Birds, Bees, Frogs, And A Grass Carpet: Semirandom Thoughts About The State Of Our “House”

Julie Trachman

Dedication:

This article is dedicated to our recently departed colleague, Prof. Mike Vozick. He was an educator, an environmentally concerned citizen, a life-long activist and as one colleague put it a "gadfly," in the best sense of the word.

One of the scenes that has remained most vivid in my mind since I read Stranger in a Stranger Land in high school was the depiction of a living grass carpet in the living room of one of the characters (Heinlein 63-65). This was characterized as a luxury item in the book. I am starting to think that Heinlein was quire prescient. At least for those of us living in urban settings (and year by year, more of us human beings are proportionally dwelling in city landscapes), we are surrounded increasingly by concrete and ocher man-made materials and less and less by the trappings of nature. I am not sure if you have considered the extent to which this transformation has an impact on our well-being. There are studies such as the one recently published by Alcock and colleagues (1253 - I254), which indicate that moving to a green space improves one's mental health and these effects are not short lived. Books have been written regarding how children growing up today in the technology era receive less exposure to nature and how chis perceived lack of exposure has led to problems in their physical and emotional development (Louv).

We don't usually think about this but we are all interconnected. No, I am not just talking about the Six Degrees of Separation (Guare) interconnectedness but rather that all living things, hum an beings, planes, bacteria et al., share a relationship with one another, evolutionarily and in other ways (Bhattacharjee 153). To a good extent, I believe, many of us reared with Western thinking forger this and think char human beings are at the top of the "totem pole" with perhaps the exception of the gods as evidenced by the notion of the Great Chain of Being. However, at an instinctive level, I think many of us recognize this. The evolutionary biologist, E.O. Wilson, called chis genetically based " hard-wiring" where we are fascinated by natural stimuli and affiliate emotionally with living organisms in our environment, biophilia (Barbiero 11). TI1ink about how many instances when you have time off, you escape to a natural setting like a park, a beach or even your backyard or garden. Even growing plans in one's home or having a pet are manifestations of this.

Rachel Carson captured the poignancy of chis phenomenon in her book Silent Spring, which made our society rethink its excessive use of the long-lived DDT and ocher insecticides.

DDT use on a large scale helped to control malaria-carrying mosquitoes in the U.S. and throughout the world (Carson 266; Wargo 175). Other practices also contributed to increased pesticide use by the mid-1900s. ln many U.S. towns and cities, the stately Dutch elm trees lined street after street instead of having more mixed tree populations. Use of pesticides on a large scale was also prompted by in­creased occurrence of single-crop cultures {monoculture) to produce our food crops. With this decreased biodiversity in tree populations ;1nd food crops, the natural checks and balances are diminished thereby increasing the ability of their insect pests co flourish (Carson 10). However, rampant use of chemicals such as DDT, be­sides targeting insects relatively non-discriminatorily, "have the power ... co still the song of birds and the leaping of fish in the streams, to coat the leaves with a deadly film, and to linger on in soil..." (Carson 7).

The effects of insecticides such as DDT (or as Rachel Carson's called these insecticides, biocides) on our environment demonstrate our interconnectedness via the food web (food chain) if by no other means. DDT was used to curb Dutch elm disease. Taken up by organisms relatively low in the food web, higher organisms feed on those organisms. ln a process called biomagnification or bioaccumulation, DDT accumulates in fats and is passed along in the food chain because in each successive organism, the DDT becomes more concentrated leading co more deleterious effects in the animals higher in the food web (chain) (Carson 22; Wargo 177). With birds, perhaps the most notorious example, the shells became coo chin and this caused problems with hatching. This almost drove the bald eagle co extinction. People also cook notice when in spring, its harbinger, the songbirds, were nor chirp­ing as usual (Carson 103).

Human activity is changing the planer, nor always for the good. Fortunately, individuals including Rachel Carson noticed the silencing of the birds and other detrimental environmental changes brought about by the wide-scale use of DDT. This was not easily accomplished bur the work of Carson and others were instrumental in forcing our government co ban DDT Likely, their efforts were helped by the fact that it was our national bird going extinct or the harbingers of spring disappearing. Or maybe, the scientific evidence that DDT was being found not just in cow's milk (Carson 22; Wargo 183 -184) but even in human breast milk was the reason (Carson 23; Wargo I 85).

And how about what might be going on more insidiously or perhaps occurring at even more widespread levels? Or how about what might be occurring in the here and now? Many of you have seen headlines regarding colony collapse disorder affecting bee hives. During summer months, we see honey bees flitting from Rower to flower collecting nectar to bring back to their hives to convert into honey and collecting pollen for its protein content. We do not fully understand what is causing the bees to die off in massive numbers. Mites and other bee pathogens have been implicated but so has the use of neonicotinoid insecticides to coat plane seeds, a practice done w minimize susceptible planes from being damaged by insect para­sites (Tapparo 2592). The bees may be collateral damage in this case. We do not necessarily chink of chis outcome, but bees, which help in the cross-pollinations of planes, many of which are vital to our food supply, are a mainstay of our ecosystem.

And then there are the frogs - potentially one of the canaries in the coal mine when it comes to global di mare change. Although we in the tri-state area recently recognized a hitherto unknown species of frog living in our backyard (Foderaro A22), in many other parts of the world numerous species are dying off. They seem co be inflicted with a fungal disease, the spread of which is related to the changing climate in these locales (Rohr 1; Chachere). Because frogs are an integral part of the food chain (food web), I will hazard w say that their dying off will have numerous effects in the food web and will lead to an explosion in the population of certain insects (at lease the ones these frogs dine on), which may very well be insect vectors of human disease.

So why should we care about the.: birds, the bees, and the frogs; Or about the polar bears losing their frozen habitats in the Arctic Circle or the coral reefs disap­pearing due with the acidification of ocean water by absorbed carbon dioxide gas? These examples serve as "rips" of proverbial icebergs (which, by the way, along with many other ice masses on this planer are melting at increasingly rapid rates threatening to alter our coastal and other landscapes). Much has been written about the importance of biodiversity on this planer in regard to disappearing coral reefs (marine biodiversity hotspots) and disappearing tropical rainforests (land-based biodiversity hotspots) which are being cut down so land can be used to harvest crops desired by human beings (Wilson 20). Besides the loss of biodiversity with respect to tropical rainforests, this practice has contributed co global climate change since this lush vegetation serves as a carbon dioxide sink (planes carrying our photosynthesis which needs carbon dioxide) which, with the wood being burned in the disposal process, contributes to air-borne carbon dioxide.

Because of human activities such as the destruction of tropical rain forest, there are many who believe this planet is in the midst of the sixth mass extinction (Quammen; Wilson 13). The food web will unravel announcedly. Ecologists recognize that biodiversity, with its manifold interconnections between the various living organisms make the ecosystem more resilient, especially when placed under extreme stress. Without chis biodiversity chat we have been privileged to have on this planer up until now, even small stresses might lead co catastrophic immediate or even delayed consequences (Foster). At the anthropocentric level, human beings will lose access to untold possible medicines that might serve as chemotherapeutic cures for various cancers, infectious diseases, etc. (Wilson 3).

Imbalances among flora and fauna will be created and or her unforeseen consequences will likely arise including the increased appearance of emerging infectious diseases (a bad outcome at lca.sc from the human perspective). And yes, I have to confess to the face chat I, like you, are co some extreme anthropocentric and it is to be expected (Bourdeau). However, I have become less so over rime, as I have gained knowledge and become more appreciative of our ties to ocher living organisms on chis planer and their inherent value (not just from the human perspective). Many other cultures including quite a few Eastern religions (Bourdeau) as well a num­ber of the Native Indian tribal cultures (Momaday) have espoused the view that all living organisms are all interconnected. 'They have also recognized the inherent value of land, water, air, their being non-living components of our ecosystem. Aldo Leopold in his seminal piece "The Land Ethic" reminds us that our well-being is directly linked co char of the physical environment around us and that these compo­nents all have an inhere value, which needs to be protected. Recognition of some of the damage we have done to our environment such as the Cuyahoga River sec on fire in June 1969 was reflected in Congress's enactment of the Clean Water Act in 1972 and the establishment of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in 1970 (Scott). These "agents" of the people and others like them help to safeguard our common environmental areas from the negligence of many industrial enterprises, which, if left to their own devices, think very narrowly of their own immediate needs. Such narrow thinking leads to issues discussed in Garrett Hardin's Tragedy of the Commons. [n reading John Bellamy Foster's excerpt where he contextualizes the four ecology laws of Barry Commoner's with respect to capitalism, one gees a better undemanding as to why capitalistic societies are increasingly :n odds with nature (Foster).

Accidents such as the British Petroleum (BP) oil spill and natural disasters such as the 2011 tsunami that debilitated the Fukushima Nuclear Reactor in Japan do happen, and they severely damage the environment on a large scale. Bur one also hears of companies illegally (or even amazing, legally) dumping toxic wastes into streams and committing ocher similar indiscretions. Some of the damage due to such situations will have implications for many generations to come. This brings us to the wisdom of the Iroquois Indians sometimes referred to as the Seven Generation Sustainability (although some would quibble char the original text does not explicitly say seven generations). The point though is a good one. We should not just be chinking of today bur also of the long-lived consequences of what we do to our environment. Because of their wide scope, the BP oil spill and Fukushima disas­ter are difficult enough to deal with in respect their aftermath. However, there may be even more serious challenges than these and other insults to the environment char will still require our attention.

We need to become less myopic and scare thinking along the lines of the seven-generation sustainability concept of the Iroquois. In some cases, we need to proceed in a downright more cautious fashion. The Precautionary Principle, which recommends that an action should not be taken if there is significant potential for deleterious consequences, is to some except practiced by many of our government agencies such as the Food and Drug Administration (Lougheed). After resting, some drugs and food additives do not ever make it to the market. Ochers, with additional evaluation, gee pulled if there are indications that there are problems when the drug or food additive are used on a larger scale. But in some cases, it seems like all caution is being thrown to the wind, especially when there are strong lobbies pushing for their product or promoting their industry. For example, the majority of scientists today believe global climate change is occurring due to anthropogenic carbon dioxide release from the burning of fossil fuels, among other reasons; however, the coal, oil and gas industries in conjunction with certain legislators who do not wane to seriously consider the evidence and instead wane to promote economic interests, no matter what might happen to the environment, hold sway (Chameides 5766; Carpenter).

There are limits to how much "insult" this planet can rake. Some of the previous mass extinctions appear to be due to natural disasters such as meteor strikes or large-scale volcanic eruptions. The type of life on this planer has dramatically changed as a result of these non-living {a biotic) interactions with the living (biotic). The type of life on this planer has also changed dramatically because of living forces (biotic influences). For example, production of oxygen by blue-green bacteria bil­lions of years ago drastically decreased the presence of anaerobes at lease on the planer's surface and these changes have been implicated in changing the non-living landscape as well (oxygen is very reactive chemically).

The interconnectedness of the living with the non-living environment forms the basis of the controversial Gaia Hypothesis (Moody) promoted by chemise James Lovelock. Lovelock and his proponents, one of whom is the eminent biologist Lynn Margulis, chink of the Earth as one living organism. They believe that the long-term stability of the ocean's salinity, atmospheric composition, temperature regulation, ere. have been maintained by homeostatic mechanisms at the planetary level (Lovelock Gaia; Lovelock "Living Earth''). Bur even if he has tempered his statements somewhat in recent past (Moody; Johnston), Lovelock himself recognizes that due to man's actions such as the anthropogenic release of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, we will be pushing the planer beyond the capacity of these homeostatic mechanisms.

Regardless of whether or not one is a proponent of Lovelock, the state of our "house" has undergone considerable "insult." The, human beings, need to look at the environment in a different light-not just to be plundered for our economic benefit. Some of these ways of viewing the environment have been explored metaphonically by environmental economizes (Raymond). The five metaphors described provide a "continuum of perspectives on human - environment relationships." They range from a closed loop metaphor, which implies char humans have a right to use ecosystem services, as long as they are being used ·'sustainably or can be properly subscribed with equivalence natural or human-made services" co an ecocultural community metaphor where the ''humans have a responsibility to range ecosystems on the basis of the connections among the spiritual, physical, and social worlds." This lase metaphor is reminiscent of how many Native Indian cultures and Eastern religions view their environment (Bourdeau). The humans living in these societies are often described as living in harmony with nature, an ideal that [ feel we need to strive for if we do nor wane to destroy our planer, the only "house" we know.

TO THE READER:

As educators, we strive to provide our students with knowledge so that they will understand the world around them better and they will be able to develop their critical thinking skills. Introducing students to science achieves both. We also want to instill in our students an interest in life-long learning as well as the notion that when they graduate, they should become civically engaged citizens. Among the ways to do so is by introducing students to important real-life environmental issues chat 1 have described in chis essay. I hope 1 have provided you with some ideas co cake into your classrooms.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

I would like to thank Prof. Chris Paskoff for reading the manuscript and providing useful suggestions and insights on environmental philosophy issues.

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