I saw this cardinal in a bare tree yesterday on my walk. It was well below freezing. Yet this small bird was active and minimally curious about me. Last evening, after I had seen this cardinal, I watched a PBS (http://www.pbs.org/) 'Nature' program about rhinoceros. The great lumbering animals were wonderfully photographed. Then my mind drifted back to a recent radio show on NPR (http://www.npr.org/) which was focused on the implications of global warming and the problems involved with our oil dependency. This morning it was about 10 degrees Fahrenheit when I ventured out. This all pulled together in my mind as a question: When the power runs out and it's cold, what will happen to our human habitat? I had visions of people hooking up wood stoves to their chimneys where their oil or gas furnaces once vented. I imagined people chopping up furniture, fences, hedges. How little time it would take for the suburban landscape to become denuded. Would there be mass migration to warmer climates? Would men with guns line the highways to the south to prevent refugees from digressing off the beaten path. Where would the refugees find a safe haven? What would they do to provide for themselves? Would it be the end of society and civilization as we know it? Well, I'm sure of one thing. The cardinal and the rhino would probably go on doing what they do without devoting much interest to the plight of the once-dominant species, gone awry. I find it helpful to think about my life in the context of the lives of other species around me. Anthropocentric thinking can lead to the kind of imbalance that is now destroying the planet's atmosphere.Cold
I saw this cardinal in a bare tree yesterday on my walk. It was well below freezing. Yet this small bird was active and minimally curious about me. Last evening, after I had seen this cardinal, I watched a PBS (http://www.pbs.org/) 'Nature' program about rhinoceros. The great lumbering animals were wonderfully photographed. Then my mind drifted back to a recent radio show on NPR (http://www.npr.org/) which was focused on the implications of global warming and the problems involved with our oil dependency. This morning it was about 10 degrees Fahrenheit when I ventured out. This all pulled together in my mind as a question: When the power runs out and it's cold, what will happen to our human habitat? I had visions of people hooking up wood stoves to their chimneys where their oil or gas furnaces once vented. I imagined people chopping up furniture, fences, hedges. How little time it would take for the suburban landscape to become denuded. Would there be mass migration to warmer climates? Would men with guns line the highways to the south to prevent refugees from digressing off the beaten path. Where would the refugees find a safe haven? What would they do to provide for themselves? Would it be the end of society and civilization as we know it? Well, I'm sure of one thing. The cardinal and the rhino would probably go on doing what they do without devoting much interest to the plight of the once-dominant species, gone awry. I find it helpful to think about my life in the context of the lives of other species around me. Anthropocentric thinking can lead to the kind of imbalance that is now destroying the planet's atmosphere.
