519
will prevail. Most recently has emerged individuals like the Swedish Greta Thunberg
(b. 2003), the “how dare you” teen environmentalist with millions of young followers deeply stirred by her frank and well-read opposition to an adult world where
most politicians, economists, and consumers remain content to embrace gradualism
at best, business-as-usual at worst. And then there is someone like the unstoppable
Dr. Russell A. Mittermeier, Chief Conservation Officer for the NGO, Global
Wildlife Conservation and winner of the 2018 prestigious Indianapolis Prize for
Conservation, who has successfully helped save tens of millions of acres in country
after country, through a combination of deeply informed science (he spent nearly 3
years and restless nights in a hammock in the rainforest of Suriname studying monkeys for his PhD), and his skillful, graceful negotiating skills with Prime Ministers
and tribal chiefs alike. Dr. Mittermeier’s children are growing up in his assiduous
footsteps.
11
We know that change is possible. Fires can be put out. Some elites and policy
pundits are panicking and wanting to do the right thing environmentally. Too little,
too late? Perhaps that is merely the crash of apathy, or ecological nihilism courting
daily anger. Or, perhaps it reflects the numbers and their equations that simply,
under even the most sanguine of probability distribution models, cannot win this
battle to salvage the earth, nor persuade a critical mass, in absence of absolute salvation, to join in the efforts. Such lackluster jeremiads are yet to be determined.
This dyad of weighted truths and waning realities, brings us full circle, into the
realm of mental health, habitual trespass and murder, and the all-out assaults on the
planet, fueled by the global average TFRs (total fertility rates of 2.5 children per
woman in her child-bearing lifespan),
12
and escalating territorial expansion of our
species. Frenzied road building across northeastern Ladakh by both Indian and
Chinese military forces, for example.
This polarity devolves to the—at least formulated—conceptual bankruptcy of
our species’ protective resolve and pertinacity. The calamities and stubbornness
driving us toward biological negation is a problem in reality as much as one in mind.
If we believe despair and annihilation to be inevitable—every sign suggests just
that—then we cannot awaken ourselves in time to fix it. If citizen science, environmental law, and ecological ethics are taken up by so meager a percentage of our kind
11 Dr. Mittermeier hosted our two-hour PBS documentary, “Hotspots” -www.hotspots-thefilm.
org -based upon his book by the same title; a concept (hotspots) that was first propounded by
British biologist Norman Myers (1934–2019) and then charismatically championed by
Mittermeier, who inspired a $261 million grant from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation in
2001 to help him, when he was then President of Conservation International, and his thousands
of colleagues around the world, to effectively implement the hotspots methodology. See
Philanthropy News Digest, December 11, 2001: “Moore Foundation Awards $261 Million to
Conservation International,” Press Release: “Conservation International Unveils Solution to
Prevent Global Species Extinctions,” Conservation International Press Release, December 9,
2001, https://philanthropynewsdigest.org/news/moore-foundation-awards-261-million-to-conservation-international, Accessed May 23, 2020.
12 See “Fertility Rate,” by Max Roser, December 2, 2017, Our World In Data, https://ourworldindata.org/fertility-rate
55.2 Hope Hastened
will prevail. Most recently has emerged individuals like the Swedish Greta Thunberg
(b. 2003), the “how dare you” teen environmentalist with millions of young followers deeply stirred by her frank and well-read opposition to an adult world where
most politicians, economists, and consumers remain content to embrace gradualism
at best, business-as-usual at worst. And then there is someone like the unstoppable
Dr. Russell A. Mittermeier, Chief Conservation Officer for the NGO, Global
Wildlife Conservation and winner of the 2018 prestigious Indianapolis Prize for
Conservation, who has successfully helped save tens of millions of acres in country
after country, through a combination of deeply informed science (he spent nearly 3
years and restless nights in a hammock in the rainforest of Suriname studying monkeys for his PhD), and his skillful, graceful negotiating skills with Prime Ministers
and tribal chiefs alike. Dr. Mittermeier’s children are growing up in his assiduous
footsteps.
11
We know that change is possible. Fires can be put out. Some elites and policy
pundits are panicking and wanting to do the right thing environmentally. Too little,
too late? Perhaps that is merely the crash of apathy, or ecological nihilism courting
daily anger. Or, perhaps it reflects the numbers and their equations that simply,
under even the most sanguine of probability distribution models, cannot win this
battle to salvage the earth, nor persuade a critical mass, in absence of absolute salvation, to join in the efforts. Such lackluster jeremiads are yet to be determined.
This dyad of weighted truths and waning realities, brings us full circle, into the
realm of mental health, habitual trespass and murder, and the all-out assaults on the
planet, fueled by the global average TFRs (total fertility rates of 2.5 children per
woman in her child-bearing lifespan),
12
and escalating territorial expansion of our
species. Frenzied road building across northeastern Ladakh by both Indian and
Chinese military forces, for example.
This polarity devolves to the—at least formulated—conceptual bankruptcy of
our species’ protective resolve and pertinacity. The calamities and stubbornness
driving us toward biological negation is a problem in reality as much as one in mind.
If we believe despair and annihilation to be inevitable—every sign suggests just
that—then we cannot awaken ourselves in time to fix it. If citizen science, environmental law, and ecological ethics are taken up by so meager a percentage of our kind
11 Dr. Mittermeier hosted our two-hour PBS documentary, “Hotspots” -www.hotspots-thefilm.
org -based upon his book by the same title; a concept (hotspots) that was first propounded by
British biologist Norman Myers (1934–2019) and then charismatically championed by
Mittermeier, who inspired a $261 million grant from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation in
2001 to help him, when he was then President of Conservation International, and his thousands
of colleagues around the world, to effectively implement the hotspots methodology. See
Philanthropy News Digest, December 11, 2001: “Moore Foundation Awards $261 Million to
Conservation International,” Press Release: “Conservation International Unveils Solution to
Prevent Global Species Extinctions,” Conservation International Press Release, December 9,
2001, https://philanthropynewsdigest.org/news/moore-foundation-awards-261-million-to-conservation-international, Accessed May 23, 2020.
12 See “Fertility Rate,” by Max Roser, December 2, 2017, Our World In Data, https://ourworldindata.org/fertility-rate
55.2 Hope Hastened