The Story

Apocalypse!

Jan. 26, 2012 | By Sharon Hartzell, DSJ Staff Columnist

The end times are here. What else could explain the New Years 2011 crash landing of thousands of birds in Arkansas and Louisiana, dubbed �"Aflockalypse” by news sources? Actually, according to scientists, the recent bird deaths were not a herald of the world’s end but an unusual if natural occurrence, likely attributable to weather changes or disease. Scientists agree that such events occur regularly in nature, and that this one was unique only in its publicity. So, no, mass animal deaths do not portend the world’s end.

Except, in a way, they do.

John Roach of msnbc.com covered the events of New Years 2011, and consulted Stuart Pimm, a Duke University conservation ecologist. �"I don’t think there is a story here,” Pimm told Roach, but noted that all is not right in avian universe. Pimm, Roach says, stated that one in six bird species is threatened with extinction.

Compared with other groups of plants and animals, birds enjoy a relatively slow, though typically underestimated, extinction rate. But extinction, in general, is more common than ever. �"For the first time since the dinosaurs disappeared,” says an article by Juliette Jowit in the Guardian, �"humans are driving animals and plants to extinction faster than new species can evolve.” The article notes that we are in the throes of the sixth �"great extinction” the Earth has seen, hastened, if not caused directly, by habitat destruction, climate change, introduction of invasive species, and overexploitation. Much scarier, if you ask a scientist, than anything �"Aflockalypse” can offer.

None of this is breaking news; it’s been going on for, well, most of our tenure on Earth. No wonder, then, that the average media coverage of accelerating extinction rates is much less than that of a few freak non-events in Arkansas. Mentions of increased extinction rates have emerged in light of the bird deaths last month, in contrast to their usual absence from papers. So it goes with long term disasters; it has taken the sudden and the sensational to wake us from our general disinterest in the life-or-death trials of the avian community.

Entertain the leap I am about to make in comparing Aflockalypse 2011 to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill this summer. On the surface, the events are entirely unrelated. The oil spill was obviously caused by human actions, while the bird deaths, despite the dubious �"fireworks” explanation offered by a number of news sources, were likely natural (proximally, at least; changing weather patterns can certainly be caused by human behavior.) However, both illustrate the typical public response to the "crazy stuff" that happens in our world. If it’s strange enough and happens suddenly enough, we take notice, whether attention is warranted or not; if it’s destruction and disaster in the long-term, we tend to turn a blind eye, waiting for the next tragedy.

The Gulf spill was bad, but not the end of the world. A New York Times article from May stated that "Some experts have been quick to predict apocalypse, painting grim pictures of 1,000 miles of irreplaceable wetlands and beaches at risk, fisheries damaged for seasons, fragile species wiped out and an industry economically crippled for years.” At 4.9 million barrels, the spill was the largest to occur in the Gulf of Mexico, but it certainly wasn't the first. A ban enacted by President Obama on offshore drilling is not likely to make it the last, either; Republican Representative Fred Upton, Chairman of the Committee on Energy and Commerce, stands with the oil industry in pushing for renewed access to offshore waters. No, the world didn’t end when the rig exploded. Despite the environmental and economic ravages that the Gulf Coast has been subject to, it will survive. For now.

Disasters like the gulf spill cannot be viewed in isolation, though. What happened in the Gulf is only one clear symptom of a disease endemic to society, though largely ignored because it’s difficult to look at. The diagnosis is simple, but the prognosis is ugly: our way of life is dependent upon a nonrenewable energy source whose increasing scarcity is already driving us towards methods of extraction that endanger our health, our welfare and our future. The environmental fallout from practices like offshore drilling, hydraulic fracturing and damaging coal mining techniques like mountaintop removal represent only a fraction of the damages we stand to incur from our unsustainable lifestyle.

The apocalypse IS coming. The signs are there, but they are usually shoved under the rug unless they fall out of the sky and hit us in the head. Unfortunately, the day may come when the overt signs of our own self-designed demise cannot be chalked up to �"freak accident,” but instead bear the epitaph �"too late.”

Sharon Hartzell is a staff columnist for the DSJ. Her views do not necessarily represent those of the entire staff.