Galapagos Journal: A Quest to See a Place Untouched by Climate Change
Editor's note: Climate change will wreak havoc on the world's most famous garden of biodiversity. Three writers travelled to the Galapagos Islands to show us just what we stand to lose. Read Terry Tempest Williams' take here. Read Rick Bass' take here.
We cross the equator by boat on March 14, 2014, off the northwest tip of Isabela Island in the Ecuadorian Galápagos—the first time for me. A couple of bottlenose dolphins race the bow of the ship, and the ocean below shimmers with perceptible energy as if a leviathan hovers just below the surface.
Boobies, pelicans, and hundreds of other seabirds dive-bomb the anchovies leaping free of the sea, driven from below by bonito and albacore tuna. Phalaropes float on mats of insects. Noddies follow the Brown Pelicans, and Magnificent Frigatebirds soar above, swooping down to steal scraps of baitfish from the diving birds. A surge of gulls and storm-petrels breaks in front of the boat, following the anchovies, rolling from one patch of frothing ocean to another upwelling, where bloody chunks of bait litter the surface. Far ahead I can see giant fins cutting the waves. A number of my boat mates jump off to swim across the invisible equatorial line. They say the water is freezing.
I am riding on a 78-foot-long, steel-hulled, refitted fishing boat named the Samba. This ship is plush, with hot water and air-conditioning. Onboard are a crew of six, a naturalist, and 13 fellow travelers, half of whom I have never met before. When we go ashore to visit the wildlife, we're not supposed to touch anything. It is exactly the kind of cruise I have carefully avoided for the past three decades.
Nonetheless, as an old soldier with a foot in the grave, I'm working on my bucket list, and this cushy, indulgent-seeming journey to these well-tended islands—planned with close friends and family—is number one. This isn't exactly a vacation, though. For more than four decades I have done my best to protect wild places, grizzly bears, and other top predators. After this trip, I will head to the North Slope of the Yukon, where polar bears are interbreeding with grizzlies. The summer sea ice in the Arctic's Beaufort Sea will be gone in a couple of years, and the permafrost is already heaving, releasing heavy gasps of methane into the atmosphere. It's possible a worldwide warming of 8 to 11 degrees Fahrenheit and six feet of sea-level rise could arrive by the end of a century, estimates I personally believe are too conservative. The rate of change is mind-boggling. I am seeking clarity from this madness. The isolated Galápagos, as yet largely untouched by climatic changes, seems something sane I can wrap my mind around. ...
The guides use the phrase "ecological naïveté" to explain the apparent tameness of hawks, tortoises, and other Galápagos creatures that evolved in habitats without predators or other threats. David Quammen coined that particular expression in Song of the Dodo, his classic 1996 book on island biogeography. The corollary of that naïveté in these animals, however, is that the evolutionary loss of defensive behaviors, or the failure to acquire new ones, may render them vulnerable to new or introduced predators like mongooses, tree snakes, or feral cats. Evolution prepared the islands' creatures for a simpler, more innocent world.
We, meanwhile, evolved to deal with saber-toothed cats in the bush, bears in the night, or, especially, other humans. But a new danger has arrived, a relatively fresh enemy, the beast of our time: global warming. How do we respond to a dimly perceived, deadly worldwide threat, one that will require a collective human resolve? Did evolution not provide us with the wit to face the rising oceans, the melting ice, and the warming earth that will greatly shrink the habitats 7 billion people depend on? Ecological naivete will not serve us well either. ...
A person, at least by age 30, who has the experience and the reading to know that there are inherent differences in the human populations of the Earth, would have to be blind not to also see the parallel of European nations now being swamped by high birthrate Third World peoples. Ethnic Europeans all around the world seem to have very few defense mechanisms to preserve their own people, a demographic self-erasing that would be unheard of in, say, China, Japan, Mexico, Nigeria or any other non-European nation.
Part of the problem does seem to be evolutionary, since Europeans are probably the most individualistic people on Earth, most cannot seem to perceive this ethnic group danger, whereas other populations, while they may fight among themselves, show group solidarity in things like voting that is taken for granted. Also, to help European individualism operate more smoothly has been the development of a widespread altruism toward strangers, so that individual competition can work in a well oiled way, with reasonably equitable rules for all, which worked when we were mostly among ourselves. So now we tend to assume that others flooding into our societies will follow these same altruistic rules. They just need to move up to being middle class! They just need more education! They just need more government programs! Etc.
Another big part of the problem has been decades of Multicultural Marxism 'marching through the institutions of the West,' as described by Kevin MacDonald in 'The Culture of Critique' and by a few others willing to undergo the severe social ostracism and economic punishment for pointing out the obvious. In fact, without the U.S. Bill or Rights, in Europe, Canada and Australia you can be legally prosecuted for criticizing the government's open-borders immigration policies.
One interesting thing to observe will be what will happen when politically correct ethnic Europeans find that their own middle-class neighborhoods are rapidly becoming Third World and they cannot afford to move away. Of course demographically for our people that will be very late in the day.
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