When I first started covering environmental stories in the early 1980s, my understanding of the crisis was essentially centered around “point sources.”<\/p>\n
That is, if you stop a factory or coal-fired power plant from pumping pollution into the atmosphere, or prevent the paving-over of a forest, or stop the sale of DDT, you effectively solve The Problem.<\/p>\n
Protect endangered species and you save The Planet.<\/p>\n
Even on big stories, like the Exxon Valdez spill — which I covered for NPR, the BBC and Alaska Public Radio — there was a clear line of cause-and-effect.<\/p>\n
Tanker plus rock equals contaminated Prince William Sound.<\/p>\n
But now there’s a growing sense in the scientific community that the larger fabric of global ecosystems is at the point of unraveling.<\/p>\n
The entire ocean is being overfished and inundated with pollution. Whole chains of key habitat and migration corridors have been disrupted.<\/p>\n
Which leads us round to events like honeybee colony disorder and white nose syndrome in bats. <\/p>\n
Obviously, it’s possible that ecological events like these are essentially ‘natural.’ Long before humans came on the scene, wild populations experienced disease, disruption, and even extinction.<\/p>\n
But it’s also possible that events like these are something like stress fractures.<\/p>\n
There are growing calls — the latest at the House Natural Resources Committee hearing yesterday — for a new kind of environmental monitoring.<\/p>\n
A sort of CDC organization designed to recognize and respond quickly to ecological systems that have reached a tipping point or an unraveling.<\/p>\n
The controversial question for such an organization, of course, would be: what do we do? <\/p>\n
How do we respond to environmental problems that are far more three-dimensional and complex (and potentially grave) than we once understood?<\/p>\n
My guess is that we will see more events like this white nose syndrome, triggered by a convergence of climate change, invasive species, human-produced toxins and habitat degradation.<\/p>\n
If so, we may find ourselves forced to make changes to our lifestyles and consumption habits that would have seemed like science fiction only a couple of decades ago.<\/p>\n
Your thoughts? Are you worried by these events? What do you think we should do about them?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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