as a feedstock for fuel in order to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.

  “Earth people got cracking on it. Earlier in the year, they came to this area with earthmoving equipment and ripped out the rainforest. Over five million acres have gone under.” A knot rose in his throat. “As you can see, they now torch the remains and, in the process, release from the peatlands massive amounts of carbon dioxide into the air—far more than the burning of petroleum would have emitted.” His faint smile held a touch of sadness. “But many tens of millions of Indonesians have become economically dependent on palm oil; some transnational corporations based out of Dubai and Singapore are making money hand over fist; and just as importantly, local district bosses sell land permits and rake in mounds of money to finance their reelection campaigns. So oil palm operations are here to stay.”

  In dismay, they surveyed the charred stumps protruding from the blackened earth like ashen tombstones. In the distance, a green desert of oil palm trees stretched as far as the eye could see.

  “Only a few tens of thousands of orangutans still roam the tropical forests of Southeast Asia. But business is business,” the deputy explained. “Day after day, huge tracts of rainforest, mostly in Malaysia and Indonesia, are being bulldozed or torched to make room for more plantations. We estimate that over one hundred thousand square miles of old-growth tropical rainforests have been converted to oil palm plantations.” It was not unlike the recent mining boom in western Guinea, Africa. His team tracked the Earth people as they were clearing the rainforest to get at the bauxite. It was but a few decades earlier when there were over hundred and fifty thousand Western chimpanzees. At present, over hundred thousand were already gone.

  The presiding chair’s mouth was set in a hard line. He eventually motioned. “Please resume with your survey of intact ecosystems on this planet.”

  “Of course.” The deputy gestured, and the panoramic view changed once again. “We have some virgin tropical dry forest in east-central Bolivia. We’ve located pristine mixed and broadleaf forests in the highlands of Arunachal Pradesh, India, and surrounding areas. In New Zealand’s South Island, we still have an intact temperate moist forest beltway on the southwestern coastal region. In the southern part of South America, there is a coastal strip of virgin mixed-beech forests beginning around the 40th parallel reaching all the way to the continent’s southern tip.”

  “And boreal forests?”

  “That’s the big one. The vast boreal forests beltway is intact in much of the Canadian Shield, Northern Rocky Mountains, Yukon, and the Alaska plateau region. Far patchier boreal beltway runs across Russia punctuated by numerous sites of mining, agriculture, service roads, logging, and oil and gas exploration.” He shrugged. “That’s it for virgin forests of any meaningful size on Earth.”

  “What else?”

  “The tropical savanna and woodland in northern and northeastern Australia. Some parts of the semi-arid savanna that makes up the Kalahari Desert region. Much of the woodland areas and sage shrub steppe of the Great Basin Desert in western United States.

  “As for deserts, the Sahara Desert is fairly intact, except for its oases. The Great Victoria Desert in Australia is comparatively undisturbed; the desert to the immediate south of Kazakhstan has some ecologically intact areas; and some northwestern parts of the Gobi Desert are relatively pristine.

  “The tundra is mostly untouched. It covers most of the arctic zone. We identified intact areas of alpine meadows to the immediate north of Mongolia and stretches of intact alpine tundra at Chang Tang Plateau, Tibet. And as you can imagine, Antarctica, Greenland, and other areas with ice cover in the arctic zone are largely pristine.”

  The deputy brought his hands together, and the holographic video winked out and was replaced with soft ambient light.

  “I am afraid that’s about it on this planet. Essentially, some of what the Earth people have deemed too hot, impossibly arid, bone-cold, too swampy, or fairly inaccessible have remained intact.”

  “The oceans?”

  The deputy’s face was bleak. “The overwhelming majority of the marine ecosystems are heavily degraded. Diverse, functional ecosystems make up but 10 to 15 percent of the ocean—mostly the high seas of the Southern Ocean and of the Arctic Ocean.

  “Just last year, tens of millions of sharks were killed. After the fins were removed, they threw the remainder overboard. I hear the east Asians make some mean shark fin soup.” He smiled weakly at that. “Mor­eover, from Dall’s porpoise to Bottlenose dolphin, countless smaller whales and dolphins are butchered. The Japanese eat them raw, sashimi style.”

  “What is the status of whales on Earth?”

  “The Earth people hunted down and slaughtered close to three million whales in the previous century, reducing some populations by as much as 99 percent. For about three decades, the Soviets were at the forefront of this.”

  “Oh? Why did the Soviets kill the whales?”

  “No real reason, Madam Commissioner,” answered the deputy. “They had to hit production goals—and the crews got substantial bonuses if they exceeded them. It was primarily a number game and a career move. The whales themselves were of little utility—they removed the blubber and otherwise left the carcasses to rot. It was ultimately a dick contest on a grand scale: the Soviet state strove at all cost to outdo capitalist countries on any gross output matrix, whale hunting included. In addition, the number of whales was dwindling fast, and they were grimly racing to the finish line, to have some sort of a national hunting legacy to leave behind.”

  “The situation here on Earth is most dire,” one of the commissioners contended.

  “Worse, actually,” said a new voice. The director of the Nature Survey Group. “Your Graces,” she said, walking to the center of the chamber. “The intact areas the deputy alluded to are in fact diminished ecosystems.”

  “Kindly expound,” said the presiding chair.

  “He talked of Siberia,” replied the willowy director. “Just a handful of millennia ago, the vast tundra zone in northern Russia used to be a mammoth steppe, teeming with millions of horses, reindeer, bison, and mammoths along with musk oxen, saiga antelopes, and woolly rhinos. They were largely wiped out from the region, and the ecosystem collapsed. Subsequently, the meadows and grass gave way to moss, shrubs, and waterlogged soils. At present, it is mostly undisturbed, yet a pitiful natural environment.

  “He mentioned the woodlands and savanna of northern Australia. Imported red foxes and cats, which went feral, have spread throughout, and a wholesale decimation followed. The ubiquitous black-footed rock-wallaby has become a thing of the past, along with most other endemic mammals.
In fact, in the last twenty years, Australia lost over a third of its at-risk native mammals. Yet, this was but the last pulse of mayhem. The dispersal of humans across the continent tens of thousands of years earlier coincided with the demise of all the large herbivores, such as the massive short-faced kangaroos, the giant wallabies, and the diprotodons: the capybara-like browsers and grazers the size and mass of white rhinos.

  “He spoke of the sagebrush steppe in the Great Basin, North America. Back in the day, it was filled with horses, elephants, camels, helmeted muskoxen, and abundance of grass species. Now it is an undisturbed ghost ecosystem, where little stirs beyond gusts of wind, and little grows beyond a few hardy species of brush.

  “He referred to the Sahara Desert. In the modern era, the region has experienced a massive collapse of its large vertebrate, with all but one of the species disappearing from the region. The sand is in pristine shape, though.

  “He alluded to the Amazon rainforest. Well, a few millennia back, settlers drove to extinction its giant ground sloth, the gigantic armadillo-­like glyptodon, and the rhino-sized toxodon. The cascade effect has been significant and is still underway: less nutrient cycling, less seed dispersal. With but a fraction of the phosphorous available, some parts of the forest have slowly been losing their fertility ever since.

  “In the Congo Basin, Africa, this saga is happening in real time. Its forest elephant, its ecosystem engineer, is driven to functional extinction. Why, in the last ten years the Earth people slaughtered twenty-five thousand forest elephants just in the Minkébé National Park.”

  “Doesn’t a park area designate a wildlife territory as protected?” inquired one of the commissioners.

  The director found little merit in the question. In Madagascar, her people reported on a large-scale slash-and-burn forest decimation of Menabe Antimena Protected Area for agriculture and slash-and-burn decimation of Tsaratanana Reserve for marijuana cultivation. In Laguna del Tigre National Park, Guatemala, the Terraneans were clearing old-growth trees for industrial cattle farming and for airstrips used by cocaine traffickers. From Punta Izopo National Park, Honduras, she received reports of new oil palm plantations popping up seemingly every week. Beng Per Wildlife Sanctuary, Cambodia, has already lost more than half of its forest in the hands of business tycoons. The Xidamingshan Nature Reserve, China, has been losing its trees and wildlife to eucalyptus plantations grown as feedstock for the paper industry. And in the protected Marahoué National Park, Ivory Coast, they counted more than twenty-thousand squatters busily cutting the native trees, replacing them with numerous cocoa trees. “Your Grace, we have been tracking many of the elephant poachers coming over from the town of Djoum in neighboring Cameroon. They get through the Gabon border and into the protected park unhindered.” She added, “In Myanmar, people slaughter the elephants for the hides—for the making of skin beads. Or jackets. Or car interiors.”