EP 740 Remember: Animals Can’t Turn on Their Air Conditioners

Just because humans stride atop the animal kingdom doesn’t mean that what affects us doesn’t affect other species on this earth  or that the impact on them by things like climate breakdown doesn’t turn around and affect our lives.  Naturalist Adam Welz tries and succeeds in driving this point home in his book, “The End of Eden,” which stands as a stark warning about the “intimate ecological breakdowns” which imperil all of life of Earth.  And while we can design technologies and mitigate the consequences of our actions, flora and fauna remain helpless in the face of a rapidly deteriorating climate crisis.  Let’s take for instance the issue of heat.  While he reminds us we do not see birds falling out of the sky, if you keep your eyes open you will see many bird species pausing for much longer periods in the shade to regather their strength.  Or you might live in Maine and notice that the ticks that would go south for the winter are now able to stay in the north longer and have harmful impacts on the moose population.  And so it goes.  Perhaps an appreciation for the impacts of climate ‘weirding’, as he calls it, on overlooked species might capture the imagination of many who tend to look away otherwise.

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