The Red List is Out – Again

by Frank J. Regan (September 18, 2007)

 What is the Red List? “…the world’s most authoritative assessment of the Earth’s plants and animals, acts as a wake up call on the global extinction crisis.”

How long has this list been issued and how often does it come out?  “Major analyses of the IUCN Red List are produced every four years. These were produced in 1996, 2000 and 2004.” 

What is the World Conservation Union (IUCN)?  “Created in 1948, the World Conservation Union (IUCN) brings together 84 States, 108 government agencies, 800 plus NGOs, and some 10,000 scientists and experts from 147 countries in a unique worldwide partnership. The Union’s mission is to influence, encourage and assist societies throughout the world to conserve the integrity and diversity of nature and to ensure that any use of natural resources is equitable and ecologically sustainable.”

Why should you care about this list?  You are being slowly boiled like a frog in a pot.  You (as Jared Diamond explains in Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed) are like the inhabitants of Easter Island that was once covered with trees chopping down the last tree.  Mr. Diamond’s point was that the destruction of the trees on Easter Island by man occurred so slowly that each preceding generation continued chopping down trees for their way of life, without the overall knowledge that over time trees were getting dearer.  They couldn’t see the catastrophe looming because like a frog being slowly boiled in a pot it was happening so slowly that they didn’t notice until it was too late.

What is the meaning of the Red List?  The Red List is another is a series of such lists and increasing amount of separate reports (Vital Signs 2007 - 2008 | Worldwatch Institute - Forecast For New York by Environmental Advocates of New York & "Northeast Climate Impacts Assessment" by Union of Concerned Scientists and "Up To the Gills" which reports on the crisis of Great Lakes fish by Environmental Defence ) that tend to collaborate the case that we are living in Extraordinary Times.  That there as signs that our environment is collapsing.  That “We Don’ Get It!” 

What’s the point? OK. We’re not as dumb as frogs.  If we were thrown into a pot of water and someone (probably Hollywood evil and all that) slowly turned up the heat so that the water eventually boiled, we would have the sense to get out before things got too hot.  And, like the peoples who inhabited Easter Island long ago, we have a sense of history and can measure the amount of trees we used to have as opposed to more recent times when the trees got fewer.  At some point, we’d either change our way of living; get off the island, or start saving trees.  Having said that, our present generation collectively seems incapable for reasons of denial, dismissal, or downright indifference to understand that there are substantial disturbances caused by mankind’s actions to the very environment he needs to survive.  No amount of environmental reports around the world on the incredible state of our troubling environment is changing most of our behavior. 

So, what do we do?  Well, I’m not sure.  Governments, industry, authors, cities, and ordinary citizens are scrambling to find out this question. But, I suspect that if you were walking down a jungle path and a lion jumped out in front of you (actually a lion would probably be found on a savanna), your response wouldn’t be to throw up your hands and give up.  I suspect you’d get moving.  According to the implied laws of evolution, if a species had been incapable of addressing life-threatening issues, like humans taking evasive action when encountering dangerous predators, they would not carry on genes to the next generation.  So, I guess the first thing to do in these Extraordinary Times is to understand the dramatic changes that our environment has undergone in the last couple of centuries and that sometime does need to be done.  That would mean that the way we keep informed of such things as the conditions of our surroundings should be the focus of our media.  Our media needs to understand the concept of Objectivity when framing environmental matters that could jeopardize our way of life.  That would require knowledge of science and that the media, and all the people in the media, are in the environment, not outside it.  For example, if a power industry is planning on creating a very polluting form of energy in a community under the jurisdiction of a particular media, this is just not a business fun fact—it is worthy of tough investigation by media to make sure that industry will not aversely affect the immediate environment.  And, that goes against the traditional sense of ‘objectivity” for the media.  On the environment, the media cannot stand aside and report as if they too won’t go down the drain from bad environmental acts. 

What’s the ultimate answer?  I think it’s kinda like what Benjamin Franklin said, “We must hang together, gentlemen...else, we shall most assuredly hang separately.” In other words, We’d better work together for common solutions for environmental sustainability because Planet Earth is one system and bad (or no) plans to deal with the present environmental disasters will gravely affect us all. Focusing on the latest quirks in the lives of O. J. Simpson and Paris Hilton won’t give you the information you need about your life support system. 

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