Hello, curious people, and welcome to the second issue of Multitudes. I’m Shantanu Kishwar, a nerd with a love for good hummus, and I’m currently making my way through a lazy Sunday. Wherever and whenever you’re reading this, I hope you’re safe, well, and happy.
This issue’s a little different from the last, but more in line with my trivia-geek aesthetic. It starts, though, with a memory.
One of the most stunning sights I’ve seen was from the Zostel in Gokarna. It sits atop a small hill overlooking the town, its beach, and the sea. Inland from the long stretch of sand was a forest of palm that stretched onto the horizon.
This visual’s been on my mind a lot, recently. Gokarna’s an overnight bus away from me, but work and the pandemic come in the way of a much-needed return. So instead, I stare longingly at the photo above from four years ago.
This is a view often associated with a tropical paradise, and understandably so. Palm trees need humidity, warmth, and sunshine, a combination found along tropical coasts, at least today. About 55 million years ago, though, the climate was, on average, 8° C warmer than pre-industrial levels. This created the perfect condition for palm trees in…the Arctic. Incidentally, that’s also how warm the climate’s predicted to get by 2300 at current rates. (The Simpsons gave us a glimpse of what this might be like).
It seems obvious when we think of the larger scheme of things, but forests don’t stay in the same place forever. As (literally) rooted as an individual tree may be, forests aren’t. To quote a stunningly produced article in Emergence Magazine,
“We often admire trees for their steady rootedness, their resiliency in the face of change; for the gift of shade and companionship that a single long-lived tree might offer us and then our children and our grandchildren, even our great-grandchildren. But trees—or, more appropriately, forests—are perhaps not so rooted, so reliably placed, as we might think.”
These movements are slow and imperceptible, or at least should be. A single tree stays where it is, but its seeds disperse far and wide. In the normal course of things, these seeds take root near their parent. The apple isn’t meant to fall far from the tree, after all. It’s only over eons as climatic patterns change that conditions far from home become more hospitable than those nearby.
That being said, we aren’t really in the ‘normal course of things’, are we?
A lot that humans have done over the last two centuries has been in pursuit of a highly-industrialised new normal. Because of this, we’ve warmed the weather, made rainfall more erratic, and caused sea levels to rise. A knock-on effect of this - we’ve also made forests (and a whole lot of animals) seek refuge in new geographies. As the science writer David Appell has written,
plants and animals have shifted their ranges by about six kilometers per decade toward the poles during the past quarter of a century. Spring events, such as blooming, frog breeding and migrant bird arrivals, have advanced 2.3 days per decade. Tropical pathogens are moving up in latitude and striking species not adapted to deal with them. About two thirds of the 110 known harlequin frog species in Costa Rica are believed to be extinct, their temperature-weakened immune systems devastated by a lethal fungus itself taking advantage of warmer temperatures.
Though most coverage of this comes from the developed world, it’s also been recorded in India. Much to the dislike of Mangrove forests around the mouth of the Hooghly river in Bengal, both sea and pollution levels have been rising. The forests have responded by taking root upstream, despite it being conventionally less hospitable (mangroves prefer salty waters, generally found close to the sea).
Slowly, but surely, our forests are moving. It’s kind of the opposite of the Ent marching in the Lord of the Rings (and likely less dramatic). The Ent rose to fight when they saw Saruman decimating their kind. Our forests may not go to war with us, but they’re definitely moving to escape our wrath.
Knowing this is spurring us to action, but not in the ways you might think. ‘Stopping’ this means stopping everything we’re doing that caused the problem. But we haven’t done that for other consequences of climate change; this isn't an exception. Instead, we’re steering into the skid and helping trees move, but in a scientific manner.
We do this through ‘assisted species migration’. Essentially, biologists and geneticists identify more hospitable domains for forests (as well as animals) and try to preserve them there. This is necessary because the climate changes faster than nature can keep up. With extinction the alternative, this seems like a solid bet.
Except it isn’t. At least not always. Humans have been moving flora and fauna about since the dawn of colonialism. The introduction of foreign species often leads to the destruction of native ones. This is why this is such a complicated process, and one we need to get right. Again, to quote David Appell,
“To do so requires a complex set of mapping and experiments—understanding, for instance, what climate trees are best suited to grow in, what region will most closely resemble that same climate in, say, 50 years, and what adaptations best ensure that a tree will take root and flourish, build symbiosis with the soil fungi, and not end up a mere matchstick awaiting the next megafire.”
When you step back and look at this, it all feels a little ridiculous. We’re trying to solve a problem but could well end up creating more. What if we accidentally introduce invasive species or pests that decimate an ecosystem? Yes, we’re trying to be careful, but we can’t be certain it won’t happen.
This isn’t to criticise anyone working on it - they’re doing the right thing by trying because something needs to be done. But, it fits into a larger pattern of outrunning problems through new-fangled tech and science instead of solving them.
Elizabeth Kolbert’s new book, Under a White Sky, talks about exactly this. We meddle with the environment, inevitably causing a lot of unintended damage. To counter that damage, we meddle a little more. It’s why we consider creating artificial clouds or launching sulphur into the atmosphere to fight global warming. Or why, in Australia, scientists are trying to tweak the DNA of cane toads, an invasive species that was introduced to kill pests on sugarcane plantations but wrought havoc on local wildlife instead.
It’s almost certain that these actions will have their own unintended consequences, creating an infinite environmental spiral. One thing comes after another after another, all so that we can try to live the same lives we do with minimal day-to-disruption. To quote the Red Queen in Alice in Wonderland (as David Appell did), “it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place.”
I don’t know what this infinite spiral says about us as humans. Is it a sign of a species-wide failure, because we never seem to learn our lessons? Or is it a manifestation of our unbridled optimism, because we always think the next thing we do will fix all our issues? It could be both, it could be neither. I’ve got no clue. If you know more about this, or have any thoughts, send in replies to this mail. I’d love to hear from you.
The Round-up
This wasn’t the most cheery issue, I’ll admit. In case you’re looking for something a little more upbeat, I’d recommend you head over to Beau Miles’ YouTube channel. He’s a wholesome adventurer who’s being doing fun stuff in Australia over the last couple of years, like canoeing to work over four days to discover the area he’s grown up in, or planting trees with his baby daughter so she can explore their farm.
If you do want to learn more about everything I’ve written about above, you should read Under a White Sky by Elizabeth Kolbert. You can get it on paperback or for your Kindle (the hardcover’s a little outrageously priced). To get a better sense of the book, you can listen to her interview on 99% Invisible (episode 436, available on all major podcast apps). You should also check out her previous book, The Sixth Extinction, which spoke a lot about invasive species and humanity’s follies in nature (paperback; Kindle edition).
Anyhoo, I hope you enjoyed reading this. If you know of other trivia geeks who might, feel free to share it with them.
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