On Amazon Fires: It’s the Ecology Stupid

Global Ecological Sustainability depends critically upon ending the logging and burning of old forests and letting them recover, expand and reconnect

“Each act of cutting and burning old trees diminishes and contributes to the pending collapse of the biosphere… The cutting and burning of old forests ends, as a prominent aspect of the coming Great Transition required for equitable and just global ecological sustainability, or together we all needlessly die .” 

Dr. Glen Barry

Old trees in old growth forests power the biosphere

A particularly malignant social and ecological disease sprung forth upon the Earth several centuries ago. A central component of European colonialism was the pernicious, ecocidal belief that wide scale cutting and burning of natural ecosystems was desirable. Indeed, cutting and burning natural ecosystems defined “civilization” and made the Western worldview superior to heathen naturalism.

This pantheon to “development” was created around murdering natural ecosystems and their inhabitants, which continues to be pursued with religious intensity. Enormous temporary growth and wealth were accumulated by some through the wholesale liquidation of vast expanses of naturally evolved life. Generations of children were born and indoctrinated into the fallacy that ecosystems existed to be cut and burnt and had no intrinsic worth.

In fact, as multitudes of indigenous cultures intimately understood, humanity is completely dependent upon natural ecosystem habitats to meet all our needs. Food, water, air, shelter, medicines, spirituality and more derive from old forests and old trees.

Humans and all life need naturally evolved ecosystems to exist and prosper. We are part of and utterly dependent upon the web of life found in the ecology of old forests and other natural habitats.

Yet we have derived an economic system of growth dependent upon their clearing. At a certain scale such habitat destruction could occur without impacting climate, soil, precipitation, and other ecological processes. Yet increasingly over recent decades landscapes, bioregions, and increasingly the global system are being thrown into disarray as terrestrial ecosystem processes and patterns are disturbed and ultimately eliminated.

Critical thresholds whereby natural ecosystems become disconnected, and are islands of habitat surrounded by devastation, have been surpassed. Abrupt climate change, lack of drinking water, soil infertility, dead oceans – all are contributed to by loss and diminishment of terrestrial ecosystems.
This European spawned disease of over-development, since embraced by many others, threatens an uninhabitable hell on Earth. Tremendous suffering awaits us all and has already begun as climate weirding, ecosystem collapse, food and water shortages, and authoritarian responses destroy centuries of progress. Ill-gotten wealth from ecosystem liquidation has enabled unsustainable growth in human populations and inequitable over-consumption.

Each act of cutting and burning old trees diminishes and contributes to the pending collapse of the biosphere. Continued clearing of old forests inexorably leads to the end of being.

The Amazon rainforest, along with a handful of other forest wildernesses in Africa, Canada, the Congo, Russia, and New Guinea, contain the last intact, contiguous terrestrial ecosystems that provide ecosystem services driving global ecological sustainability. These naturally evolved large-scale ecosystems contain a complex panoply of life that in sum power the biosphere and make Earth habitable. And at a smaller scale remnant habits along rivers, in wetlands, forest fragments, and even individual large trees continue to provide habitat for all life including humans.

Yet despite all that science has re-learned regarding the importance of natural ecosystems for biodiversity, ecosystems, and climate; these last planetary ecological engines continue to be sacrificed on the alter of mammon in an orgiastic spasm of ecological cruelty and derangement.

Ecology is the meaning of life (not development).

It is ludicrous to log old trees found in millions of year-old natural ecosystems. It is abnormal and a self-fulfilling death wish. Think of the suffering of wildlife as they are consumed by flames or die from lack of habitat.

Amazon rainforest fires threaten Brazilian and global well-being

Cutting and burning are both a cause and a symptom of the disease consuming the Amazon.

Rainforests are cleared for agriculture using fire, and the resultant micro-climate changes, particularly along exposed rainforest edges, make otherwise moist regions more prone to burning.

The current burning of the Amazon is the logical consequence of a wicked worldview’s pernicious logging of tropical hardwoods and clearing of land using fire for agricultural expansion. And most of this destruction is to feed the markets of the over-developed world which have already decimated their own natural systems.

You can make a difference in protecting the Amazon and other old forests. Your hunger for soy, beef, and timber are ultimately the cause of Amazon’s fires. Eliminate these rainforest destroying products from your life. For centuries settlers have threatened indigenous communities. Working as an ally to support indigenous land tenure is perhaps the most important thing you can do to help stop the Amazon fires. And work to support ecological restoration and regenerative agriculture in the Amazon and on all degraded lands including those near you.

Entire criminal sectors have made some powerful interests rich, and provide temporary employment for workers growing soybeans, milling logs, and cattle ranching. Yet all such extractive enterprises based upon clearing millions of year old natural ecosystems ultimately prove tragically unsustainable in the mid-to-long term.

The collapse of natural ecosystems is made more tragic by a whole lecherous NGO sector greenwashing particular types of rainforest logging or farming as being “sustainable”. Should a hell exist other than in Amazonian infernos, a special place is reserved for such traitors to the Earth and ecological truth. You know who you are, shame on you.

Around the world social protest movements are emerging, strengthening, and coalescing into more than the sum of their parts; to demand democratic, just, equitable, and sustainable social change. Only through such a Great Transition can the global environment be sustained, and all enjoy freedom and decent livelihoods. Crucially, protest movements are emerging that acknowledge that the climate, biodiversity, and ecosystems crises are one and the same.

A central demand of those seeking ecology truths must be that all cutting and burning of old trees found in natural old forest habitats end immediately. And that an age of ecological restoration be embraced with all haste to reestablish mature natural habitats across the majority of Earth’s surface.

Entire industries feeding themselves upon the trough of global ecocide must be dismantled; and replaced with eco-enterprises based upon regenerative agriculture and allowing natural ecosystems to age and reconnect. There exists tremendous potential for good livelihoods built upon restoring natural forests, soils, wetlands, and waterways. All of which will prove important in restoring our global atmosphere by slowing climate change as well.

It is morally wrong to kill old trees.

The cutting and burning of old forests ends, as a prominent aspect of the coming Great Transition required for equitable and just global ecological sustainability, or together we all needlessly die.

I beseech you to dedicate yourself to living a life that does not consume products produced by burning and cutting old forests and other natural ecosystems. And commit yourself to restoring natural habitats, indigenous well-being, and sustainable agriculture.

Do so as if your and all life depend upon it. It does.

Regenerating Gaia: Imagine a Peaceful Rebellion that Regrows Nature

Gaia – the living global ecological system – is collapsing and dying as human industrial growth overruns natural ecosystems and climate. Yet the biosphere can regenerate, as it has done before, given the time and space, free from human burning and cutting. As the twin emergencies of climate and ecosystem loss threaten the end of being, I join in calls for a peaceful “Extinction Rebellion” whereby people together do what they can, do what they must, for Earth and our shared habitat. Let’s start by regenerating nature in order to sustain creation.

Regenerate Gaia, Regrow Nature

“Imagine all the people living life in peace… You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one, I hope someday you’ll join us, and the world will be as one.” – John Lennon, Imagine

“Imagine a peaceful rebellion that regrows nature… Let’s return to and tend our planetary garden. We once shared creation with other creatures, let’s do so again. Gaia can regenerate herself if given enough time, space, and love.” – Dr. Glen Barry

One of many amazing things about nature is it can grow back. 10,000 short years ago much of the Northern hemisphere was covered by a mile of glacial ice, scouring the land of all-natural vegetation. Before that, cataclysmic asteroid strikes virtually annihilated biological life, in moments of immense planetary scale death. In each case, fragmented life re-emerged – renewed and diversified – in relatively short order. Critically, enough natural remnants remained, and were able to recover.

For eons biological life of all sorts including natural terrestrial ecosystems have shown an innate, indomitable will to sustain itself. This is not necessarily the case. Gaia, the planetary organism that is the sum of all ecosystems, can – like all life – collapse and die. Yet creation has proven to be remarkably resilient. When adequate remnant nature remains, and once pressure is taken off quickly and long enough, life is able to regenerate; genes evolve, wildlife has babies, and natural ecosystems repopulate denuded land and sea.

Gaia is a living organism. And once again, all her organic and naturally evolved life is in peril. This time at the hands of humanity.

It is difficult to fathom the degree to which natural ecosystems and climate have been disrupted by human industrial growth, and the potential for spiraling collapse should natural ecosystems and climate not be allowed to recover. The biosphere is already bifurcating between extremes (a sure sign of impending collapse) – demonstrated by trends as diverse as climate weirding, rising authoritarianism, collapsing ecosystems, mass migration, and a state of perma-war – before settling into a new normal of a depauperate and perhaps lifeless planet.

Now living in New York City and working in financial IT, much of my formative years unfolded in close proximity to nature. Some of my most pleasant memories as a child include fishing for bass from a canoe with my parents, the smell of the Earth waking in a tent, and partaking in the symbiotic ecological cycles of animal husbandry and gardening as my family homesteaded. Over the past two decades I have restored a natural forest ecosystem on a few acres of denuded farm fields – a gratifying yet grueling task.

From an early age I sensed Earth was alive and gravely threatened, intuitions fortified by over a decade of graduate studies in ecology, and a lifetime of rainforest and climate activism. It has been 5 years since I published Terrestrial Ecosystem Loss and Biosphere Collapse, ground-breaking peer-reviewed science identifying a tenth planetary boundary. There I hypothesized that 66% of Earth’s land must be covered with natural and agro-ecological ecosystems to sustain the biosphere; and foresaw the need for a revolutionary response to ecosystem and climate emergencies, now being realized with global climate strikes and extinction rebellions.

Given such a massive and unprecedented global ecological emergency, surely an “Extinction Rebellion” is long overdue.

Imagine a peaceful rebellion that regrows nature.

The place for sufficient climate and ecosystem solutions to start is to let Earth rest and recover. And most importantly, to allow and assist natural ecosystems to regrow. We must once again put our faith in seeds, and the ability of nature to sustain all life.

Massive nurseries of natives plants from local genetic stock, nearby genotypes adapted to warmer conditions, and species suitable for forest gardens will be required to provide seed stock to re-establish intact and functioning ecosystems over two-thirds of the Earth’s surface. Enormous deforested and ecologically diminished areas exist, particularly in the tropics, that must be quickly reforested. Replenishment planting surrounding and reconnecting natural remnants over vast areas will yield ecosystem services and store carbon, as well as provide massive employment. Science knows much regarding how to harness ecosystems’ natural restorative processes, carefully targeting for augmentation the re-establishment of dominant and keystone species, as remnant ecosystems are aided to expand and reconnect.

There exists enormous potential to carry out landscape scale ecological restoration activities which assist natural remnants to age, expand, and reconnect. Protecting and restoring old-growth forests, other natural ecosystems, and all kindred species are a huge part of the climate change and ecosystem solutions, and a prerequisite to solve a whole host of other ecological issues including biodiversity, soil, wildlife, and water crises.

We are speaking of restoring natural ecosystems, going well beyond tree farms. Such rewilding focuses upon assisting natural ecosystems to recover their full ecological integrity. This is demonstrated by their possessing the full range of natural species, composition, structure, and function. Diverse agro-ecological systems that emphasize organic perma-culture will play a vital role, when interspersed with intact and regenerating forests, in order to once again ensure ecosystems provide the ecological context within which humans and other species can live forever.

Of course, successfully regenerating ecosystems on a global scale presupposes that the damage to existing intact ecosystems ends. Much of the foundation-fed climate and environment movements have myopically focused upon technical solutions to climate change, failing to understand the role intact and regenerating ecosystems play in sustaining Gaia. Some go so far as continuing to sell logging primary forests as being desirable and even sustainable. We must go far beyond technophile solutions and end natural ecosystem loss and harness the Earth system’s amazing ability to regenerate herself.

This is what makes the Extinction Rebellion movement so exciting – it correctly diagnoses the threat to the biosphere, humanity, and kindred species as emanating from both climate change AND biodiversity/ecosystem loss.

Ecology is the answer.

There is no way humanity emerges intact from the climate and ecosystem emergencies and achieves global ecological sustainability unless we grow justice, peace, and equity as well. This will require powering down the industrial growth economy, demobilizing the military-industrial complex, and coming together as one human family to stop those destroying nature. Solutions include not only ending burning of fossil fuels and destruction of natural ecosystems. We must also make peace and demilitarize, promote greater fairness and justice, and limit human numbers and inequitable over-consumption.

Let’s return to and tend our planetary garden. We once shared creation with other creatures, let’s do so again. Gaia can regenerate herself if given enough time, space, and love.

It’s the End of the World and I Don’t Have Much New to Say

“Abrupt climate change is careening out of control, as the impacts of dramatic polar ice melt are given short shrift… Not a lot of new land is being made, and much of what remains is tawdry remnants of their former productive glory… And the middle class and political moderation are fading away. It is difficult to imagine how this can end in anything but utter and total collapse.” — Dr. Glen Barry

We are all in this together

After decades of writing essays highlighting global ecosystem collapse, I haven’t had much to say lately. That’s not meant to suggest that I don’t care, the threats to our very being have diminished, or that I am not still taking action for Earth.

But as the World comes to an end, I just don’t have much new to say.

Over the years I have written hundreds of essays. Recently my thoughts were about as poignantly put as I am able in The Ecology Ethic and Absolute Radical Green Freedom. There my central theses of all these years can be found: Earth is dying from ecosystem loss and climate change, only a profound cultural transition can save us, and economic decline, mass migration, and the rise of fascism are indicators of looming global ecological collapse.

It’s not even that I have become jaded or immobilized. I continue to develop machine learning systems to catalogue, and identify and network solutions, from Earth’s ecological information. Much will be unveiled on this soon (see https://search.ecointernet.org/ and https://www.twitter.com/ecointernet3 for an early start).

But as I age I have become more pragmatic. Very few societal changes have come about until the elite see it is in their interest and embrace change out of the need for self-preservation. I am working hard to connect with and understand global economics, looking for ways to build bridges between deep ecology and sustainable commerce. Thus I work a gratifying day job in finance to pay for my decades of past activism.

Clearly things are worsening ecologically, economically, and socially. Abrupt climate change is careening out of control, as the impacts of dramatic polar ice melt are given short shrift. A relatively large amount of heat is required to melt ice. Once the “air conditioning” provided by this ice is gone, extra heat will dramatically warm oceans and land, orders of magnitude beyond the calamitous warming already occurring.

Not a lot of new land is being made, and much of what remains is tawdry remnants of their former productive glory. Large naturally evolved ecosystems that power the biosphere are almost gone. The majority of the human family continues to focus upon serving invisible ghosts in the sky and buying more things, rather than concerning themselves with sustaining their shared habitat and thus community well-being.

Global economic inequity has reached obscene levels. A sizeable minority lives in cocooned techno-splendor, dying from over-consumption; as the majority barely gets by, many scrounging a miserable existence from industrially plundered environments. And the middle class and political moderation are fading away.

It is difficult to imagine how this can end in anything but utter and total collapse.

How long before the have-nots come to take what they need from those that have-so-much extra? Facebook friends will not be there to save you.

As we invest consider taking long positions in land, water, air, and food; and shorting fossil fuels, armaments, and spying. By doing so together we sustain a just, equitable, and free Earth; and we may benefit personally from funding solutions to our existential threats.

I do not think it is possible or necessary to seek perfection. But there is so much we can do individually and together to dramatically reduce the impact upon a sick Earth. Drive and fly, eat meat, and buy stuff way less. And find community, make peace, and share way more.

Recommit to humanity’s continual quest for self-improvement. Basic advances in the human condition such as slavery, racism, sexism, and militarism which nearly ended are once again threats due to profound ignorance, sloth, and greed.

We are all in this together. Resist the coming new Dark Age through love and connectedness with nature and fellow beings.

The three billion plus year old naturally evolved Earth is a masterpiece. The works of the hairless monkey with opposable thumbs are profoundly brilliant. We must continue our evolution, and doing so requires returning to our animalness, and relearning the most basic rule of all life: not fouling the nest in which you live.

Often I imagine a peaceful, thriving, loving humanity living enmeshed within rewilded nature abounding with old forests, rich gardens, and wildlife. I beseech you to make love not war, advancement not profit, equity not misery, ecology not ruin, justice not elitism, liberty not authoritarianism, respect not intolerance, knowledge not ignorance; and once again together strive for shared betterment.

Not sure how new this was. But I guess I had something to say after all.

New “Biosphere News Search” Web Site Launches to Benefit Global Ecology

Biosphere News Search

PRESS RELEASE
July 31, 2018

First of its kind climate and environment search engine, using machine learning and big data for global ecological sustainability, to be unveiled by EcoInternet this week in New York City

For more information contact:
Dr. Glen Barry, President, EcoInternet
drgbarry@gmail.com

New York, New York (July 31, 2018) – Environmental non-profit EcoInternet has today launched a new ecological search engine based upon cutting edge machine learning, data science, and big data technologies. Data tools typically used for finance and business are being applied for the first time to integrating the full body of global ecological knowledge in order to facilitate policies sufficient to avoid abrupt climate change, continued natural ecosystem loss, and ultimately biosphere collapse (1).

The new “Biosphere News Search” site at http://search.ecointernet.org/ tracks global climate and environmental news, as well as related issues as varied as rainforest conservation, sustainable agriculture, indigenous rights, and human trafficking. The best ecology news content from tens of thousands of news sources are continuously identified 24/7, algorithmically rated, networked on social media(2), and loaded into the new biosphere search engine.

“As Earth’s one shared biosphere is being pummeled by abrupt climate change and ecosystem collapse, EcoInternet is thrilled to unveil the fruits of two years of research and development into information systems to help provide solutions to these cataclysmic threats. The Biosphere News Search continuously finds, integrates, and amplifies the best global ecological knowledge using machine learning and big data technologies (which can scale indefinitely). The system is learning about the types of solutions known by experts, and desired by the public, and is constantly improving its results,” explains Dr. Glen Barry(3), President of EcoInternet.

EcoInternet and predecessors have a long history of using information technology and the Internet for environmental conservation, dating to the late 1980s from the rainforests of Papua New Guinea. For decades Dr. Barry has pioneered ecological advocacy and science on the Internet, work widely regarded by others as visionary. He was among, if not the first, blogger and news aggregator, sharing forest conservation content since the early 1990s. EcoInternet has initiated and participated in hundreds of successful community and indigenous conservation campaigns, while pioneering environmental search since the late 1990s. After a few years of concentrated learning and training in emerging data technologies, EcoInternet has recently entirely retooled their computer systems, which had been initially constructed as part of Dr. Barry’s PhD research at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

The current Phase 1 Biosphere News Search makes all global climate and environment news content searchable; with sources running the full gamut of news agencies, NGOs, community groups, and scientific bodies. Nearly a thousand articles are gathered, networked, and made searchable a day. We are now raising funds to complete our work on the new search engine by polishing the news content aggregator and the search engine’s graphic presentation. Work has already begun on creating a Google-like web search of all the best reviewed scientific and educational information on rainforests, oceans, agriculture, water, ecosystems, climate and related issues available on the Internet. In coming months EcoInternet expects to release an Internet wide ecology search engine and will also unveil a revamped ecological action network. Partnerships and sponsorship opportunities are desired.

“The global ecological system is collapsing and dying as human industrial growth overwhelms the climate and ecosystems. We urgently need to integrate knowledge regarding ecological problems and their solutions — from the local to the global scale —  to inform advocacy and policy actions sufficient to maintain a habitable planet. Future phases of EcoInternet’s Earth IT Project will organize the most important global ecological data sets into a ‘Global Ecology Data Vault’ using cutting edge data warehousing techniques not yet applied to global ecological sustainability,” says Dr. Barry.

###ENDS###

(1) Barry, G. (2014), “Terrestrial ecosystem loss and biosphere collapse”, Management of Environmental Quality, Vol. 25 No. 5, pp. 542-563. https://ecointernet.org/terrestrial-ecosystem-loss-and-biosphere-collapse/
(2) EcoInternet’s climate and environmental aggregated news are available at:
Web: http://ecointernet.org/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/ecointernet3
Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/EcoInternet/
RSS: https://www.ecointernet.org/eifullrss.xml
Search: https://search.ecointernet.org/
(3) Dr. Glen Barry on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/drglenbarry  — please feel free to connect