conservation

Global Warming Not Even in Top Five

Nowadays, to hear some lightweight, so-called environmentalists yammer and yack, the one and only environmental cause is their holy war against global warming, a.k.a. climate change.

I can’t count the number of times I’ve heard activists and the media treat climate interchangeably with environment, as if the natural environment consists of nothing but the climate, or as if manmade climate change was the only threat to the environment out there.

As California enters its summer and early fall months – the mostly rainless June, July, August and September – Hollywood’s rich and famous are likely to keep their lawns green despite Sacramento’s restrictions and their conservation-minded neighbors’ scorn. The technique known throughout the state as drought-shaming has had little effect on Kim Kardashian, Barbra Streisand and Jennifer Lopez.

On Sunday, World Water Day will be celebrated. The annual event is intended to help understand the vital role water plays in living a fulfilling life, and to plan for future water conservation.

A “long time” depends on perspective – to an impatient child it’s measured in minutes, to a historian in decades or centuries, and to the geologist in millennia. The size of humanity and our corresponding scale of influence have grown to the point where we are now a “geologically significant” force. As you might guess, our long-term influence on the planet is not for the better. We are causing a mass extinction.

Desalination Is No Panacea

If you are a population activist, you are likely to be disappointed if you do a word search for “population” in the 148-page Highlights of the massive 841-page U.S. National Climate Assessment (Climate Change Impacts in the United States) that was released to the public the first week of May 2014.

As an undergraduate majoring in fisheries and wildlife management, I learned numerous wildlife management techniques, tools and technologies.

The earth is our home. Unless we preserve the rest of life, as a sacred duty, we will be endangering ourselves by destroying the home in which we evolved, and on which we completely depend.

Edward O. Wilson
Biologist, Naturalist

On Maui’s southern coast, tourist foot traffic and development have gradually increased dune erosion and left the Wedge-tailed Shearwater (Puffinus pacificus) without places to burrow. Although the Shearwater is not officially labeled endangered, biologists consider the species at risk.