Earth Day, established worldwide in 1970 and coming up Friday, was intended to raise awareness about the consequences of ceaseless human efforts to command and control nature. Arguably it’s done that, although heightened awareness hasn’t altered the general direction.
Take the spotted lanternfly, for instance. An insect first identified in Pennsylvania in 2014, it recently arrived in at least three northern Ohio counties. The destructive lanternfly feeds on grape plants as well as peach, plum, cherry and apple trees. Its favorite, tree of heaven, is itself an invasive species from China.
This development comes on the heels of ash-killing borers that, over the past few years, have left skeletons across the landscape. Something has been killing oaks, and hemlocks are under threat too.
The Ohio Department of Natural Resources lists 122 animal species as endangered, 53 as threatened and 110 as species of concern. The endangered include the state’s two indigenous rattlesnakes; four bat species; two types of sturgeon; and 12 species of birds, including the American bittern, northern harrier and snowy egret.
Much of the damage, though not all, started long before the first Earth Day. The casualties, 11 extinctions, have been lost forever.
At least one case of COVID-19 moving from an infected wild deer to a human in Ontario was identified in late February, raising concerns about an apparently additional biological reservoir for coronavirus mutations.
Climate has drawn attention, though not necessarily as much attention as it merits.
An April 4 report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a compilation of assessments by hundreds of climate scientists, concluded Earth’s governments are quickly running out of time to curb the use of fossil fuels if they hope to keep the planet’s heating at what is deemed a manageable level.
That level would be less than 4 degrees from the long-term norm, and currently, the world’s temperature is a bit more than 2 degrees above the norm.
The day the report was made public ExxonMobil announced plans to invest $10 billion in an offshore oil development project in South America expected to yield 250,000 barrels a day.
On April 6 about 1,200 scientists from around the world organized a climate protest, some getting arrested after locking themselves inside the JP Morgan Chase building in Los Angeles.
One of the world’s great carbon sinks, the Amazon jungle, is nearing a tipping point that could turn it into a savannah. Bird populations have plunged in tropical forests. Methane, a potent greenhouse gas, hit record levels as permafrost thawed.
In March a research station in Antarctica recorded a temperature 68 degrees above normal, while temperatures in parts of the Arctic climbed to 54 degrees above average. An Antarctic ice shelf the size of New York City, and previously thought stable, collapsed.
Western Australia in January saw the Southern Hemisphere’s hottest-ever-recorded temperature at 123 degrees. Record highs were surpassed in Argentina and Uruguay. January was the sixth-warmest on record, February the seventh-warmest.
Models suggest the planet this year will remain about as warm as it was in 2021, the sixth-hottest year on record. But be aware, earthlings, models predict 2023 will bring global heat unsurpassed in recorded history.
