For each of the 12 days of Christmas, here鈥檚 something to beguile, distract 鈥� and leave you with questions for the year ahead
If getting older has any advantages, a heightened sense of perspective must be high on the list. Age may play tricks with time and foster lofty comparisons between then and now, but the thing is: the natural world doesn鈥檛 look good from up here.
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In my 60s now, I remember a world with nearly 5 billion fewer humans and a lot more ordinary, commonplace wilderness. Some children today think that bats are imaginary creatures on a par with goblins, ghosts and witches. Perhaps before too long they will be.
In memory of that natural abundance, environmental journalist Michael McCarthy has called his powerful new book . It is extraordinary, McCarthy writes, that this insect blizzard has ceased to exist 鈥� and even more so, that its disappearance has gone largely unremarked.
A catastrophic crash in Britain鈥檚 invertebrate population 鈥� which feeds bats, birds and lots more 鈥� has happened in McCarthy鈥檚 lifetime and mine, even though 鈥渢he national consciousness does not register it yet鈥�. What would it take to awaken us?
Shifting baseline
Even the world鈥檚 vast oceans are becoming hostile to life. Part of the problem is 鈥渟hifting baseline syndrome,鈥� writes marine conservationist , in Ocean of Life, his searing account of how the seas are changing. Nobody wants to listen to old-timers going on about their youth. Each generation starts afresh, and the relentless erosion of natural diversity and abundance continues.
But can people be persuaded to care?
Marty Crump, a US conservationist with a passion for amphibians and reptiles pursued over almost five decades, is an optimist. Her vast new compendium of herpetological mythology and folklore, , is a 鈥渃razy quilt鈥� of a book that quickly convinces the reader that these species constitute an enormous wealth of cultural capital. In losing them, we lose part of ourselves.
Unhappily, despite years collecting myths and legends about frogs, toads, newts, salamanders, lizards, snakes, tuataras, tortoises and crocodiles, Crump struggles to draw big conclusions from the inconsistent, paradoxical and downright peculiar stories she tells.
Frogs may be lauded for bringing rain, but cursed for floods. Lizards can be guardian spirits or devil apparitions. Tortoises can be wise or cowardly, or downright sinister. Even snakes can be canny and good, as well as cunning and conniving.
Crump concludes only that humanity seems to have a 鈥渓ove-hate鈥� relationship with these creatures. She鈥檚 convinced that folk perceptions of amphibians and reptiles somehow matter when it comes to their conservation 鈥� and maybe they do. Yet how could any 鈥渆ducation鈥� campaign that she might devise cut through the cultural morass to engender the 鈥渞espect and admiration鈥� that she clearly feels?
A different path
McCarthy thinks there鈥檚 another way, arguing that conservationists have persistently taken the wrong tack. Back in the 1980s, alongside education campaigns, sustainable development was to be the natural world鈥檚 saviour. Today, hopes ride on putting price tags on 鈥渆cosystem services鈥� 鈥� all the life-support systems that an undisturbed natural world can provide for free.
But in this new commodification of nature, if the numbers don鈥檛 add up, it鈥檚 not worth saving.
Can there be no other defence, pleads McCarthy, for butterflies, birdsong and the unfolding of ferns? His impassioned answer reflects a new, 鈥渟piritual鈥� direction emerging in Britain鈥檚 increasingly despairing conservation movement.
Every nature lover tells of an early encounter with wilderness that sparked an enduring fascination. Often, it鈥檚 a moment of awe at the beauty and sheer otherness of the natural world. McCarthy thinks that this is the ultimate defence of nature: 鈥淲e should offer up what it means to our spirits鈥� We should offer up its joy.鈥�
His first experience of such joy came as a child in 1954, when a buddleia plant in his suburban garden in Birkenhead was festooned with red admirals, peacocks, small tortoiseshells and painted ladies 鈥� butterflies that were then commonplace across England.
As his mother sank into a mental breakdown and his brother raged, McCarthy found this small but wondrous spectacle 鈥渇illing the space where my feelings should have been鈥�.
As he argues, we must 鈥減roclaim these worths through our own experiences in the coming century of destruction, and proclaim them loudly, as the reason why nature must not go down鈥�.
The worry is that today鈥檚 buddleia is stripped of its butterflies, and spectacles of nature are thin on the ground. May baby boomers not be the last generation to experience that joy.
Image credit: Mike Kemp/In Pictures/Corbis, artist: Robert Indiana
