(Photo: Chris)

In 1992, 1,700 world scientists issued a prescient Warning to Humanity that “human beings and the natural world are on a collision course.” They warned that human practices, if not checked, “may so alter the living world that it will be unable to sustain life in the manner that we know.” The statement argued saving life as we know it meant transforming our species’ interaction with nature; lowering greenhouse gas emissions and eliminating fossil fuel use, reducing deforestation, preserving biodiversity and lowering the human footprint on natural ecosystems.

Last November, 15,000 scientists, the largest scientific grouping to ever co-sign and support a journal article, issued a Second Notice warning humanity. They wrote, “The authors of the 1992 declaration feared that humanity was pushing the Earth’s ecosystems beyond their capacities to support the web of life.” And that since then, we not only haven’t made sufficient progress to address these issues, but, “alarmingly, most of them are getting far worse.”

These warnings, and the new conclusion that things are only getting “far worse,” should shock the collective soul, and rouse people to radical action. These are not rantings by doomsayers searching for a “worst-case scenario” to drum up change. What thousands of the world’s leading scientists are telling us is that human society (as it is presently constituted) threatens the existence of life on Earth. What we must confront is whether we care enough about the continued existence of the natural world — its myriad wonders, including the human species itself — to act powerfully and quickly to save it.

The dangers the scientists warned of are now pouring down with increasing force. Last year was the second-warmest year in recorded history, according to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, surpassed only by 2016. Seventeen of the 18 warmest years ever recorded have occurred since 2001. Last year was also a record year of warmth in the world’s oceans, contributing to the most destructive storms in US history, including a series of unprecedented Atlantic hurricanes ravaging Puerto Rico and other Caribbean islands, Houston and Florida. One, Hurricane Harvey, dumped rainfall amounts never seen in recorded history, amounts now linked by scientific study with climate change. This was followed by climate change-fueled drought throughout the Western US that led to massive wildfires causing dozens of deaths, destruction of forests, homes and businesses, and episodes of choking smoke impacting millions of people. Following this came more record-breaking fires in Southern California, including the largest in state history.

As bad and destructive as all this was, these were only the latest pieces of an overall puzzle, signs of a profound transformation of life on Earth. A brief look at just a few of the scientific reports from the past two years give evidence of a growing danger of ecosystem collapse.

Unravelling of Ecosystems on Land and Sea

Even with dramatic retreat and advance over millennia, polar ice has maintained and characterized Earth for millions of years, including the entire life of human existence. But that may be ending.

Coming after years of studies documenting the decline of Arctic sea ice, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) annual Arctic Report Card for 2017 found that “the Arctic shows no signs of returning to the reliably frozen region of past decades.” Jeremy Mathis, director of the Arctic Research Program at NOAA, who co-authored the report, said the Arctic is “going through the most unprecedented transition in human history.” The loss of sea ice means more heat from sunlight being retained by darkly colored open water instead of reflected back into the atmosphere, leading to a “runaway effect.” More Arctic tundra is also thawing, further releasing greenhouse gases that warm the planet. The changes are causing disruptions in the Arctic ecosystem, more widespread wildfires and undermining the ability of Indigenous people to sustain their mode of life.

The transformation of the Arctic has stunning consequences for an essential part of the planet’s ecosystem and for causing climate impacts far beyond the Arctic. As one example, Mathis said scientists are now fairly confident that Arctic warming is creating conditions for more extreme weather events in North America. A December 2017 study also linked Arctic warming to increasing the risk of drought in California. More remains to be learned, but the end of the Arctic as we know it marks a frightening tumble into unknown territory.

Arctic melt is only one part of the disappearance of ice at the poles. A recent study in Greenland, which mapped coastal glaciers and the bedrock on which they lie as they flow into the sea, found two to four times as many glaciers as previously thought are exposed to warm salt water at depth — meaning they are more exposed to melt from warming oceans. If all of Greenland were to melt, it would contribute to more than 20 feet of sea level rise.

At the other end of the planet, scientists have been tracking the breaking up of ice sheets in West Antarctica. In December, a team studying ice sheet disintegration and collapse of ice cliffs concluded that taking into account these mechanisms, estimates of median sea level rise by 2100 should be increased from two-and-a-half feet to almost five feet. This would inundate land that 153 million people currently live on. The scientists emphasized there is uncertainty in these predictions, and that these estimates and final outcomes depend on whether global carbon emissions continue to increase or are cut.

As ocean warming increases, ocean ecosystems are being damaged and transformed in frightening ways.

Scientists warn that kelp forests — coastal ecosystems rich in biodiversity — are disappearing from Tasmania to California. They’re wilting and dying due to the nearly 3 degrees Fahrenheit ocean temperature rise. Kelp ecosystems are being replaced by regions dominated by voracious sea urchins that are barren of other forms of life.

In early January, a National Geographic story titled, “Climate Change is Suffocating Large Parts of the Ocean,” warns, “A new study says warming has reduced oxygen levels in large swaths of the deep ocean, threatening marine life around the world.” In summarizing this study, Science Daily wrote, “the amount of water in the open ocean with zero oxygen has gone up more than fourfold.” Lead author of the study Denise Breitburg, a marine ecologist with the Smithsonian Research Center, wrote that “loss of oxygen in many ways is the destruction of an ecosystem,” and “This is a global problem…. It requires global solutions.”

As if this isn’t bad enough, large sections of the Great Barrier Reef off the Australian coast have been killed by two straight years of coral bleaching caused by ocean warming. In January 2018, Coral reef expert Terry Hughes and colleagues released a new paper that found tropical sea surface temperatures occurring under today’s La Niña (colder ocean cycle) temperatures are warmer than El Niño (warmer ocean cycle) temperatures of three decades ago. Hughes’s paper studied bleaching histories of 100 reefs globally and concluded, “Tropical reef systems are transitioning to a new era in which the interval between recurrent bouts of coral bleaching is too short for a full recovery of mature assemblages.”

The consequences of coral bleaching, combined with overfishing, destructive storms and pollution in reef systems worldwide are enormous. The death of coral reefs would mean the death of some of the ocean’s most important ecosystems, home to 25 percent of the world’s marine life and nurseries to a fourth of the world’s fish. Not only are we facing the wiping out of enormous natural beauty and diversity, this would mean disappearance of a good portion of the food supply literally hundreds of millions of people rely on to live. The ending of coral reefs that is already underway means destruction of a key world ecosystem that must be prevented.

The extinction of species — what many scientists have called a “sixth extinction” — is underway on land as well as in the oceans and waterways. In October 2016, a landmark study conducted by the World Wildlife Fund and the ZSL Institute of Zoology released data revealing “overall global vertebrate populations are on course to decline by an average of 67 percent from 1970 levels by the end of this decade, unless urgent action is taken to reduce humanity’s impact on species and ecosystems.” This precipitous decline is being caused by deforestation, pollution, overfishing, the illegal wildlife trade and climate change.

There is also growing concern about declines in populations of insects. North American honeybee colonies have declined by 59 percent since World War II. A recent report of a study at 63 nature reserves across Germany found flying insects declined 77 percent in the last 25 years. One of the study’s authors, Dave Goulson from Sussex University in the UK, wrote, “We appear to be making vast tracts of land inhospitable to most forms of life, and are currently on course for ecological Armageddon. If we lose the insects, then everything is going to collapse.” There are still remaining questions about if these results were particular to this region, but this is another worrying wake-up call. Insects are the most populous group of animals on the planet. Human agriculture relies on them for pollination of crops. And they are the base of ecosystems worldwide. Without insects, we could see a collapse of whole ecosystems.

Humanity is on a path of ushering in the rapid disintegration of the natural world as we know it. Given the lateness of the hour, what is called for is an emergency effort to mobilize humanity to save the planet. We are confronted by the necessity to quickly act on all the scientific warnings issued over many years: to end fossil fuel use and transition to sustainable energy development; to create planetary reserves, especially for key ecosystems and areas of biodiversity on land and in the oceans; to restrict and walk back grazing and animal agriculture while reforesting and rewilding large areas on the planet; to stop the endless expansion of human development eating up green space and natural habitat; to move against pollution, stop use of destructive pesticides, and overharvesting in the oceans and land.

All this and more could be done, and would give us at least a fighting chance of preventing some of the worst destruction to come, including the possibility of an overall collapse of living ecosystems that threaten human survival. Standing in the way are not people per se, but the pattern of organized economic life under capitalism. Capitalism, driven by competition, profitability and national economic/political interests, is incapable of interacting with nature in a sustainable way. It is incapable of meeting the challenge of these times to prevent life on Earth from slipping away.

This is true to greater or lesser extent in the entire capitalist world, but especially so in Trump’s United States. At the very moment of frightening decline of planetary ecosystems and accelerating climate change, Trump, his regime and cohorts in Congress, have launched a scorched-earth campaign against the environment — a war on nature. Trump and his ilk aren’t like Nero fiddling as Rome burned; they’re stoking the inferno with whole forests.

They have purged climate change from government websites, while denying its existence. They’ve chastised scientists for raising the connections of last summer’s hurricanes to warming oceans. Trump has ordered the Clean Power Plan scrapped, is moving to pull the US out of the Paris climate agreement and has called for drastic cuts to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) budget, especially targeting programs to deal with climate change. This administration loves fossil fuels and hates renewable energy so much it announced a plan on February 1 to cut research on renewables 72 percent.

The EPA and Interior Department have been turned into shameless instruments of environmental destruction. Scientists and officials in the EPA, the Interior Department and the National Park Service have been forced out, let go, blocked from advising or have resigned in protest. The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, one of the last remaining truly pristine wilderness areas left on the planet, is now open for drilling, a provision snuck through in the Republican tax bill. Bears Ears and Grand-Escalante National Monuments — with all their archaeological and cultural treasures, and particularly precious to Indigenous people — have been gutted and eviscerated. Now Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke, Trump and Republicans in Congress have their sights set on more monuments and national lands to pry open for extractive interests. In January, the regime declared almost all US coastal regions open for drilling. There is no regulation to protect land, water, air, wildlife or people’s health that these eco-destroyers are bound to respect.

Many factors are involved in these decisions being fully implemented, including whether drilling in many regions is profitable. Dozens of court cases have also been filed to stop many of these actions, and opposition is widespread. So, all of this is not yet decided. Much could be stopped. But that’s up to us.

Trump isn’t just the most environmentally unfriendly, pro-business president ever. As Noam Chomsky recently put it, “There has never been an administration, here or for that matter anywhere, which is committed openly to trying to undermine the prospects for organized human life in the not very distant future.”

This is a man with a disdain for (and complete lack of acquaintance with) reason, science, compassion and evidence-based thinking. What this war on nature is about: feasting, plundering and unmitigated profit-making for capital. It’s also about fascist nationalism; harnessing nature and all its bounty like a set of draft horses to the goal of US “energy dominance,” as part of dominating the globe by whatever means necessary, including nuclear war. The war on nature links up to, and is part of, the Trump regime’s overall efforts to remake the country in a fascist way.

Grand Staircase-Escalante, New Mexico. (Photo: Bureau of Land Management)

In December, Trump announced that he would shrink Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monuments in Utah by 85 percent and 46 percent respectively. The announcement came after Trump had ordered Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke in April to review 27 national monuments created since 1996 that were 100,000 acres or larger, and Zinke subsequently recommended that these and other monuments be reduced.

Trump’s move represents the largest delisting of protected federal lands in US history, removing 2 million acres from national monument status. It’s a clear break with practice of previous presidents, especially over the past several decades, who have largely expanded or created new monuments that set aside land for protection under authority of the 1906 Antiquities Act. The Act provides for presidents to establish national monuments to protect “historic landmarks, historic and prehistoric structures, and other objects of historic or scientific interest that are situated on land owned or controlled by the Federal Government.”

As a result of this decision by the Trump regime, tens of thousands of acres in both Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante that contain magnificent Native cultural artifacts, archaeological sites precious to the cultural life of six tribes and rich deposits of dinosaur fossils have been removed from national monument protection. The move by Trump, despite claims from both Trump and Zinke, opens the possibility for fossil fuel and uranium extraction on these lands, and the building of new roads, off-road vehicle use, and expansion of grazing and other practices that threaten real harm to these natural wonders. The decision also completely rejected the public comments of more than 2 million people who overwhelmingly supported maintaining the monuments as they were. Zinke arrogantly rejected these expressed viewpoints, saying, “I don’t bow to public pressure,” while simultaneously justifying the review and ultimately the decision to shrink the monuments, claiming the original proclamations to establish them had been “made without public consultation.”

In his final report to Trump, Zinke also recommended slicing the size of the Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument on the border of Oregon and California, as well as the Gold Butte National Monument in Nevada. Cascade-Siskiyou was established in 2000 and expanded in 2017 by Obama. In supporting a call for its expansion in 2015, ecologists and biologists who had studied the region described it as an “ecological wonder” that is “home to a spectacular variety of rare and beautiful species of plants and animals, whose survival in this region depends upon its continued ecological integrity” Scientists specifically cited the need to preserve the biodiversity in the face of increased threat from climate change.

Zinke also pushed for changing the management rules for six other national monuments, including three marine monuments that would remove protected status and very likely open them to exploitation by commercial fisheries at a critical time of decline of ocean life.

Five different lawsuits have been filed against Trump, et al over slashing Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante. One of the lawsuits to defend Bears Ears was filed by the Hopi Tribe, Navajo Nation, Ute Indian Tribe, Ute Mountain Ute Tribe and Zuni Tribe, all of whom have a deep connection to the land and history in the region. Shaun Chapoose of the Ute Indian Tribe Business Committee said in a statement announcing the lawsuit, “The Bears Ears region is a cultural landscape — a place to nurture our families in our traditions. It’s a sad state of affairs when the president of this great nation shows manifest disregard for our history and culture as a people, but we are prepared to fight for our rights and to protect Bears Ears.” Earthjustice has filed lawsuits on behalf of eight environmental, wildlife and public lands protection groups to protect Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante. Even the outdoor clothing company Patagonia has joined lawsuits.

Randi Spivak is public lands program director for the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD), and spoke with Truthout about Trump’s decision, as well as the larger environmental stakes of the battle over public lands. CBD is one of the groups actively leading a movement to protect public lands, and a complainant in the lawsuits.

Curtis Johnson: Trump and Zinke have claimed the gutting of Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monuments was done to allow local people to control their own land and to redress years of “overreach” by federal bureaucracy. They’ve claimed that the archaeological and artistic treasures of Bears Ears and fossils in Grand Staircase-Escalante would still be protected because the lands won’t be literally handed over to the states or private interests. How do you see that and how would you respond to that line of argument?

Randi Spivak: Let’s be clear: these are [the US’s] public lands; they belong to everyone from the citizens of Utah, to New Jersey to North Carolina. This has nothing to do with state’s rights. These lands have always been federal public lands. Read the law Congress enacted making Utah a state and Utah’s own Constitution — or that of any Western state. Each includes language forever disclaiming any interests in federal lands within state boundaries.

As far as claims that the lands are still protected, slashing protections from 2 million acres of land leaves a lot unprotected. In Bears Ears, 56,000 archaeological sites will no longer have protection. And the same goes for Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. Each monument proclamation was carefully mapped and vetted, so cutting any amount — whether it’s an archaeological treasure or Native American sacred site — will now be at risk by stripping those protections.

So, following up on that, Zinke has said all these areas will still be federal lands, and so there are still laws against taking out Native art and so forth. Can you tell us a little about if these things are protected as national monuments versus just federal lands?

While these lands will still be publicly owned, the current laws don’t provide the kinds of protections that come with national monument status. Normal management of public lands [is] heavily skewed toward extractive industries and many other destructive uses. About 90 percent of Bureau of Land Management lands are open to oil and gas drilling; over 90 percent of all public lands are open to livestock grazing. And on most public lands, you can drive off-road vehicles.

Proclaiming a national monument usually means that the area is no longer open to new drilling, fracking and mining. We know that oil and gas companies have expressed interest in portions of Bears Ears that the president has stripped of protections, and that a uranium company, Energy Fuels Resources, urged the Trump administration to reduce Bears Ears and hired a team of lobbyists to press their interest.

Another aspect of the kinds of protections that national monuments provide for archeological sites, ancestral ruins or sensitive habitat is motorized vehicles that are limited to designated roads. Each monument has a management plan developed with public input that identifies the designated roads. Stripping protections will mean more people driving machines across sensitive streams and washes, through treasured architectural sites and despoiling sacred areas.

It was interesting that in the announcement, Zinke and Trump tried to stay away from talking about extraction but focused on hunting and fishing, which was clear were already allowed in the monuments. You know they kept talking about wanting to make sure hunting and fishing are going to continue to be allowed….

That’s an outright lie. None of the monuments Zinke wants to gut restrict hunting or sport fishing. All of them leave hunting and fishing regulations up to state wildlife agencies. National monuments are open for everyone in the world to explore, and the only way to “lock up” public land is to auction it off for drilling, fracking, mining and logging.

But Zinke’s recommendations to Trump do call for stripping protections for three marine national monuments — Rose Atoll, Pacific Remote Islands and the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts. Marine monuments prohibit or phase out commercial fishing to protect a wide range of marine life — including fish, turtles, whales, dolphins and coral reefs — from overfishing [and] harmful practices such as bottom trawling. Studies have shown that protected areas are a boon to the fishing industry because the no-commercial-fishing monument protections enable healthy fish populations to swell and then swim outside of protected areas into commercial zones where they can be fished.

What do you think this monument decision indicates about what Trump and the rest are planning for public lands and waters in general? Zinke has already recommended in addition to Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante, two other national monuments should be shrunk and rules governing management of six others be changed. How do you see the stakes of this? Where are they going with this whole effort?

Unfortunately, Trump will probably follow Zinke’s recommendations that would shrink the boundaries for two other monuments in Oregon and Nevada, and reduce protections through management changes for national monuments in New Mexico, Maine and for three marine monuments. I think it’s about two things. First Trump continues play to his narrow political base. Bears Ears was all about Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) whispering in Trump’s ear to “do something,” and he did. And it’s the same thing with Greg Walden (R-Oregon) and the Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument. Walden wants to reward the logging industry by opening up these lands to heavy logging.

Under the guise of “energy dominance,” Trump is looking to open up our public lands and oceans to the fossil fuel industry to get every drop of oil, gas and coal that they can and remove protective regulations for our air, climate, wildlife, waters and lands that stand in the way. Their road map is clear.

So, these decisions from Trump on the environment are coming in a roll. The same week they made this decision on the monuments, Trump announced he’s opening the Atlantic and Arctic Oceans for drilling. Then this new tax bill is passed, opening up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for drilling. So how does the monument decision connect to the whole picture of what the Trump regime is doing to the environment?

Trump is looking to boost fossil fuel extraction and reward his billionaire industry cronies. The battle over national monuments is no different, but is one of many battles to conserve [the US’s] public lands for this and future generations.

Trump is a climate denier. He’s withdrawing the US from the global climate change accord; overturning the Clean Power Plan’s attempt to make power plants more efficient; expanding offshore drilling into every ocean off [the US’s] coasts, even overturning offshore drilling safety regulations adopted after the Deepwater Horizon disaster; [he] has done away with Obama’s landmark ban on mining federal coal propping up the dying coal industry. The Trump administration even asked the fossil fuel industry what federal regulations they consider to be a burden to them, and increasingly we’ve seen the Trump administration attempt to hide fracking damage on public lands. The Bureau of Land Management, responsible for oil and gas drilling on public lands, is basically sidestepping the law and is increasingly not requiring any analysis or public disclosure of harm from fracking to communities, wildlife, climate, land and water. It’s a de facto reversal of Obama-era reforms, which increased transparency and environmental review before approving lease auctions.

The thing that really hits me, and I haven’t seen it talked about so much, is the impact and the stakes of everything you’re talking about at a time when we’re already in an escalating crisis of climate change and general environmental decline. For instance, a recent study showing  global populations of vertebrates on pace to decline by 67 percent from 1970 levels by 2020, and scientific study after study about the melting polar regions and so forth. I want to really convey, what would you say about the stakes? Some environmental groups say, “Well, he’s not going to get away with it,” or for instance, the necessities of the market will argue against developing a lot of these resources because sustainable energy is more profitable and oil prices are low. But I see a great danger, especially given this environmental crisis we’re facing as a whole.

Let me answer in two parts. People are somewhat right in saying a lot will depend, for example, on the price of oil. The recent oil and gas auction on the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska — even though the government auctioned off millions of acres, very little was actually leased because of the vagaries of drilling in those areas and also the price of oil. But if oil prices rise again, there will be more interest from industry. And there’s still an export market for [US] coal, a significant amount [of which] is mined on public lands. In no way does the market completely protect us here, in no way.

If a company buys a lease at auction, and for virtually no money, they can sit on these leases for decades. Technically, it’s 10 years for a federal oil and gas lease, but they can renew them. Companies can speculate and sit on these leases ’til such time that the price may make it profitable. So, it may be that we don’t see wholesale drilling tomorrow in many places, but the danger is still there.

Trump is getting us in such a deep hole on the climate crisis. He’s locking us into a fossil fuel future. And the damage we’ll see to ecosystems, to the oceans, wildlife — it’s scary.

Certain things, like withdrawing the Grand Canyon uranium, that will take a while to do, they have to go through a process in which the public will get to weigh in. Maybe they won’t succeed. They can’t do everything with the snap of a finger. But make no mistake: They’re going to cause some irreparable harm here. Everything Trump and Zinke are doing will harm species, public lands, waters, and exacerbate climate change. They are dragging us into a deep hole, a bad future.

Thanks so much, that’s very helpful and I appreciate your time and your work which is so important.

Thank you. Even though these are dark times for our public lands, oceans, wildlife and our climate, it’s important that we all keep fighting. The Center for Biological Diversity is resisting Trump in every possible way — especially in the courts. So far, the Center has filed 46 lawsuits against Trump. This regime will not last forever. To get involved I would encourage readers to get connected with Ignite Change, a nationwide movement that’s standing up to save life on Earth.