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MAHB Dialogue with Mike Phillips, Executive Director of the Turner Endangered Species Fund

July 5, 2022 In Big Ideas Biology Environment Stanford MAHB Dialogues No Comment

Geoff Holland – What is biodiversity? And why is it so important to protecting the health and resilience of the biosphere we all depend on?

Mike Phillips – Back in 1997, Ted Turner and I co-founded the Turner Endangered Species Fund and the Turner Biodiversity Division. The fund is a nonprofit, private operational charity that focuses on imperiled species that are listed as threatened or endangered under state or federal law. As for the biodiversity divisions, we realized early on that we were interested in species that were imperiled but not quite so to need to be listed. For the species we formed Biodiversity Divisions. Every ranch that Mr. Turner owns has a Biodiversity Division.

What is biodiversity? Biodiversity is the sum total of all life on Earth and their interactions. The biodiversity of the planet occupies the biosphere, the living zone of the planet. Interactions between species are of paramount importance. It’s all well and good for a gray wolf, to run around the woods. But it’s really important for a gray wolf to run around the woods and do what predators do. It’s the interactions of life that give a richness to the biosphere. What’s being lost with the extinction crisis, or the biodiversity crisis, is not just species, but their interactions.

GH – You lead the Turner Endangered Species Project launched by Ted Turner in 1997. Can you summarize your approach to restoring the health and resiliency of wild eco-systems?

MP – We acknowledge that the health and resiliency of wild ecosystems are both critically important. If you’re healthy, you’re resilient. If you’re resilient, you’re healthy. Then we acknowledge that ecosystems are exceedingly complex. You can make a case that a square foot of living planet, a square foot of some wild ecosystem is the most complex, complicated thing in the universe. Because of the complexity we break our work down to simple pieces, the species themselves. For example, the Bolson tortoise is absent from a great deal of suitable desert grassland habitat in New Mexico. We believe its presence would add to the health and resiliency of that setting. So, we put them back. Other species we work with at present but in such small numbers that they are not secure. A good example here would be the Chiricahua leopard frog. You can find Chiricahua leopard frogs on the Ladder Ranch, but not in the numbers that indicate security. For such species we implement population augmentation efforts.

GH – You are also associated with the late great EO Wilson’s half Earth project. Can you explain your Wilson’s vision and the urgency behind it?

MP – Well, Ed was a friend, and I miss him. He was a true hero of mine. And I am honored to serve on Ed’s Half-Earth Council, a collection of people that believe the notion of affording proper consideration of non-human life across 50% of the planet is extremely important, not only because that life has value in and of itself, but that life is essential to the safety and security and prosperity of humankind.

I believe that ‘Half-Earth’ matters because it celebrates life. And it acknowledges that life on Earth is under assault and has been for a long, long time. The extinction crisis is very real, and has been real for a long, long time…for centuries. We’re currently in the grip of the sixth great extinction crisis to sweep across this planet over something like 450 million years. The fifth such crisis occurred about 65 million years ago when an asteroid slammed into the planet. That rock measured about six miles across. It was traveling at something like 45,000 miles an hour. It brought an end to the age of the dinosaurs in what it was essentially a geological instant.

The sixth great extinction crisis is not being precipitated by an asteroid, but rather by the activities of humankind, at least since the late 18th century and the advent of the Industrial Revolution, if not centuries earlier. It is planetary in scope. It is affecting all types of life forms, and it’s growing worse by the day. The extinction crisis is profoundly important, and evidence that the health and resiliency of the planet is being significantly weakened through humankind’s activities. Why should this matter?

Well, I would have you believe it should matter to everybody because of the relevance of life to all of us. Let’s assume for a moment that you’re a person of faith. How can you love the Creator and not love the creation, which is the handiwork of the Creator? And how can you stand by and watch something you love be needlessly destroyed without rising up in defense? Or let’s take the flip side of that logic, let’s assume you’re a secular humanist and you believe that rather than faith, it’s data and facts and logic and empiricism that matter most. Well, the best science indicates that the fate of humanity has been and will always be decided by the health of local landscapes the world over. And yet the extinction crisis, the biodiversity crisis, makes clear that the landscapes around the planet are not the least bit healthy. So, no matter who you are, the extinction crisis should matter and be understood. Acknowledging the problem is the first step. But then you have to develop a response. An effective response to the extinction crisis, the biodiversity crisis is Half-Earth’.

GH – One of the your projects is focused on revitalizing populations of Prairie Dogs and the extremely endangered Black Footed Ferret, which are dependent on healthy, undisturbed populations of prairie dogs. Can you tell us, how is that project going?

MP – I am quite proud of our work with Prairie Dogs and Black Footed Ferrets. The Black Footed Ferret is arguably the rarest carnivore in the world. In large part it is so very rare because the Prairie Dog has been persecuted for a long, long time in this country as a pest and a problem for ranchers. Prairie Dogs eat grass, and cattle eat grass and consequently some believe on occasion there’s competition. If you kill the Prairie Dogs, you make it easier for a livestock operation to go forward. Prairie Dogs have been intensively persecuted in this country for many decades. The Black Footed Ferret is an obligate carnivore on Prairie Dogs. That’s all they eat. They are completely dependent on Prairie Dog colonies. The Black Footed Ferret is an ecological specialist.

Ted Turner is the largest rancher of Bison in the country with a herd that includes 40,000 to 50,000 animals. Back in 1997, when Ted and I co-founded the Turner Endangered Species Fund, I knew that he was a determined Bison rancher, and it only made sense that the Turner Endangered Species Fund follow the Bison trail, and act on conservation opportunities that presented themselves because of the bison operation. One of the greatest conservation opportunities presented by Bison ranching is Prairie Dogs and Black Footed Ferrets. The program is going very well. We aim to make substantive contributions to the federal recovery program for the Black Footed Ferret, and I have hoped that someday the Black Footed Ferret will be so secure on Prairie Dog colonies stretching across the Great Plains, that it will be proper to remove federal protections because it is no longer endangered or threatened. It’s a perfect metaphor for what Ed Wilson wanted to see with the Half-Earth project.

GH – Can you give us another example of Endangered Species Projects you are working on?

MP – Well, we have a number of projects that I’m focused on at the Turner Endangered Species Fund. Some are historic in scale and scope. For example, our work with Red Cockaded Woodpeckers in the American Southeast, an endangered species…another habitat specialist. I’m proud that we put in place back in 1998, the largest, most significant restoration effort ever for that species. It was most significant because it was a project that aimed to establish the Red Cockaded Woodpecker to a forest that had never before supported the species. Now, that said, the forest at the Turner Avalon plantation is well within the historical range of the Red Cockaded Woodpecker. But the original forest had long since been cut down. The Red Cockaded Woodpeckers had left, and a new forest had grown up, and the birds had never come back. Now, why would the birds not come back? Red Cockaded Woodpeckers are unique in the woodpecker world. They’re the only woodpecker that has cavities that are constructed in live pines. So, they need a relatively mature forest to have access to pines that are big enough that allow the woodpecker to create a cavity in the heartwood without killing the tree. These cavities are critically important to Red Cockaded Woodpeckers. They will not survive a night or two or three if they can’t get into one of their nest cavities. When we did the restoration work at the Avalon plantation the forest had lots of big mature pine trees, but there were no cavities. We had to provide all of the cavities with inserts. No one had ever done that before.

GH – Can you summarize some of the other endangered species restoration projects you’re working on?

MP – I mention ed that we’ve done significant work on behalf of the Gopher Tortoise, and also significant work on behalf of the Black Footed Ferret, the Black Tailed Prairie Dog, and the Gunnison Prairie Dog. We are responsible for the most successful effort ever to restore Desert Bighorn Sheep in the Southwest at the Armendaris Ranch, specifically to the Fra Cristobal Mountains. We have made substantive contributions contributions to the Chiricahua Leopard Frog Federal Recovery Program. We are building out a one-of-a-kind effort on behalf of the endangered Chupadera Springsnail. We have a historic effort underway on behalf of the Bolson Tortoise in the Desert Southwest. We have done fantastic work, historic work on behalf of restoring Rio Grande Cutthroat Trout in New Mexico, and the Westslope Cutthroat Trout in Montana. When we finish the trout work, probably at the end of 2022, we will have restored those two species to over 200 miles of streams and creeks of the Rocky Mountain West. That’s a scale of work that even a state or federal agency has a hard time achieving. We have made substantive contributions to wolf recovery in the northern Rocky Mountains and the Southwest. And we were the driving force behind securing a restoration mandate for the Gray Wolf to be restored to Western Colorado. That’s just a quick summary of some of the work that we’ve been involved with over the last 25 years.

GH – What can we learn from the world’s indigenous people about how to live sustainably and in harmony with nature?

MP – Now by no means am I an anthropologist. So, you’re taking me outside of my wheelhouse of expertise, which is not very big in the first place. But I think at least from indigenous people, we can learn the value of greater ecological literacy. I do believe it’s true that indigenous peoples lived closer to the land than we do today. That was probably by necessity, not out of choice. I suppose that lots of indigenous people in the 16th and 1700s would welcome the luxuries we enjoy today. They just didn’t have them. But I think they’ve done a better job at retaining ecological literacy. I think many people around the planet are, however, ecologically illiterate. And they don’t understand that we are never going to be any better than the planet’s ability to provide for our needs. We are exhausting the natural capital of the planet at an alarming rate. We would be less inclined to exhaust that capital, if we were more ecologically literate. I do believe indigenous peoples could help us acknowledge the importance of ecological literacy.

GH – I may have got the focus wrong here, but I was taken by the fact that the Turner Foundation has this motto, ‘Save Everything’. Is that really something that’s possible, or just an ambition?

MP – It is an important aspiration for Ted Turner. Some of the most important aspirations are probably not possible, but they still serve to inspire. And that makes more possible than would be otherwise. I think people who are inspired, accomplish more than people who are uninspired. A great way to inspired is to offer a lofty aspiration. What could be loftier than aspiring to save everything?

GH – What would you like to see the social media doing to inform and energize the public about the consequences of their own eating and living habits on our earth’s rapidly diminishing biodiversity?

MP – I would want social media to remind humanity that we are completely reliant on Mother Earth, and that there are limits to what Mother Earth can do for us.

I would really appreciate it if the world of social media would point out that we need to account for all of the costs of production, distribution and consumption today, so that people are paying a fair price for whatever it is they’re buying, and not passing some cost to some future generation. We are very good at denying the real cost of production, distribution and consumption and putting a burden on future generations without compensating them for it. People have to be mindful that it’s important to pay their fair share. Those of us here today are not paying our fair share. If we were paying our fair share, we would not be exhausting our Earth’s natural capital. I would like to think social media could help everybody understand it is only right to pay our fair share today.

10.

GH – What kind of planetary scale cultural commitment do we need if we are to save ourselves from our own worst instincts?

MP – We need to acknowledge that the extinction crisis is a clarion call for readjusting our relationship with Mother Earth and with one another. The extinction crisis is caused by many, many things. It’s caused by climate change; it’s caused by habitat degradation; it’s caused by over-exploitation. Because it is caused by so many things, it is a very effective clarion call for change.

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Mike Phillips is a Research Biologist and Co-Founder of the Turner Endangered Species Fund and Turner Biodiversity Divisions.

Embracing the Earth Charter

July 4, 2022 In Big Ideas Perspective Planetary Citizen Politics No Comment

To move forward we must recognize that in the midst of a magnificent diversity of cultures and life forms, we are one human family and one Earth community with a common destiny – The Earth Charter

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The idea for the Earth Charter first emerged in 1987, and atter a multi-year process that included distinguished leaders like Maurice Strong and Mikhail Gorbachev, was refined and finally presented to the world by the Earth Charter Commission in the year 2000. It is a document built on sixteen principles that offer a solid foundation for building a new human era that is life-affirming and sustainable.

The reason we humans need a bold new start should be abundantly clear to anyone who has been paying attention to events, particularly in recent years. Words that apply: climate change, extreme weather, food insecurity, toxic chemical contamination, violent territorial conflict, human overpopulation, and global biodiversity collapse. The world we know is coming apart at the seams.

Humanity is in big trouble in so many ways all over the planet. We are entirely responsible. We must be the ones to forge a transformative new direction.

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‘Humanity in the twenty-ﬁrst century now faces the greatest test of our collective wisdom in our million-year ascent. Whether we succeed or fail is entirely in our own hands, minds and hearts, not just as individuals or nations, but as a species.’ – Julian Cribb, Surviving the 21^st Century

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The Systems View of Life

The traditional scientific view is that all of life and the universe we know function like mechanical parts of a machine, and we tend to view the parts in isolation.

More recent evidence suggests that all of life and reality are substantially connected.

Fritjof Capra, author of The Tao of Physics, says that the fundamental dilemma in the traditional view of reality is the illusion that you can have unlimited quantitative growth on a planet with limited resources. The current economic system requires constant growth to function, which can only result in the exhaustion of our Earth’s supply of essential resources.

The wiser course, based on a systems view of life, would shift the emphasis away from quantitative growth to Qualitative Growth, which Capra tells us is ‘the kind of balanced, multi-faceted growth we observe in nature where certain parts of organisms, or ecosystems, grow, while others decline, releasing and recycling their components which become resources for new growth. Qualitative growth is growth that enhances the quality of life through continual regeneration.’

The Earth Charter principles encourage a life-affirming, qualitative growth paradigm that emulates and complements nature’s grand design.

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‘Leaders guided by the moral compass of the Earth Charter should be called “Earth leaders,” rather than world leaders, because their vision is the well-being of humanity and of the larger community of life on Earth, rather than political, economic, or corporate success.’ – Fritjof Capra, Systems Scientist

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Repudiating Exceptionalism

The notion of American Exceptionalism emerged in the early 19^th century when European settlers used ‘Manifest Destiny’, fueled by Christian dogma, as justification to displace native Americans from their traditional lands. It was a brand of cultural genocide that will remain an indelible stain on the history of the Americas.

The sense of superiority many Americans of European decent continue to harbor toward people of color is rooted in this early brand of exceptionalism.

The tribalism that drives the current polarization of American politics emerges from the entitlement that exceptionalism encourages.

In fact, the survival of humanity depends on the demise of exceptionalism. It has to be relegated it to the dustbin of history.

The Earth Charter is a set of principles that calls on every person to get past their prejudices in favor of a shared planetary citizenship built on unencumbered gender equality, social justice for all, and a moral obligation for responsible planetary stewardship.

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‘We live in an age in which the fundamental principles to which we subscribe – liberty, equality and justice for all – are encountering extraordinary challenges, … But it is also an age in which we can join hands with others who hold to those principles and face similar challenges.’ – Ruth Bader Ginsburg

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A New American Brand of Politics

He who has the money and power makes the rules. That’s how it’s been from the beginnings of industrial era America, and that’s how it is now. The bankers, billionaires, corporatists, and the insular tribalists that support them are wedded to misogyny, racism, and business as usual. They deny climate change. They are against anything that might disrupt their narrow self-interest.

We are at a point of reckoning right now, with the old order doing all it can to hang on to its political hegemony by crippling the voting rights of the poor and people of color. Who will prevail? Will it be the tribalists who want to retain their cultural dominance, or will it be the substantial majority of Americans, who choose gender equality, social justice, and responsible planetary stewardship?

The American mid-term election in November, 2022 is the next chance, possibly the last chance voters will have to turn away from the dark course we are on.

Consider what a new brand of American politics could look like; a better brand of politics built on a foundation of gender equality and social justice. The list that follows reveals just some of the change that could come with a government that is empowered by voters to truly be ‘of, by, and for the People’.

The Equal Rights Constitutional Amendment would become law.
Corporations and the wealthy would pay their fair share of taxes.
The system of legalized bribery for politicians would end.
New public policy would put the common good ahead of private self-interest.
Government would aggressively address climate change and other environmental challenges.
Healthcare would become a right of every American.

In fact, all of that can emerge when the Earth Charter is embraced as prime inspiration for where the global human culture needs to go.

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‘In the political realm, we now have a series of grassroots movements of young people who are passionate about systemic social change (Fridays for Future, the Sunrise Movement, Extinction Rebellion, and many others). Their values are also consistent with those of the Earth Charter and with the systemic understanding of life that has emerged at the forefront of science.’ – Fritjof Capra, Systems Scientist

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Buying in on a Planetary Scale

It would seem to be a monumental task: getting everybody on Earth on the same page.

With eyes wide open, an informed public would surely see no alternative. We must change our ways now. We must get everybody on the same page now.

I wish I had more confidence in a positive outcome for this story. We have to believe it’s possible, despite the fact that at least half of humanity is under the thumb of one unscrupulous dictator or another. If we fail to turn the tide, we’re done. It’s dog eat dog on every level. We’ve got countries like the US, Russia, and China that are armed to the teeth. We have the capability of annihilating every living thing on Earth about ten times over. It’ll be tribe against tribe, locally, regionally, nationally, fighting for dominance. The strong might survive initially, but the savage and bloody conflicts they fight will come at the expensive of the vast majority of the world’s people. It will also leave our living biosphere ravaged, and human survival very much in doubt.

Is that really what we want from each other?

Business as usual is a dead end for humanity. The evidence for that is painfully clear. At best, we are on course to make much of our home planet uninhabitable; at worst, no one survives.

On that sober note, let’s talk about what we have going for us.

Let’s start with the fact that unlike any other era of human history, we are all connected; all of us; every nation, every culture, every language, as never before.

It is possible for any connected person to reach any other connected person anywhere else in the world in seconds. The broadcast and the social media have global reach.

This is a wonderful thing. Unfortunately, at this time, most broadcast media and social media outlets are owned by private for-profit interests. Their customers are not their viewers. Their customers are the big money interests that buy advertising time. I’m talking about the companies that sell beer, cars, oil, and every other kind of consumer commodity. The media’s revenue depends on advertising revenue from the corporate world. Media content is not shaped to inform and enlighten, its primary purpose is to deliver an audience for its advertisers.

The best we can say at this point is we have the technical capacity to link all of humanity in real time.

The Earth Charter perfectly reflects the principles that should be the foundation for the next version, the better version of humanity. We must find ways to deliver the Earth Charter message through our deeply conflicted public media. We have to encourage every ounce of creative energy we can muster to present the Earth Charter to all the world’s people..

Every person who recognizes that life on Earth is under siege must embrace their duty as planetary citizens… We must all come together. We must stand with leaders who will get us past the incrementalism. We need bold public policy based on the Earth Charter. That’s how we galvanize public opinion in every corner of our planet. We need all the world’s people standing for a common Earth vision.

It’s time we all became planetary citizens.

When voters gain control of public policy through the forward-thinking people we elect, we will see our broadcast and social media reconstituted to serve the common good.

Getting to where we all must go will be a struggle. At the moment on our Earth, we do not have strong cross-cultural bonds. We must get past that.

I remain cautiously hopeful. I believe we will get past that. I see humans of every persuasion choosing their better instincts, and also the Earth Charter. We will save our planet for future generations in the process.

Speaking of future generations, there is a step that can be taken to encourage children to see themselves as planetary citizens.

A principal leader behind the Earth Pledge is the founder of the Rainforest Action Network, Randy Hayes. The mission is to encourage schools to let their students pledge their allegiance to the planet we all depend on.

What better way to complement the Earth Charter? What better way to put children on a path to be citizens who are committed to the sixteen principles of the Earth Charter?

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‘We talk about national flags and loyalty. But, it really is the local ecosystem that people grew up with. That becomes the thing we all can bond around; we can bond around that, plus our children, and our shared hopes for the future. Once you get to that level of understanding; that we’re all members of the human family, that’s the level at which we can all come together.’ – Hazel Henderson, The Politics of the Solar Age

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Let’s All Take the Earth Pledge

When I was a boy, from my first moments in school, I remember arriving in the classroom, and the first thing we did is put right hand over heart and share the pledge of alliance to the United States of America. It was a ritual. Every morning at 8:15 AM, we pledged our loyalty.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if kids all over the planet started their school days with the Earth Pledge? Imagine, tens of millions of kids around the world pledging allegiance to our Earth every morning at school.

Beyond that, wouldn’t it be awesome if in the third grade, eight-year-old kids in every corner of the Earth could get three weeks of learning focused on the Earth Charter and what it means to live by its sixteen principles… It wouldn’t have to stop there. Students could get new lessons based on the Earth Charter in the sixth grade, the ninth grade, and the twelfth grade.

I would so love to see this.

A simple morning ritual for kids. That is how we encourage our children to become loyal Planetary Citizens; each of whom will have grown up with the sixteen principles of the Earth Charter.

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Earth Pledge

I pledge allegiance to the Earth

To its mountains, rivers, soil, and sky

One planet, irreplaceable

To be cherished and protected by all

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The Systems of Life

May 5, 2022 In Uncategorized No Comment

The Systems of Life – a MAHB Dialogue with Fritjof Capra, Systems Scientist and Author of The Tao of Physics

Diversifying Power – A MAHB Dialogue with Jennie C. Stephens

September 20, 2021 In Big Ideas Gender Roles Planetary Citizen Politics Stanford MAHB Dialogues No Comment

Diversifying Power – A MAHB Dialogue with Jennie C. Stephens, Director, School of Public Policy and Urban Affairs, Northeastern University

THE PALE BLUE DOT

May 5, 2021 In Big Ideas Science Video No Comment

This is Astronomer Carl Sagan’s achingly lovely ode to the beauty of planet Earth. Richly colored, high dynamic range video of our land, sea, and sky in all their natural splendor, and a mellifluous music track accompanies the visual feast, along with a voice track of one of the greatest citizens of the Universe, the astronomer, Carl Sagan. When I was young, he was one of my heroes. Right now, he sits on a star, flanked by Beethoven and Archimedes.

Here is a wondrous video, narrated by Carl Sagan, telling us the Earth is our only home…urging us all to rise and embrace our planetary duty..