The Same Difference?

I've been reading the book, The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine by Michael Lewis about the financial crisis of 2007–2008  and had a sort of "A-ha" moment. In general, and the short version, it goes like this:

• The supposedly smart ones (financial advisor, business leaders, politicians) did not believe the data that a catastrophe was imminent in the subprime field because, if it happened the catastrophe would be so great, it couldn't happen.
• The wise ones (business leaders, politicians) do not believe the data on that climate change catastrophe will happen because, if it happened the catastrophe would be so great, it can't happen.

The even more generalized view:

• The belief is that the greater the possibility of a catastrophe, the less likely it is to happen- if not impossible.

• When catastrophes DO happen, it is not the financial advisors, business leaders, and politicians who are impacted the most. They make money and are often even not implicated in the causes of the catastrophe.

•  It will always be the poor and those who have few resources to do anything about it who will be hurt the most.

I will just leave it at that.

An Invasive Species

Such beauty as they grow along the side of paths and the edges of fields.

They add such color, standing out against the green and reflecting the bright sun.

So I posted some pictures I took on Facebook. I thought they were phlox.

Nope.

It's Dames Rocket.. and we don't need its colors.

A friend caught the pictures and added a link from the UW-Extension that cleared things up.

You have probably noticed dame’s rocket beautiful blooms, but did you know that this beautiful plant is also invasive? Dame’s rocket was introduced to North America in the 1600’s. It is often found in moist, wooded areas, but has the ability to also invade open areas. The plant’s three-month-long blooming period and ability to set abundant seed have contributed to its spread.

Dame’s rocket is often confused with garden phlox (Phlox paniculata), because the flower colors, clustered blooms and bloom time are similar.

Well, at least I'm not alone in my mistake. But it did get me thinking about the issue. Such "invasive species" can be- and often are- beautiful. Like I noticed as I drove around town the day I took the pictures, they seem to be a "value-add" to the scenery. But they have difficulty maintaining appropriate boundaries. They take over. They even change the ecology by pushing away native life.

That got me to thinking, so I looked up a definition:

Invasive Species:
--a plant or animal that is not native to a specific location (an introduced species); and has a tendency to spread, which is believed to cause damage to the environment, human economy and/or human health.

Yep. It made sense- in some ways that are not comfortable.

Is it possible that the most "invasive species" on the planet is us? Homo sapiens sapiens? Just our very expansion and obliteration of eco-systems, polluting water and air thus damaging even our own health would certainly fit the definition.

I know there are those who can quote the charge to Adam and Eve to have dominion over the earth and subdue it, but until the last 150 years that could not mean destruction of the very place we are living. Then, when we do cause severe damage to the ecology, say through climate change, we blame it on the earth itself.

And that is not even using the examples of Europeans devastating the native human life of the Americas or enslaving other humans.It doesn't begin to describe the impact of war or the insatiable drive to expand territory.

Yes, we can be beautiful and creative, strong and hopeful, but those Dames Rockets along the roads and paths are also beautiful. But what have they already replaced?

Have we humans become an out-of-control species, a curse on the very planet we exist on? Are we truly the most destructive invasive species around?

If so, the very thing that has made us so hellishly powerful may also be what can turn things around. We have self-awareness, intelligence and the ability to think. Cognitive awareness may give us the chance to work on these problems and call the behaviors into question.

We can only hope it happens in time.

So Well Put

Some people have a way of boiling it down to the basics. Either that or have good editors. Bill Nye, the Science Guy, says it all.

As posted on Facebook by the Daily Kos

A 45-year Memory: I Was There

A beautiful April day, as I remember it. (I just checked- I was right.) It was sunny Wednesday and almost 70 degrees F. as students sat on the lawn and heard speakers tell us about the environmental dangers facing us. I was a senior and it was the first Earth Day!

The first Earth Day family had participants and celebrants in two thousand colleges and universities, roughly ten thousand primary and secondary schools, and hundreds of communities across the United States. More importantly, it "brought 20 million Americans out into the spring sunshine for peaceful demonstrations in favor of environmental reform." It now is observed in 192 countries, and coordinated by the nonprofit Earth Day Network, chaired by the first Earth Day 1970 organizer Denis Hayes, according to whom Earth Day is now "the largest secular holiday in the world, celebrated by more than a billion people every year." Environmental groups have sought to make Earth Day into a day of action which changes human behavior and provokes policy changes.
--Link

Images from Lehigh's first Earth Day celebration, from the Epitome, 1970.

I wish we had come farther than we have. Yes, many advances have occurred, but the past years of extreme push-back against climate change is amazingly short-sighted. Everything has become an even greater point of divisiveness and in many places just the mention of "climate change" gets people more divided and hostile than the mention of marriage equality. We have not yet truly accepted that this is the only home we have. And we better take care of it.

It's Now Official

A significant symbolic vote. Whatever that means.

Let it be recorded for history that late in the afternoon of January 21, 2015, the United States Senate formally acknowledged that climate change is real.
--Link

They could not agree on what is causing it.

A long way to go, but any journey begins with a single step.