by Sam Kean
Take wolves, which were once the most widespread large mammals on Earth, having roamed from Japan to India to Ireland and from Mexico to the high Arctic. In the continental United States, the only place you couldn’t find wolves was the sliver of California west of the Sierra Nevada.
But by the time the Endangered Species Act was signed into law in 1973, wolves were among the first animals needing protection—they had been all but eradicated in the Lower 48. Red wolves today survive only in a postage-stamp parcel of North Carolina. But gray wolves, thanks to protection and reintroduction efforts, have sprung back: 5,550 of them now roam in the western Great Lakes states, the northern Rockies, small patches of Arizona and New Mexico, and Washington State near the border with Canada.
The gray wolf is no longer at immediate risk of extinction in the Lower 48. With a relatively stable population now occupying 10 percent of its former range, the federal government has gone so far as to argue that the species has “recovered.” Critics have called this interpretation of the Endangered Species Act a “museum-piece approach,” because it retains species as cloistered artifacts in the smallest possible areas in which they can survive. But much of this is an accident of design. The act was created to keep rare species from going extinct; it was never up to the task of preventing species from becoming rare in the first place.
By some estimates, there is still enough habitat available to see wolves howling again in 31 states, among them California, Texas, Kentucky, New York, and Alabama. Yet it’s impossible to bring back common species, or to preserve what commonness remains, through the traditional approach of setting aside protected areas—the whole planet would soon be a park. As one wolf researcher put it, “Society has not yet answered the question of how much of the landscape ought to be shared with the nonhuman world.”
“The maintenance of commonness presents a different set of challenges,” Gaston said. “It’s much more about what you’re doing across entire landscapes. How environmentally friendly is your farming? How sustainable are your fisheries?” The conservation of the common represents a deeper ambition than the twentieth century’s lopsided division of the world into islands of wild, protected places in a sea of ruinous human activity. It calls on us to integrate conservation into every aspect of human life.
In the age of Donald Trump, however, such high-mindedness is upstaged by more practical questions: Is it wise to point out inadequacies in the Endangered Species Act when the act itself is imperiled? Is it sane to worry about commonness while species after species is frog-marched into actual oblivion? On the day of his inauguration, the president put a hold on a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service ruling that the rusty-patched bumblebee be listed as an endangered species.
In the end, the bee prevailed—at least on paper. Its listing became effective on March 21, 2017. Though it’s not yet clear what actions the federal government will take to save the species, the case was too clear-cut to dismiss out of hand. Rusty-patched bumblebees now occupy just 0.1 percent of their historical range, and have declined in number by an estimated 93 percent. The causes are exactly the kind of large-scale, modern-life challenges that Gaston talks about: pesticide use, the conversion of grasslands into industrial farms, climate change, novel diseases.
One other point that should not go unmentioned: little more than two decades ago, rusty-patched bumblebees still buzzed in 28 states. Residents of Midwestern cities remember shooing them out of the way as they walked the streets. The bee was, according to one Fish and Wildlife Service report, “so ordinary that it went almost unnoticed as it moved from flower to flower.” In other words, America’s newest endangered species used to be common.
It is the curse of today’s biologists that they are forever being asked to justify the continued existence of nonhuman life. Every species, common or rare, is the product of millions of years of evolution, its journey to this point in time exactly as miraculous as our own, but this is evidently not justification enough. Can you eat it? Does it suck carbon out of the atmosphere? Could it cure cancer? If you squeeze it hard enough, will it ooze oil that can run my car?
The defense of rare species on such grounds is often difficult. The extinction of one or another rarity—rest in peace Perrin’s cave beetle, hazel pigtoe, hairy wikstroemia—often comes at no obvious cost to humans or the larger landscape. I’m not saying that these plants and animals matter only to themselves. Taken together, rare species are the fail-safes, special teams, niche players, and understudies of the living world—today’s rarity could, with a sudden shift in evolutionary pressures, be tomorrow’s common species. Yet the loss of any single rare species amounts mainly to an incremental waning in originality, redundancy, and specialization in the environment. A wound, but largely an invisible one.
Now consider the consequences of losing a common species. Atlantic herring gather every autumn on the northern flank of the Gulf of Maine in spawning shoals that, if you could drag one ashore, would bury the whole of Manhattan six stories deep in sparkling silver fish. We know this because scientists, hailing mainly from various Massachusetts research institutions, set out in 2006 to measure them by bouncing sound waves off those giant schools. Through their technology, they witnessed what they described at the time as “perhaps the largest massing of animals ever instantaneously imaged in nature.” In a study published last year, the researchers referred to the spawning event as a “massive ecological hotspot”—though the spot wasn’t a place so much as a species.
When they got back to the lab and analyzed their audio recordings, the researchers discovered something equally stunning: a chorus of underwater songs, cries, down-sweeping “meows,” whistles, creaks, buzzing, clicking, chirping—tens of thousands of sounds, many of them outside the range of human hearing. They were the vocalizations (the voices, we might even say) of whales and dolphins.
It was a vast assembly of marine giants, from fin and humpback whales that plowed with gaping mouths through the herring schools by night, to sperm and killer whales gorging on the fish by day. The scientists were able to identify 10 of the whale and dolphin species; 4 of them are endangered throughout U.S. waters. Other herring predators include sharks, rockfish, dogfish, bluefish, hake, pollock, seals, sea lions, tuna, and an enormous variety of seabirds—it’s almost easier to draft a list of what doesn’t eat herring than a list of what does. Even squid eat herring—and so do we. Atlantic herring is currently our sixth most important fish stock.
It wasn’t always this way. In 1977, the herring population had collapsed—plummeting to 10 percent of its historical size—due to overfishing. Today, the Gulf of Maine herring are a rare good news story, once again as numerous as they were half a century ago. Michael Jech, a biologist with the Northeast Fisheries Science Center who was a part of the recent herring study, characterized that abundance with the understatement of a government scientist: “It seemed to be quite important.”
When you lose the commonness of a common species, the consequences are immediate and undeniable. Plainly put, common species are the foundation of ecosystems. They eat or are eaten by other species in large numbers. They influence and engineer their surroundings; in many cases, as with coral reefs and forests, common species effectively are the environment.
The most familiar plants and animals are also the ones best known to our eyes, ears, and imaginations, providing touchstones for our relationship with the nonhuman world and even helping to form our sense of place—rock pigeons in New York, Inca doves in Mexico City, peaceful doves in Bangkok. The 20 percent decline in European songbirds (like the 24 common land birds that have declined by 50 to 90 percent in the United States and Canada since 1970) represents a 20 percent reduction in their big-picture roles in pest control, pollination, and seed dispersal, but also in the opportunity to see wild birds and hear birdsong—a hard drop in the small pleasures of being alive.
The role of common species in nature and culture, both physical and metaphysical, all collide in the story of India’s w
hite-rumped vultures. They were the subcontinent’s primary scavengers of carrion. Without them, putrefying carcasses began to litter the landscape. (India had other vulture species, but each was either far less common to begin with or declined just as steeply as their white-rumped cousins.) The role the vultures played was soon filled by feral dogs, but this led to a spike in fatal dog-bite and rabies cases. The absence of vultures may even have contributed to an outbreak of bubonic plague, when the rotting bodies of cattle killed by a heat wave triggered an explosion of rats that carry the disease.
Until the vulture die-off, traditionalists within the Parsi religious minority had placed their dead in “towers of silence,” where the bodies were consumed by the birds, a funeral rite believed to preserve the purity of the Earth; they have now lost that link in what one Parsi leader called the chain of “creation, destruction, and regeneration.” Might even the Hindu epic of Ramayana, in which one of the principal figures, Jatayu, is usually depicted as a vulture, lose some quality of meaning in the absence of the actual birds?
None of this, I suspect, is quite convincing enough. I can sense that collective human shrug, the one that says, we adapt, we survive. In an India without vultures, people now bury or burn their livestock carcasses, while the Parsi inter their dead in sealed caskets or render them into skeletons using solar-heat concentrators that cost $3,000 apiece. Our common birds are less common than they were, but they are still the most common birds around. Until the recent recovery of the fish stock, the Gulf of Maine had gone decades with very few herring, hardly any whales. We got by, we made do.
We can live without this or that common species; the price is only a little more hardship, a little less awe. It may behoove us to pay attention to the pattern, though. If even the planet’s most widespread, abundant, and adaptable species are reaching tipping points, it is because the changes caused by humans have become so overwhelming, inescapable, and complex. “Common species are quite nice bellwethers of the systematic, insidious, and often unrecognized changes and detriments that we’re making to the environment,” Gaston said.
More and more, the cause of a common species’ sudden free fall is impossible to discern, takes years to unravel, or is ultimately given that most modern diagnosis, “multiple causes.” They are falling between invisible fault lines, collapsing into the unforeseen fractures of a biosphere under intensifying stress.
Widespread, abundant, adaptable—and damned. Why does it matter what happens to common species? Because we happen to be one of them.
BARACK OBAMA
The Irreversible Momentum of Clean Energy
from Science
The release of carbon dioxide (CO2) and other greenhouse gases (GHGs) due to human activity is increasing global average surface air temperatures, disrupting weather patterns, and acidifying the ocean.(1) Left unchecked, the continued growth of GHG emissions could cause global average temperatures to increase by another 4°C or more by 2100 and by 1.5 to 2 times as much in many midcontinent and far northern locations.(1) Although our understanding of the impacts of climate change is increasingly and disturbingly clear, there is still debate about the proper course for U.S. policy—a debate that is very much on display during the current presidential transition. But putting near-term politics aside, the mounting economic and scientific evidence leaves me confident that trends toward a clean-energy economy that have emerged during my presidency will continue and that the economic opportunity for our country to harness that trend will only grow. This Policy Forum will focus on the four reasons I believe the trend toward clean energy is irreversible.
Economies Grow, Emissions Fall
The United States is showing that GHG mitigation need not conflict with economic growth. Rather, it can boost efficiency, productivity, and innovation.
Since 2008, the United States has experienced the first sustained period of rapid GHG emissions reductions and simultaneous economic growth on record. Specifically, CO2 emissions from the energy sector fell by 9.5 percent from 2008 to 2015, while the economy grew by more than 10 percent. In this same period, the amount of energy consumed per dollar of real gross domestic product (GDP) fell by almost 11 percent, the amount of CO2 emitted per unit of energy consumed declined by 8 percent, and CO2 emitted per dollar of GDP declined by 18 percent.(2)
The importance of this trend cannot be understated. This “decoupling” of energy sector emissions and economic growth should put to rest the argument that combatting climate change requires accepting lower growth or a lower standard of living. In fact, although this decoupling is most pronounced in the United States, evidence that economies can grow while emissions do not is emerging around the world. The International Energy Agency’s (IEA’s) preliminary estimate of energy-related CO2 emissions in 2015 reveals that emissions stayed flat compared with the year before, whereas the global economy grew.(3) The IEA noted that “there have been only four periods in the past 40 years in which CO2 emission levels were flat or fell compared with the previous year, with three of those—the early 1980s, 1992, and 2009—being associated with global economic weakness. By contrast, the recent halt in emissions growth comes in a period of economic growth.”
At the same time, evidence is mounting that any economic strategy that ignores carbon pollution will impose tremendous costs to the global economy and will result in fewer jobs and less economic growth over the long term. Estimates of the economic damages from warming of 4°C over preindustrial levels range from 1 percent to 5 percent of global GDP each year by 2100.(4) One of the most frequently cited economic models pins the estimate of annual damages from warming of 4°C at approximately 4 percent of global GDP,(4–6) which could lead to lost U.S. federal revenue of roughly $340 billion to $690 billion annually.(7)
Moreover, these estimates do not include the possibility of GHG increases triggering catastrophic events, such as the accelerated shrinkage of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, drastic changes in ocean currents, or sizable releases of GHGs from previously frozen soils and sediments that rapidly accelerate warming. In addition, these estimates factor in economic damages but do not address the critical question of whether the underlying rate of economic growth (rather than just the level of GDP) is affected by climate change, so these studies could substantially understate the potential damage of climate change on the global macroeconomy.(8, 9)
As a result, it is becoming increasingly clear that, regardless of the inherent uncertainties in predicting future climate and weather patterns, the investments needed to reduce emissions—and to increase resilience and preparedness for the changes in climate that can no longer be avoided—will be modest in comparison with the benefits from avoided climate-change damages. This means, in the coming years, states, localities, and businesses will need to continue making these critical investments, in addition to taking commonsense steps to disclose climate risk to taxpayers, homeowners, shareholders, and customers. Global insurance and reinsurance businesses are already taking such steps as their analytical models reveal growing climate risk.
Private-Sector Emissions Reductions
Beyond the macroeconomic case, businesses are coming to the conclusion that reducing emissions is not just good for the environment—it can also boost bottom lines, cut costs for consumers, and deliver returns for shareholders.
Perhaps the most compelling example is energy efficiency. Government has played a role in encouraging this kind of investment and innovation: my administration has put in place (i) fuel economy standards that are net beneficial and are projected to cut more than 8 billion tons of carbon pollution over the lifetime of new vehicles sold between 2012 and 2029,(10) and (ii) 44 appliance standards and new building codes that are projected to cut 2.4 billion tons of carbon pollution and save $550 billion for consumers by 2030.(11)
But ultimately, these investments are being made by firms that decide to cut their energy waste in order to save money and invest in other areas of their businesses. For example, Alcoa has set a goal of redu
cing its GHG intensity 30 percent by 2020 from its 2005 baseline, and General Motors is working to reduce its energy intensity from facilities by 20 percent from its 2011 baseline over the same timeframe.(12) Investments like these are contributing to what we are seeing take place across the economy: total energy consumption in 2015 was 2.5 percent lower than it was in 2008, whereas the economy was 10 percent larger.(2)
This kind of corporate decision-making can save money, but it also has the potential to create jobs that pay well. A U.S. Department of Energy report released this week found that approximately 2.2 million Americans are currently employed in the design, installation, and manufacture of energy-efficiency products and services. This compares with the roughly 1.1 million Americans who are employed in the production of fossil fuels and their use for electric power generation.(13) Policies that continue to encourage businesses to save money by cutting energy waste could pay a major employment dividend and are based on stronger economic logic than continuing the nearly $5 billion per year in federal fossil-fuel subsidies, a market distortion that should be corrected on its own or in the context of corporate tax reform.(14)
Market Forces in the Power Sector
The American electric-power sector—the largest source of GHG emissions in our economy—is being transformed, in large part, because of market dynamics. In 2008, natural gas made up approximately 21 percent of U.S. electricity generation. Today, it makes up roughly 33 percent, an increase due almost entirely to the shift from higher-emitting coal to lower-emitting natural gas, brought about primarily by the increased availability of low-cost gas due to new production techniques.(2, 15) Because the cost of new electricity generation using natural gas is projected to remain low relative to coal, it is unlikely that utilities will change course and choose to build coal-fired power plants, which would be more expensive than natural gas plants, regardless of any near-term changes in federal policy. Although methane emissions from natural gas production are a serious concern, firms have an economic incentive over the long term to put in place waste-reducing measures consistent with standards my administration has put in place, and states will continue making important progress toward addressing this issue, irrespective of near-term federal policy.