We’re not doomed. Here’s how to revive Planet Earth

Gaging the human impact on life on the planet, that's a pretty touchy subject because on the one hand, you know, humans are a pretty remarkable species

Heck, we're the only species that's left the planet. At the same time, supporting an 8 billion human population is a big burden on the planet

And so for a lot of biodiversity on the planet, that's been bad news. But biodiversity is really important to our existence because we rely upon fresh air, fresh water, healthy land, healthy oceans for our own existence

And that's largely the work of creatures on this planet, from earthworms and fungi in our soil to plants and trees that generate the oxygen

and while the loss of biodiversity is extremely concerning, the silver line here, you might just say the ray of hope

that is not talked about nearly enough is nature's resilience and how, if given a chance

nature can rebound and nature can rebound dramatically. So let me talk a little bit about the resilience of nature

1960s, the crisis was that things like bald eagles and peregrine falcons were disappearing

We're down to fewer than 500 breeding pairs of bald eagles in the lower 48 states

That's the national symbol, right, in the United States. When it was discovered that that was because of the use of the DDT pesticide

this DDT was making, for example, their eggs very fragile, and reproduction of these birds collapsed

When DDT was removed from the environment these populations rebounded So for example today there more than 70 breeding pairs of bald eagles Turn of the last century the fur trade loved otter fur right

Well, we almost drove otters along the Pacific Rim to extinction, perhaps down to as few as a

thousand animals. When that trade was banned in the early 20th century, otters came roaring back

and now otter populations are back up 100,000 plus, etc. Same thing's been seen with whales, same with manatees, same with grizzly bears

Take the pressure off, their numbers come back. But what about systems

In the 1960s, there was a park really in the geographic center of Mozambique called Gorongosa

There was an incredible concentration of wildlife in the center of the park. Elephants and buffalo and hippo and lions and all that

But Mozambique in the mid-70s, after its independence from Portugal, had a horrific civil war

Killed a million people, five million people were displaced. And Gorongosa was pretty much the geographic center of that conflict between rebels and government

And so wildlife were killed for meat. They were poached for things like ivory to be sold on the black market

such that by the mid-1990s, you probably had maybe 98% of the large animals of Gorongosa had been decimated

And that's really the way things might exist today, if not for an American philanthropist named Greg Carr and the Mozambican government

who formed a partnership in the early 2000s to try to restore Gorongosa National Park

And I'm really happy to report that Gorongosa is now home to

probably 50 times as many large animals as existed there 20 years ago

That the herds of elephant are thriving, that the hippo numbers are growing

that the lions have rebounded from virtually gone to perhaps about 180 individuals It a remarkable comeback story because Gorongosa was given up for dead

but it illustrates the general principle that given some seed stock, what was left, and a little bit of introduction, but really small numbers of animals

that nature is resilient. And not only can nature come back, it can come back in a time period right under our own eyes

We have a stake in the ecological health of the planet. That's just a scientific fact

Let's just take one aspect of something we know we need. We need fresh water

Well, polluted water doesn't do us much good. Silty water doesn't do us much good

Algal-choked water doesn't do us much good. All those things are the result of not managing the systems around water sensibly

Out in nature, when you see a nice clean stream running off a mountain

the mountain, the soil and the trees are doing a lot of the work to make that water clear

When we denude a mountain, when we cut down the whole forest and all the dirt runs into the water

then we now have not only silty water, but that will affect the ability of the land

to hold the water and essentially release it slowly over the seasons. So we're learning

or we've certainly learned sometimes the very hard way, that we need the fresh water. It just

turns out that we're given that fresh water by keeping the ecosystem intact. So coexistence

could be intentional. It could also just be a byproduct of managing ecosystems more sensibly

even for our own benefit. So the really important fact about biodiversity loss is it generally due to local factors The silver lining to that is is that local action can restore it I understand with respect to climate change because we globally share our climate

that we need treaties, we need global action, we need countries to act in concert, etc. And that

seems, you know, overwhelming to an individual. But I think there's a lot of room for initiative

a lot of room for joining action in small numbers and small groups, and that some of this is

really just our learning how to coexist. And we don't necessarily have to inconvenience ourselves

too much to just make things a bit more hospitable. To participate may simply mean thinking about the

plants you plant in your garden or on a windowsill, what you use on your lawn, clean up a pond or clean

up a lake or something like that. And I don't think it's Pollyannish. There is time to change

the road, Warren, because in fact, nature can rebound so quickly. We heard a lot of anecdotes

during COVID of animals appearing on our doorsteps or on a coastline or whatever it might be

And that's probably just a glimpse of, you know, the way nature would be if we weren't in the way

If I said to you, you know, in 100 years, things might be better. It's like, well

but if I tell you that in five or 10 years, you'll see an impact of accommodating this ecosystem

or accommodating this species. And in 20 years, you might see full recovery

And that is, that should be motivating. And, you know, in some ways, it sort of goes to the more philosophical question of, you

know, what are we doing with our time we spend here on the planet? Do we want to sit in our armchairs and essentially just, you know, forecast doom

Or do we want to get up off our asses and do something? Want to dive deeper

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