by Lisa DiCaprio, Conservation Chair, Sierra Club NYC Group
On the first Earth Day, April 22, 1970, more than 20 million people participated in activities throughout the US. Earth Day facilitated the 1970 Clean Air Act, 1970 National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), 1972 Clean Water Act and the Endangered Species Act of 1973. [1] These bills received bipartisan support in Congress and were signed into law by President Richard Nixon, who also created the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) with a December 2, 1970 Executive Order.
Earth Day is annually celebrated by a billion people around the world. This year, the 50-year anniversary of Earth Day was commemorated virtually [2] due to the coronavirus pandemic, and in the context of the Trump administration’s unprecedented rollbacks of environmental regulations [3].
Despite all the global environmental activism and achievements since 1970, we are now on the precipice of irreversible climate change, the sixth great extinction, the transformation of large swaths of our planet into areas uninhabitable for humans, plants and animal species, irreparable harm to our oceans and unprecedented threats to human health from viruses that jump from wild animals to humans.
In this article, I will discuss and provide educational resources on Earth Day 50, the mass extinction of plants and animals, the coronavirus pandemic and our relationship to nature, the global wildlife trade, initiatives to protect wildlife, and Rachel Carson and our contemporary silent spring.
The Mass Extinction of Plants and Animals
The May 2019 UN Global Assessment Report on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services concluded that our human activities, such as urbanism and agriculture, have “severely altered” three-quarters of the land on the planet. We are now threatening the extinction of one million plant and animal species and accelerating the degradation of ecosystem services throughout the world. [4]
A new study, published by ecologist Gerardo Ceballos, conservation biologist Paul Ehrlich and environmentalist Peter Raven in the June 1, 2020 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, warns that the extinction of terrestrial vertebrate species is accelerating at a previously unanticipated rate and that 500 species are likely to disappear within the next two decades. As Rachel Nuwer summarizes their research in her June 1, 2020 New York Times article, “Mass Extinctions Are Accelerating, Scientists Report”: “The extinction rate among terrestrial vertebrate species is significantly higher than prior estimates, and the critical window for preventing mass losses will close much sooner than formerly assumed — in 10 to 15 years.”
Elizabeth Kolbert, the author of The Sixth Great Extinction: An Unnatural History [5], writes about our culpability in the current mass extinction in an October 2019 National Geographic essay, “What We Lose When Animals Go Extinct”:
The last mass extinction, which did in the dinosaurs some 66 million years ago, followed an asteroid impact. Today the cause of extinction seems more diffuse. It’s logging and poaching and introduced pathogens and climate change and overfishing and ocean acidification. But trace all these back and you find yourself face-to-face with the same culprit. The great naturalist E.O. Wilson has noted that humans are the “first species in the history of life to become a geophysical force.” Many scientists argue that we have entered a new geological epoch — the Anthropocene, or age of man. This time around, in other words, the asteroid is us. [6]
The Coronavirus Pandemic and Our Relationship to Nature
As of August 14, 2020, as depicted in the New York Times interactive, “Coronavirus Map: Tracking the Global Outbreak,” “The coronavirus pandemic has sickened more than 20,971,500 people, according to official counts. As of Friday afternoon, at least 760,700 people have died, and the virus has been detected in nearly every country . . .” In the US, the interactive map, “Coronavirus in the US: Latest Map and Case Count," shows that “more than 5,306,100 people in the United States have been infected with the coronavirus and at least 168,100 have died, according to a New York Times database.” Twenty-five percent of the people infected with the coronavirus live in the US, which only has four percent of the world’s population. [7]
The first coronavirus was identified by June Almeida in 1966. As Denise Gellene relates in her May 8, 2020 New York Times article, “Overlooked No More: June Almeida, Scientist Who Identified the First Coronavirus," Almeida was working at St. Thomas Hospital in London when British scientists asked her to identify a new virus that they labeled B814. She "used a powerful electron microscope to capture an image of a mysterious pathogen — the first coronavirus known to cause human disease . . . The images of B814 revealed that the virus was surrounded by a kind of halo, like a solar corona. The coronavirus was born. From her unpublished research and the work of others, Almeida immediately recognized that B814 was related to the infectious bronchitis virus, which causes serious diseases in chickens. But until the emergence of SARS in 2002 and now Covid-19, coronavirus was largely seen as posing little threat to people."
Today, “At least seven species of coronaviruses can infect humans, using our lungs as the staging ground for their schemes of genetic replication,” writes Kyle Harper in his article, “The Real Culprit is Civilization,” in the spring 2020 Time magazine Special Edition, The Science of Epidemics. [8]
Our relationship to nature is responsible for the current coronavirus pandemic and previous epidemics of zoonotic diseases (also known as zoonoses) that are caused by bacteria, viruses and parasites spread between animals and humans. These diseases include: AIDS (Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome), first reported in San Francisco in 1981; SARS-CoV-1 (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) in 2002–2003; MERS-CoV (Middle East Respiratory Syndrome) in Saudi Arabia in 2012; and periodic outbreaks of EVD (Ebola Virus Disease) in West Africa (2014–2016) and in the Democratic Republic of Congo (2015 and 2018–2020). [9]
For several decades, public health, environmental, wildlife conservation and animal rights organizations have warned about new zoonotic diseases transmitted by the mutation and jumping of viruses from wild animals to humans in wildlife markets in Central Africa and Southeast Asia, population growth and human encroachment into animal habitats, the increased consumption of wildlife, deforestation, the destruction of natural barriers between species, new contacts between humans and wild animals, and our exposure to viruses to which we have no immunity.
According to a December 23, 2017 article published in the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) journal Emerging Infectious Diseases, “It is estimated that zoonoses are responsible for 2.5 billion cases of human illness and 2.7 million human deaths worldwide each year.”
In “COVID-19 Is a Symptom of a Bigger Problem: Our Planet's Ailing Health,” a June 5, 2020 Time magazine article, Inger Andersen and Johan Rockström emphasize that “COVID-19 is not an isolated event. Research shows that 60% of all known infectious diseases in humans and 75% of all emerging infectious diseases are zoonotic. As we move into natural habitats and exploit ever more wildlife, contact between humans and disease-carrying species increases.” (Inger Andersen is the Under-Secretary General of the United Nations and Executive Director of the UN Environment Programme. Johan Rockström is Chief Scientist at Conservation International and co-director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research.)
On July 6, 2020 in Nairobi, Kenya, the UN Environment Programme and the International Livestock Research Institute released a joint report, “Preventing the next pandemic: zoonotic diseases and how to break the chain of transmission.” In his July 6, 2020 article, “Unite human, animal and environmental health to prevent the next pandemic, says ILRI/UN report,” David Aronson writes:
It identifies seven trends driving the increasing emergence of zoonotic diseases, including increased demand for animal protein; a rise in intense and unsustainable farming; the increased use and exploitation of wildlife; and the climate crisis. The report finds that Africa in particular, which has experienced and responded to a number of zoonotic epidemics, including most recently, to Ebola outbreaks, could be a source of important solutions to quell future outbreaks.
Ten recommendations are outlined for governmental action to prevent future zoonotic outbreaks, including a CDC One Health approach that recognizes “the interconnection between people, animals, plants, and their shared environment.” These recommendations are:
Investing in interdisciplinary approaches, including One Health
Expanding scientific inquiry into zoonotic diseases
Improving cost/benefit analyses of interventions to include full-cost accounting of societal impacts of disease
Raising awareness of zoonotic diseases
Strengthening monitoring and regulation practices associated with zoonotic disease, including food systems
Incentivizing sustainable land management practices and developing alternatives for food security and livelihoods that do not rely on the disruption of habitats and biodiversity
Increasing biosecurity and control, identifying key drivers of emerging diseases in animal husbandry
Supporting the sustainable management of landscapes and seascapes that enhance sustainable co-existence of agriculture and wildlife
Strengthening capacities among health stakeholders in all counties
Operationalizing the One Health approach in land-use and sustainable development planning, implementing and monitoring, and among other fields
The report was issued on “World Zoonoses Day, observed by research institutions and nongovernmental entities on 6 July, which commemorates the work of French biologist Louis Pasteur. On 6 July 1885, Pasteur successfully administered the first vaccine against rabies, a zoonotic disease.”
Climate change is creating increasingly favorable conditions for zoonotic diseases. “Our Growing Food Demands Will Lead to More Corona-like Viruses,” a March 24, 2020 Inside Climate News article by Georgina Gustin, describes the interconnections between climate change, population growth and loss of biodiversity:
Climate change presents one of the greatest challenges to global food production, with drought, flooding and increasingly unpredictable weather being only the most obvious problems. It will also force agriculture into new areas, as some regions become too hot or wet, which probably will mean yet more conversion of natural habitat into crop land. With the global population expected to soar to 11 billion people by 2100, humans will need much more food and much more land to produce it, accelerating the loss of biodiversity that helps shield people from zoonotic disease.
The article quotes Felicia Keesing, a professor of science, mathematics and computing at Bard College and an expert in vector-borne and zoonotic diseases:
We have a population problem and a consumption problem . . . Climate change is a stressor. If a species has reduced range because of habitat conversion or fragmentation, and then that species experiences atypical climate signals — like spring happening earlier — that limited range may be beyond its tolerance, so climate change can be a driver of biodiversity loss . . . The connection with disease is the species that thrive when biodiversity declines and the species that are best at transmitting diseases.
The Global Wildlife Trade
The legal and illegal global wildlife trade generates billions of dollars annually and comprises live animals as well as parts of animals, such as the scales of pangolins, the most trafficked mammals in the world, which are also killed for consumption. [10]
The presumed source of Covid-19 are bats sold in a wet market in Wuhan, a city of eleven million people and a major transportation hub located in central China. Open-stall markets that sell produce and fresh meat, wet markets sometimes feature caged wild animals that are slaughtered and sold at the market.
In February 2020, China imposed a permanent ban on wildlife trade and consumption that superseded a previous, temporary ban in January, but the Wildlife Conservation Society has identified several loopholes; for example, the new ban exempts the trade in wildlife for medicinal purposes and research. [11] Moreover, the continuation of this ban is not guaranteed, as the permanent ban implemented by China in response to the SARS epidemic was subsequently lifted.
Wildlife markets, which continue to exist in several countries, obtain wild animals from various sources, including wild animal farms. In 2013 and 2014, Sarah H. Olson, an epidemiologist with the Wildlife Conservation Society, directed a study in central Vietnam that revealed how coronaviruses are spread among field and bamboo rats, and Malayan porcupines raised in farms for sale in markets and urban restaurants. The rate of infection increased in transit because the wild animals were stressed by the crowded conditions of their captivity in cages. “It’s classic disease ecology . . . It is striking that the number of infected animals increases as you up the supply chain toward consumption,” explains Olson in James Gorman’s June 21, 2020 (updated July 6) New York Times article, “Wildlife Trade Spreads Coronaviruses As Animals Get to Market.” She distinguishes between “local access for sustainable use” and the growing preference for wild animal consumption in urban areas that is “now creating what we’re seeing with Covid-19 across the world.”
We should also be concerned about the public health risks from the legal importation of wildlife into the US. Jonathan Kolby, a wildlife expert at the US Fish and Wildlife Service, warns about this trade in his May 7, 2020 National Geographic article, “To Prevent Next Pandemic Focus on Legal Wildlife Trade”:
At airports, seaports, and land border crossings in 2019, $4.3 billion of legal wildlife and wildlife products was imported into the US. Approximately 200 million live animals are imported to the US annually, according to a five-year trade report . . . In 2019 alone, the agency opened more than 10,000 illegal wildlife trade investigations . . . On top of that, thousands of illegally traded shipments of wildlife are intercepted each year . . . an estimated 60 percent of known human diseases originated in animals, according to the World Organization for Animal Health . . . With few exceptions, the US has no laws specifically requiring disease surveillance for wildlife entering the country, and the vast majority of wild animal imports are therefore not tested . . . In fact, no federal agency is tasked with the comprehensive screening and monitoring of imported wildlife for disease . . . This leaves millions of animals that come into the US legally each year unchecked for diseases that have the potential to spill over to humans or other animals.
The extensive contraband wildlife trade in animal parts contributes to the loss of biodiversity, which is advantageous for the species of animals that spread zoonotic diseases. In “Our Growing Food Demands Will Lead to More Corona-like Viruses,” Georgina Gustin explains: “Larger animals, especially predators, need bigger ranges to survive, so when their habitat shrinks or fragments or disappears altogether, they die off. These animals typically have fewer offspring and live relatively long lives . . . But ‘weedy’ species like rats and bats, breed rapidly . . .” Richard Ostfeld, an ecologist with the Carey Institute of Ecosystem Services cited in the article, states that these species “tend to allocate their energy into breeding rather than living a long time, and they tend to have permissive immune systems and are breeding grounds for pathogens.”
As related in the World Wildlife Fund website, “The world's 4th LARGEST illegal trade,” the illegal wildlife trade is the world’s largest "after drugs, human trafficking, and counterfeiting. It is valued up to US $26 billion per year. Asia is an epicenter for wildlife trafficking. To feed this trade, animals and plants are harvested or caught indiscriminately regardless of their status. Mythical medicinal qualities and high market value continue to drive the demand for illegal wildlife products."
The wildlife trade is one of the main causes of species extinction. Katherine J. Wu discusses a new study in her October 3, 2019 PBS Nova Next article, “Wildlife trade may put nearly 9,000 land-based species at risk of extinction”:
By mining the world’s foremost databases on wildlife trade, a team of conservationists has found that 5,579 species of mammals, birds, amphibians, and reptiles are now ensnared in the global market. As these animals are depleted, poachers and traders seeking similar goods will turn to their close cousins on the tree of life — a known replacement strategy that could imperil an additional 3,196 species not currently on the market, the researchers say. If these predictions are accurate, close to 30 percent of all land-based vertebrates around today would be at risk of extinction from commoditization alone.
The conservationists based their study on databases compiled by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) and the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).
Charles Homans describes the sale of animal parts in Hong Kong in “Hong Kong, Crossroads of the Criminal Wildlife Trade,” in the February 12, 2019 New York Times. This illicit trade includes the sale of elephant tusks, rhinoceros horns, animal skins, shark fins and pangolin scales. Homans writes: “The United Nations describes the trade in wildlife as ‘one of the largest transnational organized criminal activities’. . . Between 2013 and 2017, Hong Kong seized 43 metric tons of pangolin scales and carcasses — representing tens of thousands of animals — in shipments arriving from six countries, principally Cameroon and Nigeria.”
Vietnam’s 30 national parks were established to protect its extraordinary variety of wildlife species, but poachers have transformed the country into a global center of the illegal wildlife trade. Stephen Nash details the decimation of Vietnam’s wildlife in his April 7, 2019 New York Times article, “Vietnam's Empty Forests,” which is accompanied by haunting photographs of endangered wildlife by David Rama Terrazas Morales. As Nash explains:
Its wild populations, already hemmed in by habitat destruction because of an exploding human population, are also being shot, snared and live-captured so efficiently that national parks and other natural areas are now mostly afflicted with “empty forest syndrome”: suitable forest habitat from which even small animals and birds have been hunted into local extinction. Other Asian countries are in various stages of the same convulsion. It’s frequently said that many new species vanish before science can even discover them . . . The last rhino was shot by poachers in the Cat Tien National Park in 2010. Tigers have been effectively hunted out of existence. Only tiny populations of bears and elephants hang on in small, vulnerable pockets. Nearly all of the many primate species are at risk of extinction.
Similarly, although jaguars were banned from international trade in 1975, research published in Conservation Biology in June 2020 describes the increase in jaguar poaching in Central and South America and how it is similar to the patterns of poaching in Asia and Africa. As Rachel Nuwer writes in her June 11, 2020 New York Times article, “Where Jaguars Are Killed, Common Factor Emerges: Chinese Investment,” “The findings confirm that seizures have increased tremendously throughout the region, and that private investment from China is significantly connected with trafficking of the species.” Nuwer states that jaguars previously were on the brink of extinction, but they “have slowly clawed back, to an estimated 60,000 to 170,000 animals today. But now they are in decline throughout much of their range.” The trade in jaguar parts includes their claws and teeth, which are made into pendants, skin for various purposes, meat sold for consumption in restaurants and, in some cases, for example, in Suriname, “entrepreneurial criminals graduated to sourcing entire jaguar carcasses to boil down into a product similar to the tiger bone paste that is used in Chinese medicine.”
Poaching and deforestation are also threatening wild chimpanzees in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The Jane Goodall Institute has initiated education and conservation programs in the DRC, which is “home to an estimated 40% of the last remaining wild chimpanzees on Earth.” (We share 95 to 98 percent of our DNA with chimpanzees.) Warning about the consequences of “a wave of new development,” the Institute emphasizes that “without a commitment to sustainable development in the DRC, deforestation and poaching for the illegal bushmeat trade could swiftly drive these and other magnificent beings to extinction.” An update that I received from the Jane Goodall Institute includes “The Threats They Face,” a section relating these facts:
Each year, poachers remove nearly 1 million tons of illegal bushmeat from African forests.
At least 3,000 great apes are lost from the wild every year due to wildlife trafficking.
Only 4 countries, including the DRC, now support two-thirds of all primate species.
For every chimpanzee stolen from the wild for the illegal exotic pet trade, as many as 10 others are killed.
The DRC contains much of the world’s second largest rainforest, home to an estimated 70,000 to 100,000 chimpanzees.
In 2018 alone, the DRC lost more than 480,000 hectares of primary forest, the second-largest area of tropical primary forest of any country on the planet.
By the year 2100, the DRC’s primary forests — the great ape’s habitat — could be completely destroyed.
Initiatives to Ban the Global Wildlife Trade
The current coronavirus pandemic is increasing support for a global ban on the wildlife trade.
Rachel Newer discusses the public health and environmental rationales for this ban in her February 19, 2020 New York Times article, “To Prevent Next Coronavirus, Stop the Wildlife Trade, Conservationists Say”: “A study published last October in the journal Science estimated that wildlife trade includes 5,600 species, nearly one-fifth of the world’s known vertebrate animals. While some wildlife trade is illegal, much of the hidden industry comprises legal, often unregulated trade of unprotected species, like rodents, bats, snakes and frogs. Wildlife trade in Asia is especially risky to human health, because these animals are often transported and sold live.” Nuwer quotes Grace Ge Gabriel, the Asia regional director of the International Fund for Animal Welfare, who states: “This issue is not just a conservation issue anymore. It’s a public health issue, a biosafety issue and national security issue.”
Here are examples of initiatives to ban the global wildlife trade:
A bill signed by Governor Andrew Cuomo in December 2019 that “requires the department of environmental conservation to designate certain species as vulnerable species and prohibits the sale of articles made from any part of a vulnerable species; and requires the department to designate the giraffe as a vulnerable species.” The bill, A06600/S5098, was introduced by Steve Englebright in the State Assembly and Monica Martinez in the State Senate. [12]
More than 240 organizations signed an April 6, 2020 open letter to the World Health Organization (WHO) to “recommend that governments worldwide permanently ban live wildlife markets and the use of wildlife in traditional medicine. This decisive action, well within the WHO’s mandate, would be an impactful first step in adopting a highly precautionary approach to wildlife trade that poses a risk to human health.” The letter was submitted in connection with April 7, World Health Day.
In the U.S. Congress, a bipartisan group of 67 members of Congress led by Senators Corey Booker (D-NJ) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC), and Representatives Mike Quigley (D-Ill) and Michael McCaul (R-TX) sent an April 8, 2020 open letter to the Directors-General of the World Health Organization, the World Organization for Animal Health, and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations calling for an immediate global ban on live wildlife markets and the international trade of live wildlife. The letter’s signatories include NY Senator Kirsten Gillibrand. [13]
On April 10, 2020, Jane Goodall, Elizabeth Maruma Mrema, the UN’s acting executive secretary on biological diversity; and several activists called for restrictions on wildlife trafficking and the sale of live animals at wet markets. Louise Boyle interviewed Jane Goodall for her April 10, 2020 Independent article, “Jane Goodall calls for global ban on wildlife trade and an end to ‘destructive and greedy period of human history.'" As Goodall emphasized, "We have moved into this destructive and greedy period of human history where we are destroying the environment and putting economic growth ahead of environmental protections, even though we are thus destroying the future for our own children." See also, Goodall's July 9, 2020 TED2020 Talk, "Every day you live, you impact the planet."
On May 19, 2020, the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and the Center for Biological Diversity issued “END WILDLIFE TRADE: An Action Plan to Prevent Future Pandemics,” which “outlines a series of steps for decision-makers to end wildlife trade, first at the global level and then within the United States. Because the United States is one of the nations with the highest demand for wildlife — importing more than 224 million live animals and 883 million other wildlife specimens every year — it has the responsibility to assume a leadership role.” The plan describes four areas of action: “Implement a Global Crackdown on Wildlife Trade, Strengthen US Conservation Efforts to Fight Wildlife Trade, Build Capacity to Stop Wildlife Trade, and Restore and Demonstrate Global Leadership in International Wildlife Conservation.”
On July 24, 2020, Vietnam banned imports of wildlife (dead and alive) and announced a commitment to enforce an existing ban on illegal wildlife markets. As Rebecca Ratcliffe writes in, “Vietnam bans imports of wild animals to reduce risk of future pandemics,” The Guardian, July 24, 2020, “The announcement has been welcomed by conservation groups, who have accused the government of failing to stop the flourishing trade in endangered species. Vietnam is one of Asia’s biggest consumers of wildlife products, and the country’s trade in wildlife — both illegal and 'legal' — is thought to be a billion-dollar industry.”
Scientists in the U.S. are now investigating if humans infected with the coronavirus (for example, a research scientist) can transmit it to wildlife, including bats, which provide essential ecosystem services, such as pollination, seed dispersal and control of insects. James Gorman summarizes the findings of a new report on this topic in his August 1, 2020 New York Times article, “Can Humans Give Coronavirus to Bats, and Other Wildlife?.” As he writes:
Although the issue of how bat researchers should conduct their work may seem narrow, the potential consequences are broad. The report notes that if SARS-CoV-2 became established in North American bats, it would allow the virus to keep propagating in animals even if it didn’t cause disease. And the virus could potentially spill back over to humans after this pandemic is contained. [14]
Rachel Carson and Our Silent Spring
In 1962, Rachel Carson, the founder of the modern environmental movement, published Silent Spring [15] in which she warned about the consequences of DDT, a synthetic pesticide that was developed in the U.S. in the 1940s and used for a variety of purposes. Carson discovered that DDT enters into the food chain of birds. Its adverse environmental impacts include preventing the formation of bird egg shells and, subsequently, the reproduction of birds. Her scientific research was inspired by and, in turn, bolstered by grassroots opposition to the use of DDT. [16] The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) banned DDT in the US in 1972. [17]
In Silent Spring, Carson emphasized that we must live in balance with, rather than in opposition to, nature. She challenged the assumption of chemical companies that they could repeal the laws of nature by attempting to conquer nature with synthetic chemicals.
How ironic, as Roger Cohen wrote in his March 27, 2020 New York Times op-ed, “A Silent Spring Is Saying Something,” that we are now experiencing a silent spring because “A pathogen about one-thousandth the width of a human hair, the spiky-crowned new coronavirus, has upended civilization.”
Susan Bass, the senior vice president of programs and operations at Earth Day Network, discusses the unprecedented challenges we are experiencing during this 50-year anniversary of Earth Day in her May 5, 2020 article, “It's Time to Restore Our Earth.” She emphasizes:
This year there are two Earth Days — one on April 22 and the other on Election Day in November. You can take action to help restore the Earth. Register to vote, commit to vote, vote early and Vote Earth.
Notes
[1] See the Earth Day Network website on the History of Earth Day and Sarah Seidman, "'A Future Worth Living?' Reflections on the First Earth Day 50 Years Later," posted on the Museum of the City of New York website. See also, Livia Albeck-Ripka and Kendra Pierre-Louis, “America Before Earth Day: Smog and Disasters Spurred the Laws Trump Wants to Undo,” The New York Times, April 21, 2018. The article describes “five environmental disasters that shifted the public conversation and prompted, directly or indirectly, lawmakers to act.” These disasters are the Santa Barbara oil spill, the Cuyahoga River Fire, toxic chemicals that leached into the basements of homes built in Love Canal in Niagara Falls, NY, smog-filled skies prior to the 1970 Clean Air Act, and the plight of the gray wolf, which was on the verge of extinction in the lower 48 states, and exemplified several endangered species in the U.S. that were not legally protected prior to the 1973 Endangered Species Act.
[2] See the Key Resources section of this article for videos and websites on Earth Day 50 events.
[3] For information on the 100 environmental rollbacks during the Trump administration, see Nadja Popovich, Livia Albeck-Ripka and Kendra Pierre-Louis, “The Trump Administration is Reversing 100 Environmental Rules: Here is the Full List,” The New York Times, May 20, 2020; Coral Davenport, E.P.A. to Lift Obama-Era Controls on Methane, a Potent Greenhouse Gas, The New York Times, August 10, 2020; Eric Lipton, Steve Eder, John Branch, and photographs by Gabriella Demczuk, “This is Our Reality Now,” The New York Times, December 27, 2018; and Bryan Patel, “5 US Environmental Rollbacks Pushed During the Pandemic,” Earth Day Initiative, June 11, 2020. See also, Brad Plumer and John Schwartz, graphics by Nadja Popovich, illustrations by Mathilde Aubier, “50 Years of Earth Day: What's Better Today and What's Worse,” The New York Times, April 21, 2020.
[4] Brad Plumer, “Humans Are Speeding Extinction and Altering the Natural World at an ‘Unprecedented’ Pace,” The New York Times, May 6, 2019. See also the UN Convention on Biological Diversity.
[5] Elizabeth Kolbert, The Sixth Great Extinction: An Unnatural History (Henry Holt and Co., 2014).
[6] Elizabeth Kolbert, October 2019 National Geographic, pgs. 45–48. On the Anthropocene Age, see Welcome to the Anthropocene.
[7] See also, Linsey C. Marr, “Yes, the Coronavirus Is in the Air,” The New York Times, July 30, 2020; David Leonhardt, “The Unique U.S. Failure to Control the Virus,” The New York Times, August 6, 2020; Apoorva Mandavilli, “‘A Smoking Gun,’: Infectious Coronavirus Retrieved From Hospital Air,” The New York Times, August 11, 2020; and Debora MacKenzie, COVID-19: The Pandemic That Never Should Have Happened and How to Stop the Next One (Hachette Books, 2020). Since the coronavirus is airborne, it can also be spread through ventilation systems in buildings. For an explanation of how Passive House green building design provides 100% filtered fresh air 24/7 to all habitable areas of a building, see Deborah Moelis; Ryan Lobello; Louis Koehl of Handel Architects, “Why Passive House Buildings Create a Healthier Interior Environment,” Handel Architects website, July 21, 2020. For an overview of Passive House design, see my article “High-rise Passive House in NYC,” Sierra Atlantic, fall 2017.
[8] Kyle Harper, “The Real Culprit is Civilization,” Time magazine Special Edition, The Science of Epidemics, Spring 2020, p. 27.
[9] Covid-19 is the disease caused by the coronavirus called SARS-CoV-2. For a glossary of terms, see Katy Steinmetz, “Coronavirus: A Glossary of Terms to Help You Understand the Unfolding Crisis,” in the spring 2020 Time magazine Special Edition, The Science of Epidemics, pgs. 16–19. For a historical comparison with the 1918 pandemic, see Christine Hauser, “The Mask Slackers of 1918,” The New York Times, August 3, 2020.
[10] See the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) website article, “Wildlife Trade 101,” posted on August 15, 2019, which states: “Wildlife trade means taking and selling dead or living plants and animals and the products derived from them.”
[11] James Gorman, “China Ban on Wildlife Trade a Big Step, but Has Loopholes,” The New York Times, February 27, 2020.
[12] For more information on this bill, see, Elly Pepper’s May 1, 2019 NRDC Expert Blog, “One Million Species Extinctions: Not on New York's Watch!” (Elly Pepper is the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) Deputy Director, Wildlife Trade, Wildlife Division, Nature Program.) Previously, on August 12, 2014, Cuomo signed a bill to prevent the trade of illegal ivory items and protect endangered species. See the press release, “Governor Cuomo Signs New Law to Combat Illegal Ivory Trade and Protect Endangered Species.”
[13] See also the Center for Biological Diversity April 9, 2020 press release about this open letter.
[14] On the threats to bats in the US, see Michael Ray Taylor’s op-ed, “Fighting to Save America's Bats,” The New York Times, April 14, 2018.
[15] Rachel Carson, Silent Spring (Houghton Mifflin Company, 1962). Silent Spring was serialized in three installments in The New Yorker in 1962 and then published as a book on September 27, 1962. Carson’s first installment, “Silent Spring – I” appeared as A Reporter at Large column in the June 16, 1962 issue of The New Yorker. Carson published several articles and books on nature, including Under the Sea (Simon & Schuster, 1941) and The Sea Around Us (Oxford University Press, 1951). For contemporary environmental activities in Rachel Carson’s name, see the Rachel Carson Council and the Rachel Carson Campus Network (RCCN).
[16] See, Eliza Griswold, “How ‘Silent Spring’ Ignited the Environmental Movement,” The New York Times Magazine, September 21, 2012 and Jill Lepore, “The Right Way to Remember Rachel Carson", The New Yorker, March 26, 2018. On the suburban roots of the opposition to DDT, see Christopher C. Sellers’s op-ed, “How Green Was My Lawn,” in the September 20, 2012 New York Times, in which he discusses a 1957 lawsuit filed by 13 Long Island residents to stop the aerial spraying of DDT on their lawns. See also Sellers’s book, Crabgrass Crucible: Suburban Nature and the Rise of Environmentalism in Twentieth-Century America (University of North Carolina Press, 2012). Natalie Naylor provides a historical perspective on the role of women in initiatives to conserve nature and protect the environment on Long Island in her article, “Long Island Women Preserving Nature and the Environment,” in the 2016 Vol. 25–2 issue of the Long Island History Journal.
[17] The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) website page, “DDT – A Brief History and Status,” relates the history of DDT and its ban by the EPA. The “Development of DDT” section explains: “DDT (dichloro-diphenyl-trichloroethane) was developed as the first of the modern synthetic insecticides in the 1940s. It was initially used with great effect to combat malaria, typhus and other insect-borne human diseases among both military and civilian populations. It also was effective for insect control in crop and livestock production, institutions, homes and gardens. DDT’s quick success as a pesticide and broad use in the United States and other countries led to the development of resistance by many insect pest species.” The “Regulation Due to Health and Environmental Effects” section of the article includes this information: “The publication in 1962 of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring stimulated widespread public concern over the dangers of improper pesticide use and the need for better pesticide controls. In 1972, EPA issued a cancellation order for DDT based on its adverse environmental effects, such as those to wildlife, as well as its potential human health risks.”
KEY RESOURCES: Videos and Websites
EARTH DAY 50
Videos
April 19, 2020 Earth Day 50 Virtual Kick-Off presented by Earth Day Initiative and March for Science.
“Greta Thunberg in conversation with Johan Rockström. Earth Day 2020”
Brave New Films, “Vote Like Your Earth Depends On It”
Mary Robinson, TEDWomen 2015, “Why climate change is a threat to human rights”
Sylvia Earle, TED2009, “My wish: Protect our oceans”
Welcome to the Anthropocene — a Film About the State of the Planet — Rio + 20 Summit (2012)
Water in the Anthropocene, January 22, 2014 International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme
“Home,” May 12, 2009 (Note: This film relates the story of our human footprint on the planet.)
Jane Goodall, July 9, 2020 TED2020 Talk, “Every day you live, you impact the planet.”
“Pandemics, wildlife and intensive animal farming,” June 2, 2020 conference.
Johan Rockström, the executive director of the Stockholm Resilience Centre, 2010 TEDGlobal, “Let the environment guide our development.”
John Carey, “The 9 limits of our planet . . . and how we’ve raced past 4 of them,” Ideas.Ted.Com, March 5, 2015.
Websites
Earth Day Initiative: Do Just 1 Thing
The Stockholm Resilience Centre website outlines nine planetary boundaries
stratospheric ozone depletion
loss of biosphere integrity (biodiversity loss and extinctions)
chemical pollution and the release of novel entities
climate change
ocean acidification
freshwater consumption and the global hydrological cycle
land system change
nitrogen and phosphorus flows to the biosphere and oceans
atmospheric aerosol loading
The Ten Principles of One Planet Living:
zero carbon
zero waste
sustainable transport
sustainable materials
local and sustainable food
sustainable water
land use and wildlife
culture and community
equity and local economy
health and happiness
Wildlife Protection Conventions
UN Convention on Biological Diversity
UN Endangered Species Act of 1973
Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES)
Wildlife Protection Organizations
National Resources Defense Council
Center for Biological Diversity
International Union for the Conservation of Nature
International Fund for Animal Welfare
Pan African Sanctuary Alliance
African Elephant Conservation Fund
Asian Elephant Conservation Fund
Rhinoceros and Tiger Conservation Fund
Bat Conservation International
Humane Society of the United States
World Organization for Human Health
Environmental Investigation Agency
Carey Institute of Ecosystem Services
World Resources Institute Global Forest Watch
(Author’s Note: This article is an expanded version of a presentation that I gave on April 22, 2020 at a New York University School of Professional Studies virtual faculty salon on ethics.)
For my previous Sierra Atlantic articles on topics relating to this column, see
"Climate negotiations: the dreary record, path to success"
“Protecting Our Oceans — Educational Resources”
“Key Resources on Recent Climate Change Reports”
“Key Resources on Climate Change Reports: Part II”
“Five Years of Activism: NYC Commits to Fossil Fuel Divestment”
“High-rise Passive House in NYC”
“Initiatives to Reduce Plastic Pollution”
“The Social Cost of Carbon & Why It Matters”
“Ecological Footprints and One Planet Living — Educational Resources”
“The Drawdown Project to Reverse Global Warming”
“Carbon Footprints and Life-cycle Assessments — Educational Resources”
“Biomimicry: Innovation Inspired by Nature — Educational Resources”
“The Circular Economy — Educational Resources (Part I).”
Return to 2020 Summer Sierra Atlantic