The View from Lazy Point: A Natural Year in an Unnatural World

by Carl Safina

  Around these various struggles runs that one gathering thread: whenever we take the focus off ourselves and move it outward, we benefit. Life’s most fortunate ironies are that what’s best for the long run is best now, and selflessness serves our interests far better than selfishness. The wider our circle of considerations, the more stable we make the world—and the better the prospects for human experience and for all we might wish. The core message of each successive widening: we are one. The geometry of the human voyage is not linear; it’s those ripples whose circles expand to encompass self, other, community, Life, and time.

  * * *

  Temperatures haven’t nudged the thaw point in many days and nights. What was fluid is solid. Stand resolutely in the same place, and the view changes anyway. But once the freeze is in and the bay locks up, any change will mean a thaw. The great thing about hard times is: when things change, they can only improve.

  Though the land and ponds are hardened with ice and deep in winter, we’ve turned the corner on the length of days. That and a layer of snow bring a brightening. Life knows the beat of this tune, though the dance steps can be subtle. Where dead branches poke the winter sky stand the silhouettes of Red-tails in love. After shooting hawks for fun went out of style, Red-tailed Hawks recovered. Now they’re as common as they should be. Their hormones anticipate nest building and all it implies, and for a brief honeymoon in late winter before the real work begins, you see these eagles of the suburban woodlots perched closely in pairs, silently anticipating spring. One morning I hear a descending deeee-deeee. Chickadees—or at least one—are switching from their winter chick-a-dee contact call (“Where’s everybody?”) to their breeding song (“Here am I”). Their roaming flocks, formed for winter safety, will disband as the birds reassert property claims in the pines. They feel the world changing, and they change their tune.

  Can we do less? “A change in the weather is sufficient to recreate the world and ourselves,” said Marcel Proust. We must make a new song, tell the new story that there has arisen a need to consider the future in ways that seldom burdened generations past. Our new story, so much better informed this time, ought to feel newly inspired.

  Our year’s journeying has brought us glimpses of next horizons and unprecedented urgencies. By the dimming lights of our outdated philosophical, ethical, and economic traditions, we are sailing in uncharted waters. To navigate safely, we’ll need to be less heavily freighted, more nimble in steering. To orient ourselves, we’ll need a new compass whose poles are dispassion and compassion. A “compass of compassion” would be a formidable navigator. But still we’ll need to decide where we want to go. Perhaps we’ll describe the place where we’d hope to find our children living. Compassion can begin to plot the course.

  Even an accurate compass can put you on the rocks if no one’s monitoring the obstacles. We need good navigating instruments, a destination; we also need to have our eyes open. We need to avoid the rocks and the ideological shallows, keep the world’s vitality brimming—and stay afloat.

  You can see the origins of human traits in the behavior of other animals: their drive to survive; their passion to defend and reproduce; curiosity; and even, among a few, glimmers of caring. (This summer my neighbor J.P. had been hand-feeding a gull that landed on his roof each morning, and one day it arrived with a billful of fine grass and other nesting material, and delivered it into his hand.) Uniquely among animals, though, our minds are gifted with a capacity for extension, reflection, and far-ranging compassion.

  Compassion doesn’t simply mean caring for poor people or putting band-aids on need. It seeks to remedy sources of suffering. It means we require a clear, peaceful way of providing what the world can bear—and knowing when enough is too much. In part, it means realizing that far fewer people would mean far less suffering.

  In the 1830s, Charles Lyell’s book Principles of Geology sent tremors by demonstrating that the workings of the past, visible now, are still shaping the workings of the present. The idea impressed a young and observant Charles Darwin and changed our way of seeing—indeed, our way of searching. What we now need to realize is that the workings of the future, too, are visible in the workings of today. For better or worse, we shape the future in the present. Because we can love our children, we have a twin stake: in this place and in its prospect.

  * * *

  To advance compassion and yet survive in a world of appetites—that is our challenge. Where any weakness is crushed or exploited, empathy must be load-bearing. Yet compassion may be the lightest, strongest concept yet devised. Century upon century, it wages a widening peace.

  The compass of compassion asks not “What is good for me?” but “What is good?” Not what is best for me but what is best. Not what is right for me, but what is right. Not “How much can we take?” but “How much ought we leave?” and “How much might we give?” Not what is easy but what is worthy. Not what is practical but what is moral. With each action we decide whether to sow the grapes of wrath or the seeds of peace.

  The compass of compassion suggests that very few things, each simple, are needed. We shouldn’t hate people for the group they were born into, or because we hold conflicting beliefs about things that cannot be proven, seen, or measured. We can’t infinitely take more from—or infinitely add more people to—a finite planet. While living in a world endowed with self-renewing energy, we can’t run civilization on energy that diminishes the world. If we can get these simple things under control, I think we could be okay. Simple does not mean easy. Yet more than ever before in history, we can now understand what’s needed. But nations need to act boldly and soon. Time runs short at an accelerating pace.

  We are self-assembled stardust aware of the universe and the future. Energy that had been headed across the eternal, infinite vacuum of space is at this moment running the thought machine that is the breathing you. We are one knot in a great web of being, building out of the vast past and (with luck) continuing billions of years into the future, until the sun dies, the last of its energy reaches Earth, and our local light goes out. The most appropriate response to the world is to realize, with awe, the ferocious mystery of being alive in it. And act accordingly. The worst thing anyone should be able to say about their life is also the greatest thing anyone can say: “I tried my best.”

  * * *

  The harshness of deep winter continues driving ducks, crossbills, siskins, and Snowy Owls south into our region. Yet even as they are still arriving from the north, the first grackles and robins, inspired by February’s lengthening days, are already returning from the south.

  So the year curls around on itself, nuzzling its nose in its tail.

  And in the morning, a Red-winged Blackbird, singing, returns the world. We end at the new beginning.

  REFERENCES

  COAST OF CHARACTERS

  Cooking in evolution: Wrangham, R. 2009. Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human. Basic Books.

  40 percent of land’s productivity used by people: Vitousek, P. M., et al. 1986. “Human Appropriation of Products of Photosynthesis.” BioScience 36:368–73. That quantity is similarly estimated at over 30 percent overall but much higher locally by: Imhoff, M. L., et al. 2004. “Global Patterns in Human Consumption of Net Primary Production.” Nature 429:870–73. For coastal shelves the estimate is similar; see: Pauly, D., and V. Christensen. 1995. “Primary Production Required to Sustain Global Fisheries.” Nature 374:255.

  Half a percent of the animal mass: Imhoff, M. L., et al. 2004. “Global Patterns in Human Consumption of Net Primary Production.” Nature 429:870–73.

  Vertebrate populations down 30 percent since 1970: WWF Living Planet Report: Living Planet Index, available online.

  Forests are shrinking: FAO. 2006. Global Forest Resource Assessment 2005. Rome: United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization. See also: Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, available online.

  Dead zones: Nellemann, C., et al. 2008. In Dead Water: Merging of Climate Change with Pollutio
n, Over-Harvest, and Infestations in the World’s Fishing Grounds. United Nations Environment Programme.

  Convention on Biological Diversity shortcomings: United Nations Secretariat of the Convention on Biodiversity. 2006. “Global Biodiversity Outlook 2.” www.cbd.int/gbo2/.

  Two Planet Earths: Kitzes, et al. 2008. “Shrink and Share: Humanity’s Present and Future Ecological Footprint.” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B 363:467–75.

  Luca Pacioli and accounting: Lanchester, J. 2009. “It’s Finished.” London Review of Books, May 28, 2009, p. 3.

  Eiders: Pearson, T. G., editor. 1940. Birds of America. Garden City Publishing.

  Nicolas Denys: quoted in Mowat, F. 1986. Sea of Slaughter, pp. 52–74. Bantam.

  Forbush, on sea duck palatability and decline: Pearson, T. G., editor. 1940. Birds of America. Garden City Publishing.

  FEBRUARY

  Harold Morowitz as quoted in: Des Jardins, J. R. 2000. Environmental Ethics. 3rd ed., p. 219. Wadsworth/Thompson Learning.

  MARCH: IN LIKE A LION

  Eating myrtle berries: http://elibrary.unm.edu/sora/Auk/v109n02/p0334-p0345.html. See also: https://drum.umd.edu/dspace/bitstream/1903/2181/1/umi-umd-2170.pdf.

  A fifth of the world can’t see the Milky Way: “Dark Sky Park in Ohio Takes Long View.” USA Today, February 26, 2009.

  Aristotle, Aquinas, Bacon, Descartes, and Kant quoted in: Des Jardins, J. R. Environmental Ethics, 3rd ed., pp. 219, 95–96. Wadsworth/Thompson Learning. Also: Freud, S. 1927. The Future of an Illusion. Norton, 1979.

  Emerson quoted from his Nature, 1836. Thoreau quoted from Walden, 1854.

  Charles Darwin quoted from closing of On the Origin of Species, 1859.

  George Perkins Marsh’s 1865 book was Man and Nature. Pinchot: quoted from his 1914 book, The Training of a Forester, J. B. Lippincott Co.

  MARCH: OUT LIKE A LAMB

  About 2,500 of 6,000 amphibians threatened: iucnredlist.org/amphibians. Including Yellowstone: McMenamin, S. K., et al. 2008. “Climatic Change and Wetland Desiccation Cause Amphibian Decline in World’s Oldest National Park.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 105:16988–93. Various causes of amphibian declines: Stuart, S., et al. 2004. “Status and Trends of Amphibian Declines and Extinctions Worldwide.” Science 306:1783–86. Atrazine: Hayes, T. B., et al. 2002. “Hermaphroditic, Demasculinized Frogs After Exposure to the Herbicide Atrazine at Low Ecologically Relevant Doses.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 99:5476–80.

  “Remoteness” of future people: http://gadfly.igc.org/papers/orfg.htm.

  John James Audubon quote regarding Passenger Pigeons from: Matthiessen, P. 1989. Wildlife in America. Viking. “Where a tremendous slaughter took place,” plus other history and speculation on disappearance: Fischer, M. 1913. “A Vanished Race.” Bird Lore March–April, available online. Passenger Pigeons also in: Cokinos, C. 2001. Hope Is the Thing with Feathers. Grand Central Publishing. And in: Pearson, T. G., editor. 1940. Birds of America. Garden City Publishing.

  Aldo Leopold’s 1949 classic book is A Sand County Almanac, Oxford University Press.

  Charles Darwin from his 1871 book, The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex.

  “As much and as good”: Locke quoted in Des Jardins, J. R. 2000. Environmental Ethics. 3rd ed., p. 62. Wadsworth/Thompson Learning.

  “The Tragedy of the Commons”: Hardin, G. 1968. “The Tragedy of the Commons.” Science 162:1243–48.

  TRAVELS SOLAR: CORAL GARDENS OF GOOD AND EVIL—BELIZE AND BONAIRE

  Certain pollutants: Kline, D. I., et al. 2006. “Role of Elevated Organic Carbon Levels and Microbial Activity in Coral Mortality.” Marine Ecology Progress Series 314:119–25. And: Bruno, J. F. 2003. “Nutrient Enrichment Can Increase the Severity of Coral Diseases.” Ecology Letters 6:1056–61. Also: Voss, J. D., et al. 2006. “Nutrient Enrichment Enhances Black Band Disease Progression in Corals.” Coral Reefs 25:569–76.

  Algae obliterate light that baby corals need: Lee, S. C. 2006. “Habitat Complexity and Consumer-Mediated Positive Feedbacks on a Caribbean Coral Reef.” Oikos: A Journal of Ecology 112:442–47. See also: Box, S. J., and P. J. Mumby. 2007. “Effect of Macroalgal Competition on Growth and Survival of Juvenile Caribbean Corals.” Marine Ecology Progress Series 342:139–49. Seaweeds transfer harmful bacteria to corals: Smith, J. E., et al. 2006. “Indirect Effects of Algae on Coral: Algae-Mediated, Microbe-Induced Coral Mortality.” Ecology Letters 9:835–45.

  Parrotfish are important for the corals: Mumby, P. J., et al. 2006. “Fishing, Trophic Cascades, and the Process of Grazing on Coral Reefs.” Science 311:98–101.

  Roger Revelle and Hans Suess: Doney, S. C. 2006. “The Dangers of Ocean Acidification.” Scientific American, March 2009.

  There’s a third more carbon dioxide: Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. 2001. The Scientific Basis: Contribution of Working Group I to the Third Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Cambridge University Press. One hundred times faster: Fabry, V. J., et al. 2008. “Impacts of Ocean Acidification on Marine Fauna and Ecosystem Processes.” International Council for the Exploration of the Sea Journal of Marine Science 65:414–32. Also: Royal Society. 2005. Ocean Acidification Due to Increasing Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide. Policy Document 12/05. We’ve reversed a long natural cooling: Kaufman, D. S., et al. 2009. “Recent Warming Reverses Long-Term Arctic Cooling.” Science 236–39. Stabilizing climate requires that: Stern, N. 2007. The Economics of Climate Change. Cambridge University Press. A warming of five degrees Fahrenheit and the doubling by midcentury: Sachs, J. 2009. Common Wealth: Economics for a Crowded Planet, pp. 91–93. Penguin Group. A different planet: Hansen, J., et al. 2007. “Dangerous Human-Made Interference with Climate: A Giss Model.” Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics 7:2287–312.

  The North Atlantic is absorbing: Sabine, C. L., et al. 2004. “The Oceanic Sink for Anthropogenic CO2.” Science 305:367–71.

  Changes in pH and a review of climate effects: Brierley, A., and M. Kingsford. 2009. “Impacts of Climate Change on Marine Organisms and Ecosystems.” Current Biology 19:R602–14.

  Carbonate concentrations: Orr, J. C., et al. 2005. “Anthropogenic Ocean Acidification over the Twenty-First Century and Its Impact on Calcifying Organisms.” Nature 437:681–86.

  Ocean surface has 30 percent more hydrogen ions: Feely, R. A., et al. 2004. “Impact of Anthropogenic CO2 on the CaCO3 System in the Oceans.” Science 305:362. And: Feely, R. A., et al. 2008. “Evidence for Upwelling of Corrosive ‘Acidified’ Water onto the Continental Shelf.” Science 320:1490–92; published online May 22, 2008. And: Orr, J. C. et al. 2005. “Anthropogenic Ocean Acidification over the Twenty-First Century and Its Impact on Calcifying Organisms.” Nature 437:4095.

  How changing carbon dioxide concentrations will affect the ocean’s calcium carbonate concentrations: Hoegh-Guldberg, O., et al. 2007. “Coral Reefs Under Rapid Climate Change and Ocean Acidification.” Science 318:1737. See also: Kleypas, J. A., et al. 1999. “Geochemical Consequences of Increased Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide on Coral Reefs.” Science 284:118–20.

  Carbon dioxide expected to reach 550 ppm after midcentury: Rogelj, J., et al. 2009. “Halfway to Copenhagen, No Way to 2°C.” Nature Reports. Published online: June 11, 2009, doi:10.1038/climate.2009.57. See also: Silverman, J., et al. 2009. “Coral Reefs May Start Dissolving When Atmospheric CO2 Doubles.” Geophysical Research Letters 36:L05606.

  Foraminifera shells: Moy, A. D., et al. 2009. “Reduced Calcification in Modern Southern Ocean Planktonic Foraminifera.” Nature Geoscience 2:276–80. Experiments with clams, oysters, mussels: Fabry, V. J., et al. 2008. “Impacts of Ocean Acidification on Marine Fauna and Ecosystem Processes.” International Council for the Exploration of the Sea Journal of Marine Science 65:414–32. But see: Iglesias-Rodriguez, M. D., et al. 2008. “Phytoplankton Calcification in a High-CO2 World.” Science 320:336–40.

  Corals able to survive “by going naked”: Fine, M., and D. Tchern
ov. 2007. “Scleractinian Coral Species Survive and Recover from Decalcification.” Science 315:1811. Hundreds of millions depend heavily on reefs: Cinner, J. E., et al. 2009. “Linking Social and Ecological Systems to Sustain Coral Reef Fisheries.” Current Biology 19:206–12. See also: Hoegh-Guldberg, O. 2005. “Low Coral Cover in a High-CO2 World.” Journal of Geophysical Research 110:C09S06, doi:10.1029/2004JC002528. Also: Pandolfi, J. M., et al. 2003. “Global Trajectories of the Long-Term Decline of Coral Reef Ecosystems.” Science 301:955–58. And also: Donner, S. D., et al. 2005. “Global Assessment of Coral Bleaching and Required Rates of Adaptation Under Climate Change.” Global Change Biology 11:2251–65.

  60,000 small-scale fishers and heavy fishing pressure from: Nenadovic, M. 2007. In: “A Report on the Status of Coral Reefs of Bonaire in 2007 with Results from Monitoring 2003–2007.” R. Steneck, et al., pp. 71–80. Informally published.

  FAREWELL, WHOLE NEW TIME

  In 2007 the United States consumed as much oil: U.S. Energy Information Administration at: http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/country/index.cfm?view=consumption. Also: Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (available online). And: Worldwatch Institute’s annual State of the World (Norton) contains statistics on resource use. Resources since 1950s: Speth, G. 2008. The Bridge at the End of the World, pp. 1–3. Yale University Press. See also: Millennium Ecosystem Assessment.