Saving The Whales, And Ourselves

TO THE HUMAN EYE, the right whale is perhaps the strangest looking life form to ever swim the planet, excepting squid. only, it can't swim. it actually uses its inherent buoyancy to float submerged in the north Atlantic. the size of a school bus, it looks like an oblong rock covered with barnacles, with a huge gaping maw of a mouth. we had better appreciate this magnificent animal while we still can; there are only about four hundred and fifty living, and according to the experts, it will be extinct within two decades, unless drastic action is taken immediately, which does not appear likely. the right whale has stopped reproducing, as if giving up. It can give birth once every three or four years. Of the seventy or so available for birthing this year, none have gotten pregnant, and none will. the reasons for this are the usual suspects: human activity and climate change. In other words, human activity. its migratory patterns, like those of most species, are changing due to global warming, and are taking it into areas with less abundant food sources. entanglements in fishing nets play a role, as do collisions with ocean going vessels. the animal's high fat content make it a tempting target not only for illicit hunters but also for sharks, and other predators. they appear to be stressed out, which could account for its decline in fertility. there is now a constant background of human made noise, machinery, in almost every region of the world's oceans; the right whale is not the only species negatively impacted by the noise of humankind. The whale could be saved with several simple but effort and expense laden steps, according to teh experts, but probably won't be, due to a lack of political will, as mentioned above. prohibiting fishing and al other ships from its habitat would be helpful, as would enriching its food supply by adding nutrition to the areas in which they move. Complacency about the state of the environment is ubiquitous. A case in point is Gregg Easterbrook's new book "Its Better than It Looks: Reasons For Optimism In An Age Of Fear". An interesting read, and uplifting, but, a bit too optimistic on the environment. Easterbrook points out that poverty is being greatly reduced world wide, that modern medicine and technology are improving and lengthening everyone's life, that the crime rate is down, and that there are fewer wars than normal, and all that, all true. Indeed, much of our pervasive pessimism is unfounded. By almost any measure, humankind is better off than ever before. But he runs astray when he tells us that recent predictions concerning the rate of global warming have been too pessimistic, and that the actual rate of climate change is slower than expected. This is simply not true. In fact, plant and animal species are becoming extinct at an unprecedented rate, the result of human activity, the "anthropocene". The average rise in average global temperatures is accelerating, with no relent possible, because the carbon content of teh atmosphere is still increasing. As it now stands, our species will either be extinct or living in extremely hostile climatic conditions within a few generations. Easterbrook is accurate, however, when he points out that the emergence of solar and wind energy offers great hope. its merely a matter of whether clean energy will dominate the market place soon enough, and whether existing damage will be reversed in time. We can only hope, and work hard to survive.