Mother Nature Is Trying to Kill You (27 page)

The alternative, though (am I hitting you hard enough over the head with this?), is for us to stop acting like mice and treat biodiversity as though it matters. We need to act as though nature has value beyond calories or dollars, even though our DNA doesn’t have that appreciation built in. However deadly and selfish and brutal nature may be, it’s unique, beautiful, surprising, and more valuable than words can express.

One important step in protecting nature is to make an effort to connect with it. The experience I got from having a botfly can’t be mimicked by any human-built theme park or 3-D movie. When you see something real, for yourself, it makes a difference to the rest of your life. For me, seeing a real-life sac-winged bat changed me much more than reading about their salting behavior. You can watch all the documentaries about vampire bats you want to, but when you stick your head into their cave and let them scream at you, it’s different.

Take a moment to think about your own experience with this. Have you ever seen a wild animal that made your jaw drop? A whale? A bear? An owl? A sea turtle? Have you ever gone snorkeling or hiking or even just watched birds at the feeder? Think about the value those experiences give you as a person. Why not make a decision to fill your life with more of those experiences? Visit parks. Spend your dollars on ecotourism in other countries. Take your friends and family members with you. Get out there and remind yourself why nature is worth preserving.

Another great way to help protect the world is to support science. Science is how we learn what species are out there and come up with plans to preserve them. By taking pride in our intellect and letting our species push the boundaries back, we’re finding new ways to interact with nature, to protect our planet, and ultimately to protect ourselves. Some technologies, like genetic engineering, scare a lot of people because they seem so unnatural, but that might well be the best thing about them. It’s only by looking beyond what’s already been done that we can have our best hope of improving our trajectory. We have to have open minds about technology if we want to survive.

Every plant or animal we’ve ever changed through breeding has been genetically modified. Now that we understand the molecular basis of those changes, we can make them more quickly and effectively than ever before. There’s good reason to be wary of large multinational corporations controlling the availability of foods, but there’s no reason to fear genetic engineering as a technology. Just because it feels unnatural doesn’t mean it’s bad. We have to let go of that knee-jerk assumption.

And just as the tools of agriculture must change, so too will the scale. It might seem appealing to dream of a world where we
get all our foods from nature, without big farms, but there are just too many people on Earth now for that to be a solution for everyone. With an expected population of 9 billion within the next forty years, we’re going to need agriculture to be more efficient than ever before. I know big farms might not have the appeal of small, family-run ones, but big farms can be more efficient. So if you’re going to cut down hectares and hectares of the Amazon rainforest to set up farms so people can eat, it’s far better to grow as much food per unit area as possible so that we can cut down as little as possible. The dream that there’s a natural way to live without agriculture just doesn’t work in a world of 9 billion people—at least not for all of us.

Scientists are scrambling to find ways for our species to survive. They deserve all the support they can get.

Moving away from this false ideal of “natural” living would be good for sustainability, but it’s also important socially. What’s natural about gender equality? What’s natural about human rights? Nothing. A sea lion torn to shreds by a killer whale has no rights, and the female pintail duck doesn’t get to file legal proceedings against the lecherous males who attacked her. Human rights are a fundamental component of the future we’re trying to create, so let’s call them what they are—unnatural and essential.

Rape has been part of the behavior of our species since before we were humans; we inherited it from our prehuman ancestors. Let’s leave rape behind. There’s no use for rape in the human world, and there’s no place for people who think they can justify rape because it’s natural. When a woman gives birth, let’s not
force her into making difficult decisions based on some imaginary “natural” way to do so. Let’s give her the freedom to choose the experience she wants, secure in the comfort that modern medicine is there when she needs it. Let’s also make that medicine available to people around the world, so that no woman has to experience pregnancy in fear and with unnecessary pain. There is no justification for sentencing eight hundred women to death that way each day, no matter how natural that risk might be. Let’s let same-sex couples marry, not because male bats have sex with one another sometimes, but because it’s the right thing to do.

Nature has no place in discussions of social justice. We’re humans—we evolved in nature, but we can do better than the natural order. Let’s take a little pride in the fact that we’ve invented human rights. It doesn’t matter whether they’re natural or not. We’re animals, but we don’t have to act like them.

What I’m really advocating for is a rebellion of the human meat robots against our DNA oppressors. We’re hardwired to be selfish, to put our DNA’s needs ahead of the other people and ecosystems around us. It’s natural to care more about how hot your coffee was this morning than the fact that while you were drinking it a five-year-old girl in Tanzania died from malaria. But so long as people born in some parts of the world are doomed to hunger, poverty, and war, the progress enjoyed by the rest of us can’t take effect. Biodiversity will slip away because we just weren’t built to deal with issues of a global scale. But just because we weren’t
built to
do that job doesn’t mean we
can’t
do it.

Find a nonprofit that is working on an issue you care about and join it. Consider the World Wildlife Fund, Amnesty International, or even Bat Conservation International. Read books. Vote for political parties that respect women’s rights, environmental
sustainability, social programs, and basic science research. Tell people why you vote that way. Change minds. Volunteer in your community. Volunteer in someone else’s community. Work with kids. Do something to improve other people’s lives.

Just rub it in your DNA’s face.

It’s quite possible that the last time organisms on Earth had as much influence on the globe as humans do today was during the Great Oxygenation Event. But our legacy doesn’t need to be one of destruction. We have the power to choose our own destiny, so let’s create a utopia here on Earth, based on human rights, equality, and environmental sustainability.

To do nothing about those issues and stay immersed in our own personal, selfish experiences is the most natural thing to do. So give your natural instincts the finger, and be unselfish. It’s not enough to feel good when you see other people effecting those changes. For this to work, we need to do it as individuals. This is between you and the molecules inside you. Make the world a better place, even though it will be more work for you and cost you more money than doing nothing. We’ve been doing everything our DNA asked of us for long enough. Rise up, meat robots!

Shelby and I have big plans to take Sam around the world to see the wonders of nature. Someday maybe we’ll even hunt out those bioluminescent ostracods, the emerald sea slug, or that vegetarian spider
Bagheera
. I can barely imagine the thrill of sharing those experiences with Sam. Maybe Shelby and I will even take Sam to our campground in Texas and scratch the sand together with him to call in those pallid bats. Until then, though, my plan is to just let myself be in love—in love with Sam, in love with Shelby, and in love with the fragile, wonderful natural world.

I
. You can watch it on YouTube. It’s only a minute and a half long:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZbFM3rn41do
.

II
. In 1973, Theodosius Dobzhansky wrote an essay in the
American Biology Teacher
with the eleven-word title “Nothing in Biology Makes Sense Except in the Light of Evolution.” That sentence just nails it, and the essay does too. It’s a classic, well-written piece, and I recommend it if you’re looking for ways to argue evolution skeptics out of the dark (Dobzhansky 1973).

III
. This problem is called “the tragedy of the commons” (Hardin 1968).

First and foremost, thank you
for reading this book.

There are many people to thank for helping me put this book together. I am grateful to Jeff Kleinman and Michelle Brower of Folio Literary Management for asking me what book I’d most like to write and then pushing me to think beyond the bat book I proposed in response. I’m also extremely grateful to Michelle Howry of Touchstone for believing in this book, for her edits and comments as I wrote, and for her patience and positivity throughout the writing process.

I also thank Susan Moldow, Stacy Creamer, David Falk, Sally Kim, Jessica Roth, Meredith Vilarello, Ana Paula de Lima, Martha Schwartz, George Turianski, Joy O’Meara, and Peg Haller, at Touchstone Books in New York, along with Kevin Hanson, David Millar, Alison Clarke, Sheila Haidon, Felicia Quon, Maximillian
Arambulo, Michelle Blackwell, Andrea Seto, and April Gibson at Simon & Schuster Canada, for their enthusiastic support of this book.

I am grateful to the scientists who have helped me shape my view of the world. Brock Fenton, John Hermanson, Sharon Swartz, and Tom Kunz supervised me through my graduate studies and postdocs, but there have been countless others—professors, postdocs, instructors, graduate students, and undergraduates who have also contributed to my education. I reached out to a few of those people while writing this book, and I thank Attila Bergou, Gerry Carter, Rulon Clark, Christina Davy, Yvonne Dzal, Leif Einarson, Brock Fenton, Patrick Flight, Megan Frederickson, Matt Heard, John Hermanson, John Hutchinson, Emily MacLeod, Troy Murphy, Matt Ogburn, John Ratcliffe, Shelby Riskin, Jaime Tanner, and Amity Wilczek for their helpful responses. I’m also grateful to the legion of scientists who wrote the two hundred plus scientific articles I drew upon while writing this book. None of this would be possible without their curiosity and hard work.

In the world of TV, Beth Hoppe has been very much like an academic advisor to me. She gave me my start on a show about evolution and then spent several years training me to be an effective communicator of science. The fact that I had the opportunity to write this book is a direct result of her support.

I wrote this book while working full-time at Discovery Canada’s
Daily Planet
, and I thank my colleagues there for their patience while I did so. I’m especially grateful to Paul Lewis, Ken McDonald, Kelly McKeown, and Ziya Tong, but there are more than a hundred other people there who help make that show happen five days a week, and I thank them all for their support while
I worked on this book. Thanks also to Marilyn Haft for helping me juggle these various parts of my career.

I thank my mother, Mary W. Walters, who is a great editor (and also a fabulous author of fiction, by the way), for helping me tighten my writing and for supporting my wacky career in general. Mom, you’re brilliant, and if I look half-smart sometimes, it’s only because you teached me so good. I also thank my family for their support.

It’s somewhat perverse that I took so much time away from Sam and Shelby to write a book about my love for Sam and Shelby, but somehow that’s what happened. Shelby knew how much this book meant to me, helped me free up the time I needed to get it written, and offered many invaluable suggestions to help me improve the book itself. Thank you both.

Toronto

September 2013