Does the natural world around us sound healthy to you?

I think this guy’s blog post says pretty much what I’d be saying if I couldn’t make it a handy link. In short, each generation seems to accept as “normal” the state of the world at the time they become aware of it. What we think of now as “normal” is a sad shadow of the way things used to be, and it would have to get worse yet for people to think there’s a decline. And even more so, for the people being born now who will accept the present state as baseline normal.

It makes me ineffably sad and powerless feeling. And yes, I do believe we are killing the planet How could one deny the evidence.

What are you going to do in order to force human beings to behave in accordance to your whim, and not their basic nature?

Well…I was out sitting by my garden early this morning having coffee around 7:30 while the cats frisked around. My back yard has no fence and backs up to a pine, Oak and Manzanita covered hillside bordering the back of a cemetery. As I sat in silence 2 squirrels chased each other around the trees, a hummingbird was buzzing in the tree behind me and various other birds were carrying on. Deer come through the yard on a regular basis and at night gray foxes haunt the cemetery grounds making creepy yipping and howling sounds.

Natures noise is intact over here in my little neck o’ the woods.
Yes, clearly we are destroying the planet but, life always finds a way. Short of nuclear war or the sun exploding, life will find a way to survive, just maybe not human life. That’s fine with me, I think the earth should return to an eden status minus humans.

Our species has done nothing but damage to the natural world, Time to become extinct and let other life forms have the earth to themselves IMO.

The universe is trying to kill us.

It’s all out of kilter, the natural environment is being destroyed everywhere, species are becoming extinct, Man and his cities are growing everywhere like some horrible plague. But what is happening can be no worse than what happened in the last Ice Age and the Earth will abide. (I hope).

” How long till we listen to what our planet it telling us? ”

Parse that ” we ” into the many varying viewpoints on this and your answer, unfortunately, will be, too long.

One interesting thing that comes from Krause’s work is that noise pollution can interfere with animal communication. Krause touched on that briefly when he talked about the jet’s noise drowning out the frogs. This article elaborates on this.

@LostInParadise Yes, I have heard of that too! Poor little frogs. :-(
I even water all the tree spiders webs over here on hot evenings like tonight. I mist the entire nature area behind my house so all the little critters can cool off too.

Devil’s advocate here. Not that I necessarily believe this, but hasn’t survival always been based upon adaptation and assimilation?

People say we’re interfering with nature, but aren’t we a part of it (and a small part, at that, in terms of the age of the planet). Do YOU get to define what is natural and what is not?

We interfere on behalf of species that are going extinct. We protect them and coddle them (if they’re cute) when it might have been their time to expire.

If we drive ourselves into extinction, who’s to say that isn’t part of the “natural” plan?

^^^ Quite possibly, and we’re doing a damn fine job of it too. lol

I’d say though, that there is a big. difference between a species becoming extinct due to natural phenomenon vs. human encroachment and loss of habitat.
Many species extinction is the direct result of human hunting, loss of habitat and encroachment. Ice ages, meteors and other “natural” extinction events pale in comparison to what humans have done in the last several hundred years.

@Coloma My point is, if we weren’t dropped here by an external source, humans are natural and act according to our “nature”.

@laureth Excellent link. I know intellectually that when we first arrived on these shores they teemed with wildlife beyond anything I can imagine today. There were so many passenger pigeons they would darken skies for an hour as they flew overhead. Capt. John Smith, the commander of the Jamestown Settlement in Virginia said that the chesapeake bay was so filled with fish one didn’t need a line or net. You could dip a frying pan in and come up with dinner. The West was covered with great herds of American Bison as far as the eye could see. I’ve never seen an America like that, and so my sense of loss comes from my own limited experience, but even that, stretching over nearly 7 decades, is a deeply depressing scene. Where I grew up there was one main road. There were fruit orchards and a big vegetable garden behind our house, then a small corn farm. All else was forest. Now it is all roads and housing projects, stores, a school. So much habitat gone.

@janbb My feelings exactly.

@josie I understand what you are saying, and I have to admit that other than trivial actions like this and membership in groups that push for wildlife and nature conservation, there isn’t much I can do. But I do not accept that destroying the planet that sustains us is inherent to human nature. For most of human existence, we lived simple lives that did nothing to upset the balance of nature. Primitive peoples still do. We’re no longer primitive. With enough education and awareness, we can reverse our wrongs and find ways to live in harmony with nature. We will either do that, or nature will extinguish enough of us to make it so. The choice is ours.

@Coloma Sounds idylic. It reminds me of where I spent my childhood.

@Rarebear Perhaps so.

@flutherother Unless we do something really stupid like fight WWIII with unrestrained use of nuclear weapons and bioweapons, I suspect that mankind will adapt. Every sign points to it getting way, way worse before it gets better. We will likely touch of a mass extinction greater than that which ended the age of the dinosaurs. But a remnant will survive, and biodiversity will emerge again.

@Neodarwinian I am pretty sure you are right.

@LostInParadise Yes. Navy super-sonar seems to be damaging and killing whales and dolphin as well.

@Blueroses We certainly are a part of nature, but we are currenly the only part capable of contemplating that fact, and comprehend that our continued comfortable existence depends on our caring for the rest of nature around us rather than just clear cutting it till roads and strip malls are all that cover the planet’s land masses.

Who is to say what ought to be the natural plan? Because we can think about it, we are.

I always like listening to the 90 Second Naturalist (and his voice compared to which street I’m on, is always my gauge for whether I’ll be early or late for work) and he’s often talking about our corrective measures to protect a species.

It’s not always human-caused threats.

Two I remember are: The “Little Penguins” of New Zealand are threatened by foxes who can swim from other islands. So humans introduced sheepdogs or “penguin dogs” to protect them. (First problem was the penguins would die from heart failure when the dogs started barking and herding, but that was addressed through training). Now they have mass-produced and are at a hundred times their previous population.

Second, is the small bird that was threatened by Steller Jays because both like to nest near human campgrounds and this little bird’s egg is a total bonus treat for the Jays.

We use aversion tactics for a smart bird. Inject a chicken egg with a substance like ipecac. Instant puking.

Now, I’m not sure if I’m in favor of this, but the idea of a bunch of jays vomiting like a good frat party makes me laugh.

We interfere. Because we can think and act.

@Blueroses Hehe. No question it’s a delicate system and sometimes our best intentioned efforts blow up in our faces. Which brings up one other thing going for us. We can learn form our mistakes.

@ETpro I’m going to guess that “learn form our mistakes” was intentional

@Blueroses Ha! I wish I could honestly claim it was, but believing that would be a mistake.