DAILY QUICK READ - JUNE 16, 2016

Disappointing To Say the Least

We’ve give Norway lots of credit for its greenhouse gas efforts, but this report erases a lot of goodwill.  This is industrial whaling with government support and the goal of expanding the killing.  Tragic.

They get a lot of praise for their progressive society and high living standard, but at least in one regard, Norway definitely doesn’t deserve any praise: whaling. A new report released today, calls on the international community to respond to Norway’s systematic whaling expeditions and efforts to loosen international regulations on whaling.

But the country’s whaling industry doesn’t seem interested in preserving the international reputation. The Norwegian government itself is funding a number of projects to promote not only whale sales, but also alternative commercial products derived from whales, including dietary supplements, medicines, and cosmetics. In fact, whale oil seems to be a highly desired product in the Norwegian cosmetic industry.

Besides cosmetics, where new applications are being developed for whale oil with the help of the Norwegian government, whale meat is being used for animal feed and sold for human consumption at SPAR markets.

Greenpeace Captain

I’m a bit up and down regarding Greenpeace.  I sometimes question the broad scope of the causes in which they become involved, but I never question their commitment to the environment.  If our planet is indeed a boat, then Greenpeace is one of the preeminent organizations attempting to keep that boat afloat.

I’ve been a captain for Greenpeace for 35 years, fighting for our environment in every corner of the globe. I’ve confronted polluters, poachers, smugglers, terrorists, criminals—both private and corporate, armies, navies, vigilantes and you-name-it. I’ve been arrested, jailed, had my ships chased, shot at, boarded and attacked, and had French commandos bomb and sink my ship under my feet—killing a crew-mate in the process.

Wherever I go, people ask me why I continue to take the risks that I take in defending the Earth. For me, the answer is simple: I care about what our planet will be like in the future. Not in the distant future, but the very-near-term-future in which my daughters Anita and Natasha (ages 24 and 20) will be living while raising their own children.

An analogy I like to use about our planet is that we’re all on one boat, and with more than 7 billion people on it, it’s actually a pretty small boat. As we drill holes into the bottom of the boat we’re all living on, the water is rising. And yet we keep on drilling holes, faster and faster, ignoring the fact that the water is lapping at our knees. How much longer can we continue to ignore that what we are doing to our planet is affecting us all? Saving the whales, the forests and the atmosphere is great, no question. One of the main reasons that environmentalists and activists do what they do is that we are trying to save us from ourselves.

Take a look at Captain Willcox's book.

Extinction Isn’t So Bad

After the Permian extinction, it only took about 3.35 million years to accomplish a “speedy recovery” of marine reptiles and fish.  So, we’ve got that going for us once we get this Sixth Extinction over with.  Something to look forward to…

Reptiles rapidly invaded the seas soon after a global extinction wiped out most life on Earth, according to a new study led by University of California, Davis, researchers.

Global climate change — likely triggered by massive volcanic eruptions — killed off more than 95 percent of all species about 250 million years ago, at the end of the Permian period. Land reptiles colonized the ocean in just 3.35 million years at the beginning of the Triassic, a speedy recovery in geologic time, the researchers report today (June 13) in the journal Scientific Reports.

“Our results fit with the emerging view that the recovery was faster than previously thought,” said study co-author Ryosuke Motani, professor of paleobiology at UC Davis’ Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences.

Who Needs Zoos – Good Question

There are zoos and there are zoos, but if we insist that zoos (and aquariums) do their jobs and if we patronize and support those quality institutions, then we have chance to preserve wildlife.  Zoos can do that and return it to the wild.

Responsible zoos and aquariums exist to facilitate and promote the conservation of animals. And the need for intensive conservation campaigns is now more urgent than ever before: Our world is currently in the midst of the “Sixth Extinction,” a term coined by Elizabeth Kolbert in her Pulitzer Prize-winning book of the same name. Unlike the five preceding die-offs, which were precipitated by natural events—such as those that killed off the dinosaurs, exterminating three-quarters of all species on the planet—the current mass extinction is a result of human activities encroaching on wild spaces.

Today’s zoos and aquariums are uniquely positioned to combat those evolving threats. Using robust and sophisticated breeding programs, these institutions fund and facilitate countless initiatives to propagate species and preserve genetic biodiversity, and then reintroduce critically endangered or extinct species into the wild.

Turn Half the Planet Into a Wildlife Preserve

This is a provocative proposal.  Of course the people living in the half of the planet that will be turned over to wildlife may have some objections.  Unfortunately, his logic regarding the need for viable habitat space suggests that without such an extreme solution, there is no hope to retain the number of species and diversity necessary to sustain them.

E.O. Wilson, one of the world’s most respected biologists, has proposed a radical, wild and challenging idea to our species: set aside half of the planet as nature preserves.

The reason why half is the answer, according to Wilson, is located deep in the science of ecology.

“The principal cause of extinction is habitat loss. With a decrease of habitat, the sustainable number of species in it drops by (roughly) the fourth root of the habitable area,” Wilson wrote via email, referencing the species-area curve equation that describes how many species are capable of surviving long-term in a particular area.

By preserving half of the planet, we would theoretically protect 80% of the world’s species from extinction, according to the species-area curve. If protection efforts, however, focus on the most biodiverse areas (think tropical forests and coral reefs), we could potentially protect more than 80% of species without going beyond the half-Earth goal. In contrast, if we only protect 10% of the Earth, we are set to lose around half of the planet’s species over time. This is the track we are currently on.