So Kil and I drove out into the desert tonight. We walked around with the dog, and cruched over the sun-scorched, and cracked earth. The sun warmed the air and lit up the alkali flats, something I missed seeing terribly. After we had our fill of fun (and after the dog had run herself to sleep), we traveled down the road some more. On our way back, we pulled over and huddled under the stars. I saw two things I had really missed seeing, the milky way, and stars in general. Kil had never seen the first, and did not know that stars can actually twinkle and wink like excited fireflies. We got to talking about why the sky is so obscured in many areas. The air and light pollution is enough in some places to completely blot out the night's majesty. We talked about a book I really should read, "Desert Solitaire", and how it echoed our thoughts about the struggle of conservation against human memory. He had read the book in his English class, and his professor had talked about teaching over in a smoggy city. When attempting to describe a rainbow to the kids in his class, he had to say, "well, you know how sometimes oil floats on top of puddles? That is what it looks like". How can you describe such simple beauty to those who haven't seen it? Not very well unfortunately.

That also got me thinking about a basic tally in my head. Let's see:

Baiji River Dolphin: Possibly extinct (recently)
Vietnam Leaf-Nosed Bat: Possibly extinct
Amur Leopard: 35 wild individuals
Yangtze Giant Soft-Shell Turtle: About four individuals (Captive and Wild)
Crested Shelduck: If still alive, about 50 individuals
Asiatic Cheetah: 50-60 individuals
Florida Panther: Less than 100 individuals
Humans: 6.8 BILLION individuals

Hmm.

I've actually had to set my Asian comic back a few decades, just to get some level of biodiversity in there. That's really sad. Pathetic actually. And I've heard the few people who even know of the river dolphin's extinction place the blame solely on China. Hrm, and who outsources to the factories that are causing massive pollution in the Yangtze river? Ohhhh, oops. We didn't want to think of that, eh? The sooner people accept that everyone is in this together, and the sooner people stop causing problems en masse, the sooner people can start working on more solutions together.

Of course, you have to believe that there is a problem first. The attitude many people take about the environment echoes an article I read about a very active fault line in CA. The people who lived along it were asked what they thought of being in close proximity to something that was liable to cause widespread death in a short ammount of time. The response was summed up in one woman's reply, which was something to the effect of, "oh, that? I try not to think about that. *Giggle*". This in turn, reminds me of the quote (Kurt Vonnegut I believe), which went something like, "and each generation builds along the fault lines, creating their own natural disasters". Indeed. There are the equally disheartening replies of, "well, it is sad...but that is just how things are". Pray tell, exactly why are they that way?

I was at the zoo about two weeks ago, and a woman pointed to the amur leopard and said, "that's a bengal tiger". She refused to believe her boyfriend's claims that she might be mistaken. That was a twenty something year-old, and not an uncommon type of statement to hear at a zoo. Did this person miss out on the little kiddy book where you point to the animal that is huge, orange and striped, and your mommy tells you it is a tiger with a "T"? I don't expect people to know a white rhino from a black rhino, or even a rabbit from a hare, but seriously...a tiger and a leopard? One has stripes, the other spots. The absolute lack of and disregard for basic animal knowledge (say nothing of the world outside of mammals), is completely disheartening. You learn a ton of equations in school that most teacher's admit you will never use within your lifetime once you leave high school....but you don't even know what a tiger is when you graduate? People can't be expected to worry about rapidly disappearing species if they don't even know what they are. And who knows what the greatest overall threat to species worldwide is? I hear "hunting" most often. What I don't often hear is "loss of habitat". This can be due to things like pollution, "patchworking", and land development, but whatever the cause, loss of land (and water) is a huge threat that needs serious attention. One of the most effective types of conservation societies are those that buy up land and place protective restrictions on it. Why? Because it doesn't just help out the poster kids like gray wolves and giant pandas. It helps everyone, be it plant, amphibian, mammal, bird...or, ultimately, human. And what does all the land loss, pollution, and so forth really add up to? Could it be the thing no one wishes to even discuss? Too many fucking people and an ever increasing global population? Nah. *giggle* Let's talk about something else.

Well, I hope to see more environment-related education, and a whole hell of a lot less ignorance and denial (I find money has a way of spinning issues and blinding eyes as well). On the way home, Kil and I lost sight of the stars as we neared the city. The moon followed us the whole way back very faithfully. I hope it too won't be stricken from the sky, leaving me to describe it to future generations as, "a big, glowing ball that was sometimes a sliver. Sort of like a shiny quarter, or a fingernail clipping". Mmm, lovely.