* Extremely interesting - earth, population, bees & worms *

[Guest guest]

Earth Day Cometh and Earth Day Goeth

 

And Where have all the Bees Gone?

 

Earth Day Report by Captain Paul Watson

 

 

Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not

sure about the former.

 

- Albert Einstein

 

(1879 - 1955)

 

Earth Day is almost here. I don't believe in Earth Day myself. I think it's

a little silly to devote one single day of the year to being concerned about

the environment, but I suppose one day is better than no day at all.

 

 

Having been an environmental activist since 1968, I have seen the movement

go up and down like a roller coaster in popularity. It was big in 1972 with

the Environmental Conference in Stockholm which I attended and it became big

again in 1992 with the U.N. Environmental Conference in Rio De Janeiro that I

also attended. I remember that the priority issue in 1972 was the danger of

escalating human populations but by 1992, that concern was not even on the

agenda.

 

Well we are approaching the end of another 20 year period and it looks like

ecology is in vogue again thanks to global warming and a few other scary

things. Green is once again popular.

 

 

I can always tell when the environment is getting to be faddish again. My

indicator is the number of lectures I am booked for around this time of year.

It reached its peak in 1992, practically disappeared for awhile and now it's

coming around again.

 

 

What worries me is that the movement is constantly being sidetracked by the

issue of the day.

 

 

It's global warming now. When we were trying to warn people about global

warming and climate change twenty years ago, no one was interested. Now it's

become the " in " issue and the big organizations are tapping the public for

donations to address the problem although no one has come up with anything that

makes much sense. But global warming is good for business if you're one of the

big bureaucratic organizations whose primary concern is really corporate self

preservation.

 

 

Greenpeace is even telling people that they can slow down global warming by

(and I kid you not) " singing in the shower " . Yep, you see all you have to do

is run the water, then get wet, shut the water off, and sing in the shower

as you lather up and then open up the faucet and rinse off. Ah, so simple to

save the world.

 

 

The problem is that these big organizations are too politically correct to

address the ecologically correct solutions.

 

Instead they are baffling everyone with abstract concepts like carbon

trading and carbon storage or trying to sell us a new hydrid Japanese car.

 

Even Al Gore with his Inconvenient Truth totally ignored the most

inconvenient truth of all. I'll get to that in a moment.

 

 

But let's look at the number one cause of global greenhouse gas emissions.

 

 

First and foremost it is human over-population, the very same issue that was

the priority concern at the 1972 United Nations Conference on the

Environment in Stockholm.

 

 

It's 6.5 billion people folks.

 

 

Remember in 1950, the world population was 3 billion. It's now more than

doubled.

 

 

6.5 billion people produce one hell of an annual output of waste and utilize

an unbelievable amount of resources and energy.

 

 

And this number is rising minute by minute, day, by day, year by year.

 

 

And most of the people having children have no idea why they are even having

children other than that's what you do. Most of them don't really love their

children because if they did they would be very much involved in trying to

ensure that their children have a world to survive in.

 

 

Unless over-population is addressed, there is absolutely no way of slowing

down global greenhouse gas emissions.

 

 

But how do you do that within the context of economic systems that require

larger and larger numbers to perform the essential task of consuming products?

 

 

Corporations need workers and buyers. Governments need tax-payers,

bureaucrats and soldiers. More people means more money.

 

 

I've said for decades that the solution to all of our problems is simple. We

just need to live in accordance with the three basic laws of ecology.

 

 

First is the Law of Diversity. The strength of an eco-system lies in

diversity of species within it. Weaken diversity and the entire system will be

weakened and will ultimately collapse.

 

 

Second is the Law of Interdependence. All of the species within an

eco-system are interdependent. We need each other.

 

 

And the third law of Ecology is the Law of Finite Resources. There is a

limit to growth because there is a limit to carrying capacity.

 

 

Human populations are exceeding ecological carrying capacity.

 

 

Exceeding ecological carrying capacity is diminishing both resources and

diversity of species.

 

 

The diminishment of diversity is causing serious problems with

interdependence.

 

 

Albert Einstein once wrote that " if the bee disappeared off the surface of

the globe, then man would have only four years of life left. No more bees, no

more pollination, no more plants, no more animals, no more man. "

 

 

That is the Law of Interdependence.

 

 

 

Forget global warming folks. The disappearance of the honeybee could end our

existence as human beings on this planet far sooner than we think.

 

 

And the honey bee is in fact now disappearing. Why? We don't know why. It

could be genetically modified crops, I could be pesticides or it could be that

our cell phones are interfering with their ability to navigate.

 

 

Whatever the cause the fact is that they are disappearing. All around the

world bees are disappearing in a crisis called Colony Collapse Disorder.

 

 

And bees pollinate our plants. Everywhere on the planet, bees are hard at

work making it possible for you to live and enjoy life.

 

 

We hold on to our place on this planet by only a toehold. If anything

happens to the grass family, we are screwed. If the earthworms disappear, we are

in

big trouble. If the bees disappear, well according to Albert Einstein who was

considered somewhat smarter than most of us, we will have only four years.

Just enough time to get a college degree to discover that everything you

learned is relatively useless when sitting on the doorstep of global ecological

annihilation.

 

 

We are cutting down the forest and plundering the oceans of life. We are

polluting the soil, the air and the water and we are rapidly running out of

fresh water to drink.

 

 

Only corporations like Coke and Pepsi have figured out that water is more

valuable than gold. That is why they are bottling it in plastic bottles and

selling it. This week I saw a bottle of water in my hotel room that I could have

drunk for only $4.

 

 

Unbelievable. That means that water is now being sold for more than the

equivalent amount of gasoline. I hope that I'm not the only one who thinks this

is insanity.

 

 

Now for Al Gore's really inconvenient truth. In his film he does not mention

once that the meat and dairy industry that produces the bacon, the steaks,

the chicken wings and the milk is a larger contributor to greenhouse gas

emissions than the automobile industry. You see, Al may drive a Prius but he

likes

his burgers.

 

 

This is why the big organizations like Greenpeace and the Sierra Club will

not say a thing about the meat industry. Last year I saw Greenpeacers sitting

down for a baked fish meal onboard the Greenpeace ship Esperanza while

engaged in a campaign to oppose over-fishing.

 

 

When we pointed out that our Sea Shepherd ships serve only vegan meals, the

Greenpeace cook replied, " that's just silly. "

 

 

We see what we want to see and we rationalize everything else.

 

The oceans have been plundered to the point that 90% of the fish have been

removed from their eco-systems and at this very moment there is over 65,000

miles of long lines set in the Pacific Ocean alone and there are tens of

thousands of fishing vessels scouring the seas in a rapacious quest to scoop up

everything that swims or crawls.

 

 

This is ecological insanity.

 

 

The largest marine predator on the planet right now is the cow. More than

half the fish taken from the sea is rendered into fish meal and fed to domestic

livestock. Puffins are starving in the North sea to feed sand eels to

chickens in Denmark. Sheep and pigs have replaced the shark and the sea lion as

the

dominant predators in the ocean and domestic house cats are eating more fish

than all the world's seals combined. We are extracting some fifty to sixty

fish from the sea to raise one farm raised salmon.

 

 

This is ecological insanity.

 

 

Yet the demand for shark fin is rising in China. Ignorant people still want

to wear fur coats. In America, we order fries, a cheeseburger and a " diet "

coke.

 

 

Ecological insanity folks.

 

 

Last week a reporter called to ask me if I had really said that earth worms

are more important than people. I answered that yes I had. He then asked how

I could justify such a statement.

 

 

" Simple, " I answered. " Earthworms can live on the planet without people. We

cannot live on the planet without earthworms thus from an ecological point of

view, earthworms are more important than people. "

 

 

He said that I was insane for suggesting such a ridiculous idea when people

were made in the image of God, and earthworms were not.

 

 

What we have here of course is a failure to communicate between two

radically different world views. His which is anthropocentric and sees reality

as

human centred and mine which is biocentric and sees reality as including all

species equally working in interdependence. He sees us as divine and better than

all the other species and I see us as a bunch of arrogant primates out of

control.

 

 

But that's my two cents worth for Earth Day 2007.

 

 

Consider the humble honey bee and remember that the little black and yellow

insect you see flitting busily from flower to flower is all that stands

between us and our demise as a species on this planet.

 

 

We better see to it that they don't disappear.

 

 

 

May be freely published and distributed

 

 

Captain Paul Watson Founder and President of the Sea Shepherd Conservation

Society (1977- Co-Founder - The Greenpeace Foundation (1972) Co-Founder -

Greenpeace International (1979) Director of the Sierra Club USA (2003-2006) - The Farley Mowat Institute Director - _www.harpseals.org_

(http://www.harpseals.org/)

 

 

 

 

" Sail forth - steer for the deep waters only, Reckless O soul, exploring, I

with thee and thou with me, For we are bound where mariner has not yet dared

to go, And we will risk the ship, ourselves and all. " - Walt Whitman

 

_www.Seashepherd.org_ (http://www.seashepherd.org/) Tel: 360-370-5650 Fax:

360-370-5651

 

 

 

Address: P.O. Box 2616 Friday Harbor, Wa 98250 USA

 

 

 

 

 

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