Social outrage and advocacy

On the way to my first semester of college, I passed a car with a bumper sticker that read, “Nuke a gay whale for Jesus.” In the early 1980s (Reagan-era) no one grasped the idea, let alone the meaning, of political correctness yet. This simple sticker encompassed the social outrages and advocacy issues of the day. “No Nukes” raged after Three Mile Island; ranging from elephants and wolves to children, the latest “Save the…”-themed iteration was “Save the Whales.” Gay rights finally gained a foothold more than a decade after the Stonewall riots and as HIV/AIDS began its rampage through the world. And, well, you know, Jesus, an enduring point of derision, adoration, and divisiveness.

Save the Whales

I remember those “Save the…” campaigns. A few years past the signing of the Endangered Species Act of 1973 (ESA) extensive vitriolic opposition insisted that this law, meant to protect species and the habitat required to sustain them, would curtail industry and cause undue harm to economic development. The idea that any species needed saving met resistance. And, really, so what if a species goes extinct?

The ESA says that individual species need company, critical habitat, and connectivity. I doubt, in 1973, the authors of the ESA would have specified that species need breeding opportunities, hidden in the “need company” and “connectivity” categories – as individuals need the opportunity to meet potential mates. Nothing lives in a vacuum.

“Species loneliness’ identifies the intense solitude that we are fashioning for ourselves as we strip the Earth of the other life with which we share it.” R. MacFarlane, Underland, A deep time journey

Save the humans from themselves

Despite human-perceived otherness, separateness, and higher life form-ness, humans need other humans. Like the species we are trying to save, we need connectivity to each other and the world around us. We need food, water, shelter. Every habitat has a carrying capacity. As the population grows, we need to do more with the remaining resources without destroying what’s left. 

I wonder, were passenger pigeons considered critically imperiled when their population dropped to three billion? As many as five billion of this well-known extinct bird once flew east of the Rocky Mountains in flocks that reportedly passed overhead for hours and sometimes days. Near limitless flocks diminished to zero during the last 30 years of the 19th century. Market hunting, habitat loss, and human disruption of breeding colonies that once numbered in the hundreds of thousands of pairs destroyed the connectivity.

The ESA is designed to protect critically imperiled species from extinction as a “consequence of economic growth and development untampered by adequate concern and conservation.” I wouldn’t say the human population is critically imperiled (hello, eight billion). Our current global condition, rampant changing climate, and the subsequent increasing catastrophic weather and human crises resulted from untampered economic growth and development. It does not appear that the ESA has caused undue harm to economic development.

Intended to take no more than two years, the process to list endangered species currently averages 12 years. In the ESA’s 50-year lifespan, 1,652 species have been listed in the U.S. Only 85 of these have been delisted—11 due to extinction. As many as another 50 species went extinct while waiting to be listed. As economic development continues to harm the species (human and otherwise) of the world by reducing and polluting critical habitats, climate change exerts itself more heavily. And as the listing process drags into decades, is it time to list humans? 

Where are the humans?

This morning, I Googled “ESA” for background information; Emotional Support Animal (ironic that this ranks so highly) and European Space Agency filled the first page of results. The Endangered Species Act has fallen off the front page of life and into the obscure corners of historical hysteria that we were changing the species composition of the Earth. The Endangered Species Act has been overshadowed by the looming climate crisis that may make all current species obsolete. 

Where are the humans in this? We continue to drag out the ESA listing process. We continue to consume fossil fuels. We continue to expand our population. We continue to expand resource extraction. We continue to expand our water consumption. We continue to expand our habitat consumption. We continue to create and transport nuclear waste. We continue to expand use of chemical fertilizer, pesticide, herbicide, cleaning compounds. We continue… We continue… We continue…

At what point do we realize we expanded beyond our capacity? At what point do we understand if we foul this nest, no other planet exists on which to build a new one? Nothing lives in a vacuum. If we can’t get it together to save other species, can we do it for ours?

Would a current sticker say “Queer Jesus rode the plutonium train to the climate change extinction grounds”?

“It has been said that people of the modern world suffer a great sadness, a “species loneliness” – estrangement from the rest of Creation. We have built this isolation with our fear, with our arrogance, and with our homes brightly lit against the night.” Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants