Fouling the Nest
As I slid past a thirty meter-high granite cliff in my kayak this week, I noticed a slash of white just below a small cave-like crack in the rock. It brought to mind the proverb: “It’s an ill bird that fouls its own nest”, a typically human way to characterise foolishness by casting unmerited aspersions.
The white stain is excrement from the osprey that lived there for several years. Like all birds, they never make a mess in their nest.
We humans, on the other hand, spend as much time inventing and practicing ways to foul and defile our nest — the entire planet — as birds spend hunting for food, which, if the screeching sound I kept hearing was a hungry chick, entails pretty much every waking hour.
It was hidden in the trees higher up. Osprey build, expand and relocate nesting sites to suit their needs.
Human needs seem to be ruled by greed and stupidity. According to a recent Pew Research Center survey, 69% of U.S. adults “prioritize developing alternative energy sources, such as wind and solar, over expanding the production of oil, coal and natural gas.”
A new analysis has disclosed that the oil and gas industry has delivered $2.5bn (£2.3bn) a day in profit for the past 50 years. Nevertheless, according to the International Monetary Fund, the fossil fuel producers benefit from $16bn in subsidies a day.
We’re in effect paying them not to do anything about one of the major causes of global warming. That they get away with it is, to paraphrase Jimmy Buffet’s “Margaritaville”, “our own damned fault.”
How “foul” is that?
WILLFUL SELF-INTEREST
One would have thought that the heatwaves scorching much of Europe and North America would convince even the most ardent disbelievers that climate change is real, that we all need to “do our bit” to curtail it. But on what was not even one of the hottest days we’ve had this week here in “cottage country”, I saw a man sit for ten minutes in an SUV, parked in the shade, with the windows up and the engine running to keep the AC blasting while he waited for someone.
Still, he was being selfish in big-time company. In 2015, the Scientific American reported that Exxon, (now Exxon Mobil), the world’s biggest oil and gas company, “was aware of climate change, as early as 1977, 11 years before it became a public issue.”
Today, Exxon claims it is “committed to providing affordable energy to support human progress while advancing effective solutions to address climate change”.
The tag line of a crude saying from my youth sums that up perfectly: “…and the cheque’s in the mail”.
AND AS IF THAT ISN’T ENOUGH
One would think that if we can’t do as much as we need or would like to roll back that kind of pollution, we could at least not create other forms. I recently got stuck at a traffic light next to a vehicle with a sound system so loud the bass made my car vibrate.
As much as I don’t appreciate it, I understand that loud music is some people’s way of escaping the other madness in the world, but what’s in your head if you can tolerate that level? The answer, I fear, is “very little”.
As I escape my way, trying to achieve metronome-like precision and the perfect stroke to maximise effort and minimise the sound of the paddle blades dipping in and out of the water, I am aware that this gloriously tranquil corner of Nature was shaped by noise.
The sound made by retreating glaciers, grinding and gouging myriad lakes out of some of the oldest and hardest rock on earth must have been violent. Now, in the fifty meter-deep one that I paddle, lake trout weighing up to five kilograms thrive in cold, dark silence. (FYI the Ontario record is nearly 29 kgs).
The only creatures on the lake that can go that deep are loons, and they hunt much smaller fish. A pair of them are raising twins this year. It’s rare for both chicks to make it so far along.
Surviving to full adulthood will require the kind of work on the part of their parents that the “ill bird” in the world must emulate in the nest we share. On available evidence, that’s about as likely as me achieving the perfect forward paddle stroke.
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3 thoughts on “Fouling the Nest”
in 1965 gravel-voiced barry mcguire told us
we were on the “eve of destruction”…writing
today he’d tell us we are on the “edge of destruction” and “fallin’ fast”…
all because we are a self-centered and therefore
self-destructive society…
america has turned into a gun range and
free-fire zone…
we water lawns three times a week…
and pollute our waters(48,000,000 pounds
of waste enters oceans DAILY-world watch
institute)…
we heat the planet and burn our forests…
once we thought recycling was cool…
have we become a suicidal society?…
teetering on the “edge of destruction”?..
I fear McGuire had it right…