Busy busy

For several weeks, it has been difficult to find time to write here because I have been so busy completing work for conferences, shows and books. A good thing to keep me off the streets of despair, as, when I read the article in the May/June 2007 Mother Jones magazine by Julia Whitty on species loss.

Whitty writes about the impact of species diversity loss as a consequence of global warming. She writes of cataclysmic disruptions to the ecosystems we depend upon and the complexity of inter-dependent relationships between species.

The one many of us are watching now, is the mysterious loss of pollinating honeybees. All those busy bees are disappearing. But do you know that microcospic bacteria and archaea, consume methane gases that will otherwise accelerate global warming even more than we are seeing today? And that we are endangering them with the detritus of scientific explorations? Read the article. I will not spoil the anticipation of mysteries revealed.

The problem is we go unconscious. Or we begin ignorant. And yet we plow forward with our agendas. Whether that is making babies or harvesting the rapidly dwindling bounty of this fragile planet.

It is all happening so fast and our capacities to deter disaster are so cumbersome. Whitty's article is titled, "By the end of the century half of all species will be gone. Who will survive?"

Rather than drive myself mad with worry and grief and frustration, I keep myself busy, busy busy, cat on my lap right now, elderly dog on my couch downstairs, waiting to be walked, irons in the fire.