Why We’re Unwilling to Confront the Dirty Truth About Eating Meat

In her new book Reality Bubble, Ziya Tong explains why many people are willfully ignorant about our food system.

We’ve made incredible advances in science and technology in recent decades, giving us a closer look at many of the universe’s inner workings. But despite this new insight, there’s still a lot we miss — sometimes on purpose. Science journalist Ziya Tong explores 10 of our biggest blind spots in her new book Reality Bubble: Blind Spots, Hidden Truths, and the Dangerous Illusions that Shape Our World. The excerpt below comes from the chapter “Recipe for Disaster,” about the perils that come with turning a blind eye to the workings of our food system.

For years, people have tried to justify the five-second rule. The “rule” suggests that if food falls on the ground, you have five seconds to pick it up before it becomes bacterially contaminated. Of course, there is no science to back this up. Instead, we come up with our own justifications like, “Don’t worry. It’s just a slice of cheese. You can wipe it off quickly,” or “It’s a jelly bean, not a gummy bear. See? Nothing stuck to it.”

The science however, is definitive: drop your food on the ground and almost instantaneously it will have bacteria on it. So why does the myth persist? Simply, because we want it to. We can’t see the bacteria and it doesn’t appear to cause any harm, so most people (79 percent, according to one survey) will pick up and eat food that’s been dropped on the floor.

Now, a dirty jelly bean is one thing, but when it comes to the dirty truth of our food system, are we able to confront the facts or do we do the same thing and look away because we want to?

With food, there are things we’d rather not know. And here’s the rub: we know we’d rather not know. Scientists have found that our brains will shut down information that doesn’t make us feel good, or that causes us stress, which is one reason why we tune out suffering. But as Margaret Heffernan writes in her book Willful Blindness, “Not knowing, that’s fine. Ignorance is easy. Knowing can be hard but at least it is real, it is the truth. The worst is when you don’t want to know because then it must be something very bad. Otherwise you wouldn’t have so much difficulty knowing.”

If we were the least bit curious to know where our food comes from, it wouldn’t be hard to get the facts. The gothic horrors of the meat-packing industry have been well known since Upton Sinclair published The Jungle more than 100 years ago. Though you might be a little less likely to find a rat in a tin of corned beef today, the sheer scale of the slaughter has grown enormously, and mechanization over the past century has arguably only made slaughterhouses and industrial-scale farms more shocking. As James Pearce notes in his essay “A Brave New Jungle,” “Perhaps the most insightful way to illustrate the intensification of animal-intensive agricultural production over the course of the 20th (and into the 21st) century is with a simple statistic: the poultry industry today slaughters more birds in one day than the entire industry did in the year of 1930.”

And while those who profit from the carnage are content to keep the facts and statistics hidden, unpleasant truths are the easiest things in the world to hide. If someone doesn’t want to know something, they’re not going to know it.

Disgust is another powerful inhibitor. Disgustologists, as the scientists who study the subject like to call themselves, have found that the emotion of disgust is universal, and it does have benefits. That we recoil and grimace when we see sores or lesions on putrid flesh, for instance, is an evolutionary advantage. Disgust keeps us away from pathogens. It protects us from disease.

But many things we might potentially be disgusted by are no longer in view. In particular, when it comes to cheap meat in the food industry, we are in the dark about important facts about our food. Facts like, the animals we eat are routinely fed garbage and other animals’ feces. Facts like, most bacon comes from pigs that were put in a gas chamber. And facts like, there are steaks in supermarket meat cases that came from a steer that was skinned alive.

Perhaps you’d rather not know that. Some facts definitely make it more difficult to eat, or at least to shop. It is certainly not suitable conversation for dinner. Reading off the ingredients in, say, artificial coffee creamer is unappetizing enough, but it’s a different matter entirely to contemplate the provenance of a cutlet. And while we are content to know little to nothing about everyday ingredients — dipotassium phosphate, mono- and diglycerides, silicon dioxide, sodium stearoyl lactylate, soy lecithin, and artificial flavors — in the case of food that was once alive, knowing little to nothing is a different kind of opacity and at least partly a matter of conscience. Not knowing is a way to keep our consciences clear.

We are animals too, after all. And animals tend to have an innate regard for other animals. The esteemed American biologist E.O. Wilson called this “biophilia,” or “the urge to affiliate with other forms of life.” Many humans feel a sense of reverence or connection when in the presence of nature, perhaps because we are a part of nature. It is all but impossible to resist the desire to nurture and protect a puppy or kitten; few can approach a horse without wanting to put a hand on its neck. A sense of kinship with fellow animals is not the subject of rigorous scientific study, but the evidence for it is impossible to ignore. We love animals.

Deep down, our similarities are difficult to deny. A cow’s experience or a chicken’s, or even a bat’s, is certainly different from our own. We don’t know what it’s like to be a cow or a chicken or a bat, but it’s like something. When we think about what it’s like to be an animal, we are in the same position a robot with artificial intelligence (or a Martian) would be in when processing the question of what it’s like to be human. That is, the fact that our behaviors can be dispassionately described doesn’t mean it should be assumed we are incapable of rich experiences. And we have no grounds to make that assumption about other animals. As philosopher Thomas Nagel points out, “To deny the reality…of what we can never describe or understand is the crudest form of cognitive dissonance.” We can’t believe that each of us sees and experiences the world in a unique way and at the same time deny that other animals see and experience it just as uniquely.

Cognitive dissonance is really just a name for the discomfort we feel when we both know something and avoid knowing it. In the case of where meat comes from, the result is a willful blind spot big enough to hide a mechanism of death so grisly, so gruesome, and so huge that it has already changed the face of the planet almost beyond recognition. And if we can miss several billion deaths without batting an eyelash, what else has been hidden in plain sight?

Excerpted from The Reality Bubble by Ziya Tong. Copyright © 2019 by Ziya Tong. Published by Allen Lane, an imprint of Penguin Canada, a division of Penguin Random House Canada Limited. Reproduced by arrangement with the publisher. All rights reserved.

Can the Environmental Movement Carry a ‘Green Wave’ Into 2020?

Elected officials won’t care about environmental issues unless environmental voters turn out to the polls.

Americans are finally beginning to understand the severity of the climate crisis. Nearly three-quarters of Americans now say global warming is “personally important” to them, even as the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports that we have just 11 years to take dramatic action to avert climate catastrophe.

I guess we should see this as good news — better late than never — but a crucial question remains: Does America have the political will to enact the big changes needed to address climate change before it’s too late?

There’s a simple answer: Yes, but only if environmentalists vote.

The 2018 midterms were something of a high-water mark for turnout of environmental voters. More than 8 million “environment-first” voters flocked to the polls last November, a robust showing that has spawned renewed interest in a Green New Deal and carbon pricing — although not nearly enough interest to actually pass such measures.

Now, imagine how politicians would react to these kinds of initiatives if twice as many environmentalists turned up to vote.

It’s not an impossibility. In the 2016 presidential election, 10 million environmental voters stayed home in an election that was decided by fewer than 80,000 votes. Even if only half of them started voting, that would be a “green wave” impossible for any politician to ignore.

Simply put, politicians will always go where the votes are. If environmentalists aren’t voting, we’ll continue to be ignored. If we show up to vote, politicians will follow. If you’re not convinced, look at the host of Democratic presidential candidates now scrambling to appeal to the growing block of Democratic climate voters.

At the Environmental Voter Project, our goal is to turn these millions of non-voting environmentalists into an army of super-voters who drive policy-making at the local, state and federal levels.

And we’re already making progress.

Voter registration — Earth Day voter registration event in Mill Valley, Calif. (Photo by Fabrice Florin, CC BY-SA 2.0)

In the 2018 midterms, the Environmental Voter Project targeted over 2.1 million unlikely-to-vote environmentalists in six states (Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Massachusetts, Nevada and Pennsylvania). Ultimately, our efforts resulted in 58,961 new environmental voters being added to the electorate.

How’d we do it? By treating people as social beings — not rational beings — plus a healthy dose of peer pressure. We don’t try to rationally convince people of the importance of voting; instead we appeal to how they wish to be viewed by their friends and neighbors. Using the latest behavioral science research, we tap into widely accepted societal norms: our desires to be good citizens, to fit in with our peer groups and to not be left behind. We often remind environmentalists that their voting records are public, and that most of their friends or neighbors voted in the recent election.

For instance, we mailed voters copies of their public voting histories and increased turnout by as much as 3.4 percentage points in some states. Our volunteer canvassers asked non-voters to sign pledges to vote, and then we mailed those pledges back before Election Day, increasing turnout by 4.5 percentage points. Our digital advertisements said things like “Be a good voter,” “Your neighbors are voting; are you?” and “Who you vote for is secret; whether you vote is public record.” These simple messages increased turnout 0.4–1.2 percentage points.

Some of our turnout techniques had different results with different demographic groups — direct mail did better with older voters and people of color, whereas text messages performed better with younger voters — but most interventions ended up increasing turnout well over 1 percent, which is a big deal in politics.

In short, these techniques work. We’re turning non-voters into voters.

The best part is that habits are sticky, which means that many of these new voters will keep showing up, and campaigns will start paying attention to them as regular voters. Just three years after launching, the Environmental Voter Project has already created 93,423 environmental “super-voters” — people who previously did not vote, yet now vote so consistently that politicians are fighting for their attention.

This is the kind of concerted, year-round mobilization effort the environmental movement needs. We must treat every election — no matter how small — as an opportunity to turn non-voters into voters. And in 2019, voting in your local city council, mayoral or statewide elections is particularly important — not just because of the impact on local and state policy-making — but also because it tells 2020 candidates which new voters they need to pay attention to.

To encourage these consistent voting habits, the Environmental Voter Project is treating 2019 as if it were 2018 or 2020. We’ve already worked with thousands of volunteers to mobilize environmental voters in over 60 elections since last November’s midterms — from municipal elections in Las Vegas, Jacksonville and Colorado Springs to state legislative races in Pennsylvania and county-wide ballot measures in Georgia. Before 2019 is over, we’re expecting to contact more than 2 million environmental voters in Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Massachusetts, Nevada and Pennsylvania, and we may expand into additional states beyond that.

Clearly, the momentum is shifting. We saw the beginning of a green wave in 2018, but we’re not yet a big enough voting block to bring about the enormous policy changes that we need. So we need to start showing up.

The United Nations says we have 11 years left to avert climate catastrophe. As environmentalists, it’s our duty to spend these next 11 years voting in every election and mobilizing other environmentalists to vote too. And we must start now.

Together, we can turn this growing green wave into the sea change we need to force politicians to act before it’s too late.

The opinions expressed above are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of The Revelator, the Center for Biological Diversity or their employees.

To Better Save the Planet, Show Yourself

Effective communication about critical conservation issues requires scientists and other conservationists to show their personalities and tell their stories.

I’ve spent the past two years deeply examining the art and effectiveness of science communication — especially in wildlife television — and I’ve come to a surprising conclusion.

Many wildlife series are well made and educational, but also…lacking. They show the animals and their struggles, but I consistently felt as though something important was missing.

But what? For months, the answer eluded me.

Oddly enough it revealed itself in the work a different type of television communicator, the late chef, writer and traveler Anthony Bourdain.

Bourdain was one of my heroes. Following his tragic and unexpected suicide last year, I found myself obsessively re-watching episodes of his television series Parts Unknown and No Reservations in an attempt to find closure. In doing so I realized they contained a vital ingredient for science and environmental communication: the importance of human connection.

What made Bourdain’s series so special? Quite simply, he made the most elite culinary titans seem relatable. Bourdain showed his guests being themselves. He gave them time to tell their personal stories and asked questions that drew out their heartfelt emotions.

In other words, Bourdain encouraged his guests to be “real.”

That has an effect on the viewer. When I watched the late chef Paul Bocuse, the iconic figure in French cuisine, laughing with friends during the “Lyon” episode of Parts Unknown, I felt connected to him. We came from different backgrounds, but in that moment, I realized that the chef and I were both human beings with the same core needs. I thus felt like I could relate to Bocuse — even trust him.

This is what those wildlife specials were lacking, and it’s a direction we need to go in with science communication, especially concerning critical environmental issues. We need to show that scientists — despite their education and technical expertise — are people the public can relate to and trust. This has the potential to disseminate knowledge, touch lives, create solidarity and generate support for conservation.

Bourdain relied heavily on local experts to help him understand a region and its cuisine. Following his example, I turned to four experienced science communicators, conservationists and scientists to better understand the topic of “realness” in science communication.

The Traditional Approach — and Why Avoiding It Works

To better understand why some of those wildlife films didn’t work for me, I spoke with a scientist who has experience in engaging with his audiences.

Rob Nelson is a marine biologist, the executive director of the science video site Untamed Science and an Emmy award-winning filmmaker. He’s appeared on television numerous times as a presenter and expert consultant. He’s also just as enthusiastic and friendly in person as he is on camera.

According to Nelson, “The traditional way of telling a story with a scientist is to make them the voice of authority.”

To accomplish this, he explains, filmmakers usually “set the camera a little bit lower — that puts the scientists into a power position…and they talk to whatever the issue is.” You find similar approaches in articles, television interviews and other media, where the scientist is positioned as an expert and just gives the facts.

Nelson says he’s not entirely satisfied with the standard way of depicting scientists, but it’s so ingrained in the way scientists and the media have been trained to communicate that it’s not always easy to change.

“Generally, if I make everyone sound fun, or I show any bit of personality that is not authoritative, scientists want me to take it out.”

Despite this general pattern of resistance, Nelson points to a time he succeeded in portraying scientists in a less formal manner — and reveals how it paid off.

Starting in 2012 Nelson made a series of videos called “Bugs in Your Home” featuring entomologist Michelle Trautwein and her team. This time Nelson avoided using the “power position” shots and instead tried more creative, yet subtle, methods like interviewing the scientists while they were, “crawling around sucking bugs up off the floor.” He didn’t do it to be clever; he just showed his subjects doing their jobs and talking about what they found. This provided viewers with a unique window into a new world and showcased the enthusiasm that Trautwein and her crew had for the insects around them.

When Nelson released “Bugs in Your Home,” it set off what he describes as “an avalanche of people making videos on it: Nat Geo picked it up, BBC picked it up, PBS — everyone did a video about bugs in your home.”

Nelson refuses to take full credit for this avalanche, but, as he points out, “that was an example of scientists who got their work out, and I did it [the video] in a way that wasn’t super-authoritative.”

Touching Lives

One scientist who’s never tried to be overly authoritative is Samantha Yammine, a neuroscientist better known as Science Sam.

Yammine and I instantly connected over our shared respect for Anthony Bourdain and issues like inclusivity in science. She was equal parts bubbly and serious, which matches the tone of Yammine’s Instagram profile, where she has nearly 35,000 followers.

Most of her Instagram posts contain facts about science, ranging from stem cells to space exploration, but she also shows her personality. She frequently smiles or makes funny facial expressions in her photos, and she writes in an informal tone that matches her upbeat style of speaking.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by 🔬 samantha yammine (she/her) (@science.sam) on Feb 14, 2019 at 7:27am PST

Not only has Yammine’s personal approach to science communication earned her tens of thousands of followers — allowing her to disseminate knowledge far and wide — but it’s also touched lives.

“A lot of people have come to me saying, ‘Thank you, because I’ve never met a scientist like you,’ ” Yammine says. “Especially young students who feel that they don’t belong in science will say, ‘You’re the first scientist I’ve met who also likes to watch this show, or isn’t afraid to dress this way, and I’ve always felt out of place because I dress the same way.’ ”

By being herself — by being real — Yammine has made students feel like they’re not alone. In other words, she’s generated solidarity.

And she’s not the only one.

Solidarity in Hardship

I first met Lindsay VanSomeren, a freelance writer with a master’s degree in wildlife biology, last year at The Wildlife Society’s annual conference. She’s more reserved than Nelson and Yammine, but still warm and eager to help, with a good sense of humor.

When VanSomeren graduated from the University of Alaska in 2014, she and her husband moved to Colorado — where one would think there’d be plenty of wildlife jobs. After searching for months, though, she was unable to find a decent one. Facing significant financial and psychological distress, VanSomeren had to mostly leave biology to survive.

That’s when she found herself reaching the public in an unexpected way. She created an informal survey to find out if other biology graduates were having the same problems, and it turns out she was far from alone. More than 700 people responded, making it clear that financial problems are common among biologists, who often have to deviate from their intended careers to support themselves.

“I don’t know anybody really who’s gone in a completely straight, linear path and didn’t have to duck off here and there,” she tells me. Her own career has taken its own unexpected path: She now runs a website devoted to providing scientists with financial tips, while also working as a science writer for Untamed Science and other publications.

Just as VanSomeren’s personal situation resonated online and created new opportunities, Nelson was able to build solidarity when he uploaded a video about his struggles with depression.

“People came out of the woodwork,” Nelson says. “I got a bunch of people who were very committed followers because I suddenly made a video that resonated with them.” Even Nelson’s own father opened up about his life-long battle with chronic depression, about which Nelson “had no idea.”

Determination and Passion

Dr. Natalie Schmitt has had a long career, starting with studying marsupials in Australia and then hosting television shows for Animal Planet and other networks. She moved on to making her own documentary, and finally to studying whales in Antarctica.

A few years ago Schmitt put everything on hold and moved to Canada to develop a DNA field kit that would allow researchers to accurately identify animal scat in the field — beginning with snow leopards.

This transition and the subsequent journey have been exceptionally hard. In a blog post last July, Schmitt disclosed some of the challenges she’s had to deal with.

“It’s been an incredibly lonely path,” she wrote, “I’ve missed my family and friends terribly.” Schmitt even revealed that she “was sexually assaulted while waiting for a bus.”

Also last year, Schmitt released a video on her DNA kit’s Facebook page about a grant application that had fallen through — and how that affected her emotionally. Just like VanSomeren, financial concerns have been a heavy burden for Schmitt. As she wrote last July, “The constant concern over money, to not only fund this project but allow me a quality of life where I don’t have to watch every penny, has also been taking its toll.”

Given these challenges Schmitt might have been justified in giving up. But she hasn’t.

“I see so much application to this,” Schmitt says of her DNA kit. “I’ve never felt more passionate about something in my life. I think once you find that, you just can’t give up.”

Although she’s faced many obstacles, Schmitt’s authenticity and resolve have had unexpected benefits.

Schmitt has intentionally connected with the public, encouraging them to support her DNA kit and snow leopards. “Suddenly people became very passionate about snow leopards — they wanted to learn more,” she divulges. “Not only did they contribute a small amount to my project, they’ve gone away with this newfound passion and understanding for snow leopards.”

Schmitt tells me scientists have been moved by her story as well.

When we spoke she explained that two biochemistry postgraduate students who were “not familiar with the field of conservation” had approached her. “They said to me that they were so inspired by the work that I’m trying to do that they said, ‘Look, we want to volunteer our time to work on your project over our summer break.’ And I was just floored by that.”

Schmitt’s also managed to secure a Sabin Snow Leopard Grant from Panthera — a global wild-cat conservation organization — that’s helping her to cover living expenses. Her story is far from over, and there are glimmers of hope.

I Write, I Eat, I Do Science

The ultimate goal of science communication must go beyond transmitting facts: We need to change hearts and minds. To do that we’ll have to let ourselves be seen — reveal our personalities, tell our stories, and connect with the public on a human level.

It works. Schmitt’s openness and tenacity have made her an ambassador for snow leopards. Nelson’s approach got people interested in bugs. Yammine engages viewers and fans on a regular basis. And VanSomeren created a community around a harsh truth.

This is why I’m advocating for a more personal approach to science communication: When we give people the chance to relate to us as human beings and as experts, our examples can resonate with them in unforeseen ways. This might, as in Schmitt’s case, win broader support for the critical projects and environmental issues we’re working on.

And that, just like a conversation with Anthony Bourdain, can help change the world, one person at a time.

The opinions expressed above are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of The Revelator, the Center for Biological Diversity or their employees.

What Losing 1 Million Species Means for the Planet — and Humanity

A new UN report finds that at least 1 million species are at risk of extinction. Will this finally be enough to motivate worldwide action?

The United Nations this week released a powerful report on the state of nature around the planet. Among its disheartening conclusions, the report — by hundreds of experts from 50 countries — estimates that a staggering 1 million species are at risk of extinction in the next few decades due to human-related causes.

Let’s unpack that a bit.

The report bases its estimate on the number of known species on the planet — about 8 million — and what we know about how many of those species are already at risk of extinction.

For example, more than 40 percent of the planet’s amphibian species are threatened with extinction, along with about a third of the shark family and a third of marine mammals. The report also estimates that about 10 percent of insect species are at risk, a fact highlighted by all of the recent news about the impending “insect apocalypse.”

frog research extinction — Panamanian golden frog by Brian Gratwicke (CC BY 2.0)

That’s all bad enough, of course, but there’s something the UN report doesn’t discuss: In all likelihood the number of species on the planet is actually much higher than 8 million, meaning that even more species are probably at risk.

How many species are we talking about? One 2017 study pegged the worldwide level of biodiversity at an amazing 2 billion species. Another study in 2016 used mathematical models to come up with an even higher number, between 100 billion and a trillion.

A lot of those extra billions of species are “just” microbes, so they’re not exactly your easy-to-count and easier-to-mourn megafauna like rhinos, wolves and orangutans. But they’re still an important part of the ecosystem. As the more visible species go extinct, it’s likely they will too.

It’s all connected, you see. A soil microbe disappears and maybe that loss contributes to a tree also dying off. That tree produced fruit, so the birds and monkeys that visited its seasonal buffet then suffer. After that the predators that eat the birds and monkeys disappear. Meanwhile we’ve lost the insects that pollinated the tree, the snails that helped break down its decaying leaves and branches, the snakes and lizards that ate the snails and insects, and probably more microbes along the way.

It’s an organic game of Jenga. Remove enough parts of the system and the entire thing threatens to collapse.

We see this on islands and other restricted ecosystems all the time. Species evolve into incredibly specific microhabitats, which themselves become incredibly susceptible to disruption. Change the temperature a degree or two, alter the rainfall a tiny bit, remove a key pollinator, or plow the whole thing over with a bulldozer and species go extinct in the blink of an eye — often before they’ve ever been observed, described or named by scientists, or before conservationists can issue a call to protect them.

Of course, the numbers we’re talking about here are almost impossible to comprehend, whether we’re talking about 1 million or hundreds of millions. That makes it hard to motivate action or to establish policy — after all, how do you broadly say “let’s protect a million unnamed species” when we can barely get our society motivated enough to save iconic species like the northern white rhino?

Sudan northern wrhite rhino — Photo: Sudan, the last male northern white rhino, in 2015, by Make in Kenya/Stuart Price

What makes it worse is that virtually none of these extinctions will take place out in the open. There will be few if any endlings — the last individuals of their kind — in public view, slowly dying off one by one in a zoo or on a well-watched mountain top. Most species will drift away in caves, in the ocean, in the ground, or in the air, one by one, bit by bit, dying by a thousand papercuts, until they’re wiped out in one fell swoop or until there are too few remaining individuals to find each other and reproduce. Then they’ll go extinct far away from human eyes, and it may take decades of searching to scientifically prove that they no longer exist.

That’s just for the species we know enough about to look for in the first place.

And if we don’t explicitly see an extinction happen, does it matter to most people?

Toward this issue of getting people to notice and care, the UN report takes an interesting path. It positions the extinction crisis and the general decline of nature as something that will affect the very thing causing it — humanity. The loss of species, the report points out, will threaten global food security and water supplies and even make the climate crisis worse.

Will that “ecosystem services” approach get people, especially policy makers, motivated? We’ll see. The extinction crisis is also, in my mind, a crisis of morality: a resource in short supply these days, at least in the leadership of a particular country that comes to mind.

Still, the report also includes a long list of policy recommendations for leaders around the world. These include important goals for sustainable energy, sustainable food growth, forest conservation, freshwater protection and Indigenous land management.

Will leaders hear the call? I’m actually a bit heartened. This report was front-page news on The New York Times and hundreds of other media outlets. The news was shared widely on social media. People got angry. And scared.

And the story isn’t going away any time soon. The UN’s report is just an early summary for policy makers; the full version will come later this year, providing numerous opportunities to keep talking about it.

But the time for simply talking is long past over. As this report makes perfectly clear, it’s now or never for us to take conclusive action — on an individual basis, at a country level, and as a human society.

Whether that happens — or whether it happens fast enough — remains to be seen. Meanwhile, we’re undoubtedly already losing many of those 1 million species, and we’re about to lose more. The numbers will soon start to stack up, and along the way they’ll also speed up, with ecosystems collapsing and extinctions happening faster and faster.

That’s a bleak outlook, but many believe we can still turn things around. Sir Robert Watson, the chair of the UN body that issued the report, said in a press release that “it’s not too late to make a difference.”

He added that it won’t be easy, though, indicating that it will require a transformative shift in how human society operates.

“By transformative change, we mean a fundamental, system-wide reorganization across technological, economic and social factors, including paradigms, goals and values,” Watson said. This, he added, will face “opposition from those with interests vested in the status quo,” but he continued by saying that “such opposition can be overcome for the broader public good.”

And maybe for the good of a few thousand species along the way.

How to Build the Green New Deal? Cities and States May Already Have Answers

There’s much to learn from local efforts — and good reasons why they’ll need to be part of the process, experts say. But can states do it on their own?

Over the past several months, legislators in Washington have engaged in heated conversations about the Green New Deal, the potential plan to help the United States to cool the planet by quickly and equitably curbing greenhouse gas emissions and transitioning to cleaner energy sources.

The hotly debated idea has both vocal supporters and detractors. But even for those who champion the mission, there’s still a lot to figure out about how it would be developed and implemented.

The good news is that any effort to bring the Green New Deal to fruition wouldn’t need to start from scratch. Proponents can, and should, look to states and cities for help and inspiration, says Caitlin McCoy, a fellow at Harvard Law School who specializes in in climate, clean air and energy. McCoy just authored a new policy paper that shows areas where state and local governments have been leading and how understanding their progress is crucial to crafting any new sweeping federal legislation.

“States are an experimental testing ground for policies that could one day be adopted at a federal level,” she says. Green New Deal backers, she adds, “would be wise to do an accounting of what’s happening at a state and local level and see where they might be able to plug federal policies and programs into existing architecture and frameworks. And any big federal policy to operationalize the principles of the Green New Deal would necessarily need to build on state action, because a lot of the areas that the deal seems to be seeking to reach are areas of traditional state and local control.”

Clean Energy Goals

One of the most ambitious goals of the Green New Deal is the sourcing of 100 percent of the country’s power from clean, renewable sources.

States have been working toward this goal for decades — 29 states have renewable portfolio standards that set minimum amounts of electric power that utilities need to get from renewable sources. In fact about half the growth in U.S. renewable electricity generation and capacity over the past two decades can be tied directly to state renewable energy policies, according to McCoy’s paper.

So far these standards have been relatively modest, but that’s beginning to change. In the past year California, Hawaii, New Mexico, Nevada and Washington have committed to 100 percent renewable or 100 percent carbon-free targets.

Wind farm hawaii — Pakini Nui Wind Farm in Hawaii. (Photo by Rakesh A, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

Other states are considering similar goals, but Illinois may take things even further. State leaders there are currently considering a renewable energy bill that would also address social-justice issues and help communities that have been tied to dirty energy transition to become part of the emerging clean energy economy.

Vox reporter Umair Irfan called this bill’s focus on environmental justice, “a remarkable test case of one of the Green New Deal’s core principles.”

Meanwhile Washington D.C. and more than 100 other U.S. cities are already onboard with similar measures to hit 100 percent carbon-free energy.

There’s good reason to keep an eye on the progress that cities are making, says John Farrell, who directs the Energy Democracy Initiative at the Institute for Local Self-Reliance. Cities have displayed a strong focus on energy programs that aren’t owned or managed by big utility companies. “That keeps more of the energy dollars in our communities — we can now do programs like solar on rooftops rather than just giant power plants,” he says. This emphasis on how wealth creation happens and who gets the economic benefits is a key component of the Green New Deal, he points out.

Farrell says he’s seen a growing number of municipalities consider community-shared solar programs, in which residents can buy into neighborhood solar arrays and receive a credit on their utility bills. Minnesota has been a leader on that front. “It took off in a couple of progressive communities that were climate-change oriented and spread very quickly because it was a great financial deal,” he adds.

Slashing Emissions

There’s local progress on curbing emissions, too.

McCoy calls California a “shining example” of how to reduce emissions from buildings. The state has worked since 1977 to incrementally tighten efficiency standards for buildings and now has an ambitious plan for achieving zero net energy in new construction. “That’s why we see California as really leading the nation in terms of the level of energy efficiency that it demands in new buildings,” she says.

Municipalities around the country have started to catch up to California’s lead. Boulder, Colorado, adopted an ordinance in 2015 requiring energy efficient retrofitting in buildings with a goal of 80 percent reduction in emissions by 2050.

And just this April New York City passed its own Green New Deal, which consists of 10 bills to slash greenhouse gas emissions. The most notable would require buildings larger than 25,000 square feet to reduce emissions by 40 percent by 2030 and 80 percent by 2050. Similarly, the goals of Los Angeles’s own Green New Deal, announced at the beginning of May, include requiring all buildings to be net zero carbon by 2050.

Another opportunity is in boosting state rebate programs for home appliances, water heaters and HVAC systems, says McCoy. State rebate programs were expanded between 2010 and 2014 with help from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. The act allowed states to design their own programs, determine which products would be eligible for rebates, and offer recycling bonuses for replaced items.

Other states have ramped up investment in infrastructure to support electric vehicles. Maryland is using $11 million in settlement money from Volkswagen’s emissions scandal to build more electric vehicle charging stations. Utilities in New York will install more than 1,000 fast chargers in the next seven years.

Hydrogen fuel cell bus — A zero emission hydrogen fuel cell bus in Irvine, CA. (Photo by Dennis Schroeder / NREL)

Minnesota, Virginia and California also have efforts underway. California’s plan requires new homes and townhomes with attached garages to be wired to support electric vehicle charging. Texas has revived an electric vehicle incentive program.

And it’s not just private cars. New York City, Portland and King County, Washington, are working to convert their bus fleets to electric by 2040.

There’s one more area of opportunity: the Clean Power Plan. McCoy’s research highlighted this Obama administration policy, which sought to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from power plants. The plan could be used “as a model and set a nationwide emissions budget with caps tailored for each state,” McCoy writes. “States would then submit compliance plans reflecting their needs and opportunities, informed by their knowledge of their electric systems.”

Unfortunately we haven’t gotten to see yet how well this would work. Efforts to implement the Clean Power Plan have been delayed by the Trump administration, which is seeking to scrap the effort.

All of these areas will be good starting points for federal legislators if they craft a mobilization plan like the Green New Deal. “They would be wise to take note of how states have faced challenges in these efforts and worked to overcome them,” writes McCoy.

Balance of Power

As the stalled Clean Power Plan illustrates, it can be hard to imagine any kind of significant federal environmental action taking place during the Trump administration, which is undoubtedly more intent on rolling back environmental protections than enacting them.

But the Trump era has so far been useful in spurring state and local action to tackle climate change. Farrell says he’s encouraged by all the cities pledging to hit higher renewable energy goals, but there’s still the question of whether they’ll actually get there and how they’ll do it.

“There aren’t that many cities yet who have really successfully wrestled with what that looks like and what policies would need to be put in place,” he says.

And then there’s the issue of whether piecemeal state and local efforts will be enough to help compensate for the leadership vacuum at the federal level. Right now, the answer is likely no, according to a recent Harvard Law policy paper by third-year student Michelle Melton. She’s a former fellow working on climate policy for the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

But there’s still reason for hope. “A growing number of states that make up a large portion of the U.S. economy have committed to climate mitigation by employing a wide range of policies, even if these policies are incremental, piecemeal, or experimental,” Melton writes.

Farrell says the cumulative population of the cities and states that have made these commitments already represent a significant portion of the country, but there’s still a huge role for the federal government to play when it comes to providing financial incentives for investment in clean technology or tax credits to level the playing field.

“I think what cities can do is pretty impressive, especially if they own their own utilities, but there’s a limit to how much they can accomplish unless the rules are changed to allow them to go further,” says Farrell. “In terms of solving the climate crisis, it can’t just be 200 cities that have volunteered to do something around renewable energy. It really needs to be all of us.”

Orangutans, Coal, Climate and Resistance: The 13 Best Environmental Books of May

This month brings two new books about the psychology of climate change and a two-volume series on resistance, plus at look at the secrets that blind us from taking action.

Looking for something new to read? We’ve got you covered. Here are our picks for the best environmentally themed books of May 2019 — and it’s quite a collection, with 13 new titles about a pioneering conservationist, the history of water woes in California, the dirty legacy (and future) of coal, and even the psychology of climate change.

Check out May’s baker’s dozen below.

Wildlife and Endangered Species:

Supernavigators: The Astounding New Science of How Animals Find Their Way by David Barrie — Navigate your way to your local bookstore and pick up this fantastic book, which covers everything from migrating birds and sea turtles to ants and dung beetles. Barrie’s got the human element covered, too: He’s a Fellow of the Royal Institute of Navigation. (He also happens to be the great-great-nephew of Peter Pan creator J. M. Barrie.)

Undaunted: The Wild Life of Biruté Mary Galdikas and Her Fearless Quest to Save Orangutans by Anita Silvey — Galdikas isn’t as well-known as her primatologist colleague Jane Goodall, but she should be. This YA biography tells her inspirational story, which becomes more relevant every year as orangutans become ever more endangered.

The Last Fish Swimming: The Global Crime of Illegal Fishing by Gohar A. Petrossian — We don’t talk enough about illegal fishing, a problem that threatens to empty our oceans and push many species into extinction. This new book, by a noted criminology professor, hopes to change that. It defines the scope of the problem and offers a toolkit of policy recommendations to help solve it — while there’s still time.

Pollution:

The Reality Bubble: Blind Spots, Hidden Truths and the Dangerous Illusions that Shape Our World by Ziya Tong — Smile, you’re on secret surveillance cameras…unless you’re working at a factory farm, power plant or garbage dump. In that case, go about your business without anyone seeing. Tong’s globetrotting book examines these dangerous parts of the world that remain hidden from public view and reveals how that lack of transparency clouds our vision of the future.

Flint Fights Back: Environmental Justice and Democracy in the Flint Water Crisis by Benjamin J. Pauli — A sadly necessary book putting the activism that emerged during the Flint water crisis into the context of the broader struggle to maintain and protect democracy. If it can happen there, it can happen anywhere.

Coal by Mark C. Thurber — A detailed examination of why the industry that relies upon this massively polluting substance never seems to pay its full environmental costs. (Hint: Money has something to do with it, but it’s a lot more complex than that.)

Climate Change:

The Psychology of Climate Change Adaptation by Anne van Valkengoed and Linda Steg — It’s time to dig into peoples’ brains to help understand how and why they react to the already emerging threats of climate change. This forward-thinking academic book looks at the key psychological theories related to adaptive behavior, examines a few real-world cases, and then sets “an agenda for future psychological research on climate change adaptation behavior.”

Climate Psychology: On Indifference to Disaster edited by Paul Hoggett — The flip side of the previous book, this one examines why people fail to respond to climate change, including new results from a series of research projects conducted around the world.

Greenovation: Urban Leadership on Climate Change by Joan Fitzgerald — An in-depth examination of how cities contribute to global warming, and how a handful of metropolises are innovating to help turn things around.

Climate and Society: Transforming the Future by Robin Leichenko & Karen O’Brien — A great book for undergraduates trying to wrap their heads around climate change and what they can do about it on a societal level.

The Dreamt Land: Chasing Water and Dust Across California by Mark Arax — The history of drought in California has been building for decades. Arax trekked around the state to examine the historic and ongoing battles over what humans, wildlife and crops get to drink.

Full Spectrum Resistance by Aric McBay — This two-volume series provides a powerful primer for activism on social-justice and environmental issues, using examples from more than 50 resistance movements around the world. The first book discusses how to build movements, while the second examines strategies for change.

That’s our list for this month, but there’s plenty more to add to your reading lists. For dozens of additional recent eco-books, check out the “Revelator Reads” archive — and come back in just a few weeks for next month’s inspiring list.

How Climate Change Will Affect Real Lives — Now and in the Future

To better understand future climate projections, let’s look at how they may play out in the life of someone born in 2000.

Climate change has already had serious effects, but as we know from the steady and increasingly loud drumbeat of projections from various scientific bodies, the dangers will grow much greater in future decades.

But what does this actually look like?

Projections of life in 2050 or 2100 seem like the stuff of science fiction, yet those seemingly distant decades are not so far off. The 22nd century is roughly one lifetime away. The great majority of today’s young adults will see 2050, and many children currently in your local daycare or elementary school will see 2100.

It seems difficult for us to plan for developments that are decades away, but climate science is clear that our actions today and over the next few years will make a profound difference to the planet and its inhabitants in the years to come.

How will climate change affect the lives of today’s young adults?

Let’s imagine the life of someone born in 2000 and, for the sake of specificity, say she lives in California, where scientists have done lots of climate-related modeling.

Our hypothetical young California woman, we’ll call her Emily, can expect to live until around 2080. Based on current statistics, she can probably anticipate her first child at around age 26, and that child will likely live well past 2100. Emily would be in her prime years during mid-century (2040-2060), the same period when her daughter will be transitioning into adulthood. So let’s start then.

To flesh this out, we need to consider two scenarios, one where significant but not stringent efforts are made to control carbon emissions, the other where little is done — the latter being the path we’re currently on. Much will depend on the actions humanity takes between now and the middle part of the century.

What will her world look like?

By 2050 the low- and high-emissions scenarios will already be starting to diverge, though not as far as they will later. Sea level will be up under either scenario, about eight inches with lower emissions and more than 10 inches with higher emissions. San Francisco airport is about a foot above sea level, so with high tides and storm surges it will be underwater on a regular basis. Major droughts will be a bit more likely even in the lower-emissions scenario, but will come twice as often with higher emissions. Average annual temperatures in California will also rise about 4.4 degrees Fahrenheit with lower emissions, or about 5.8 degrees with higher emissions.

By late in the century (2080 to 2100), Emily will be elderly or will have died, her children may be retired, and there may well be grandchildren or even a great-grandchild. By this time the differences between the lower-emissions and high-emissions scenarios become very stark.

In the high-emissions scenario, things will have gotten much worse by 2100. Sea level in San Francisco will be up over four feet, which means much of the city on average will be under water (and even more so with high tides). Many of Southern California’s beaches will be gone.

What used to be the once-in-a-century driest year will happen three times as often. Temperatures will have risen 8.8 degrees. As a result, Sacramento, which currently has 60 to 90 days a year with the temperature exceeding 90 degrees, will have about that many days over 105 degrees by the end of this century. Similarly, while Los Angeles now has only about 18 90-degree days a year, by the end of the century, 2 out of 3 years will see 50 to 100 days like that. This translates to four to six times as many deaths from heat waves, the projected loss of nearly all of the Sierra snowpack and two-and-a-half times as many critically dry years.

Outside California the world that Emily’s daughter and grandchildren have inherited is also vastly changed. Globally, by the end of the century the high-emissions scenario where average temperatures are more than 7 degrees Fahrenheit looks grim. We would see “unprecedented heat waves, severe drought and major floods in many regions, with serious impacts on human systems, ecosystems and associated services,” according to a report by the World Bank. The world’s poor would be the most vulnerable to the resulting water and food insecurity. The kind of heatwaves that killed tens of thousands in Russia in 2010 would become the “new normal.”

The World Bank’s sober conclusion is that there’s no guarantee we could even adapt to that world.

We’ll have slowed this damage a bit in the lower-emissions scenario, but the problems will still be severe. In this version of the world to come, the sea has risen more than two feet in California. Average temperatures are up 5.6 degrees Fahrenheit there. According to researchers, even in this low-emissions scenario, there will be sharp decreases in the Sierra snow packs that supply California’s water in the summer, and there will be two or three times as many deaths from heatwaves. That’s terrible, but it’s still progress compared to the high-emissions scenario, and an even stronger effort to reduce emissions might have done more — but it’s worth emphasizing that our actions still make a real difference even if we fail to stabilize climate completely.

Of course long-term climate models predict probabilities, not certainties, and are most uncertain at the local or regional level. Actual emissions trajectories are likely to be different from these scenarios. And demographics vary by race, age and social class, so a really complete analysis would have to make such distinctions and also consider future trends in thinking about life expectancy, fertility and childbearing. The usual caveat applies: “Your mileage may vary.” But none of these refinements would change the basic thrust.

There are three big lessons here. The first is that 2100 isn’t all that far away. The children of someone like Emily have a very good chance of seeing 2100, and their children almost certainly will. The trajectory of carbon emissions between now and then will have a major impact on their lives.

The second lesson is that even the lower-emissions scenario will cause a serious amount of warming and all the problems that come with it. We — as a nation and as a society — need to do better than that, which means a strenuous effort to cut worldwide emissions as soon as possible.

The third lesson is related: The future is not fixed. Even if we fall short of the ideal effort against climate change, what we do will still make a big difference. As we saw in the two models for the year 2100, the changes we make today to curb emissions will compound over time, like interest rates providing increased yields for the planet. We have a tremendous ability — and responsibility — to shape what the world will look like, not just for hypothetical Emily but for all future generations.

Native Renewables: Powering Up Tribal Communities

An organization focused on increasing energy independence for American Indians is helping to bring light, jobs and new opportunities to tribal communities.

There’s something amiss in the Southwest. The region has the best solar potential in the country, yet thousands still live in homes without electricity. The problem is especially acute in native communities like the Navajo Nation, which was passed over in earlier efforts to bring electricity to rural communities.

Suzanne Singer and Wahleah Johns saw this problem as an opportunity. In 2016 they started the organization Native Renewables to help bring power to homes on the Hopi reservation and the Navajo Nation. The project also works to train a local workforce to build, maintain and manage renewable energy systems.

We spoke with Singer, a mechanical engineer and a member of the Navajo tribe, about the promises and hurdles of expanding renewable energy access in native communities.

What made you decide to use your engineering skills to expand renewable energy capabilities for Native American communities?

I started thinking about it when I was a graduate student intern for the Tribal Energy Program at Sandia National Labs. Learning about the amazing things other engineers and other tribes were doing planted a seed in my mind that I could use my capabilities to potentially improve the lives of native people.

Suzanne Singer (Photo courtesy of Native Renewables)

Several years later, a chance encounter with Wahleah Johns, our executive director, led to many conversations about our similar passions and ultimately the formation of Native Renewables. We wanted to empower native people to own their power — through education and by using renewable energy — to help solve energy access problems.

One amazing thing about being involved in the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math) community is meeting other Native American students and professionals who are building their technical skills and looking for an outlet to use those skills in their communities.

What are some of the biggest challenges to scaling renewable energy systems in communities?

In the context of our work, there are more than 15,000 Navajo homes that lack electricity. With a reservation the size of West Virginia, a major challenge of electrification is the cost to provide grid-tied power to every home in rural areas. One potential solution is to provide access to an off-grid photovoltaic system with battery storage that is affordable for low-income families. Our goal is to provide a pathway for families to go solar without introducing a financial burden.

For larger utility-scale, commercial or community projects, the challenges can vary from tribe to tribe. There are 573 federally recognized American Indian and Alaska Native tribes and villages, and even more state-recognized tribes. One challenge can be having the initial capital funding to invest in a project. There can be some environmental hurdles and questions around how the project impacts wildlife, sacred sites and use of lands. With the success of every tribal project, there is motivation to learn from those successes to scale up the number of projects.

What’s most exciting to you about the field of renewables right now?

I’m excited to see the role it plays in tribal energy infrastructure in the next several years — particularly on the Navajo Nation, where the president and vice president recently signed a proclamation in support of renewable energy. Being in the southwestern states of Arizona, New Mexico and Utah, the Navajo Nation is well located to take advantage of the solar resource potential.

What opportunities are you hoping your work creates?

One of the biggest impacts we can make is educating native people of all ages about solar energy. Historically, some energy projects on the reservation involved the donation of photovoltaic systems without much explanation of how to use the system, what maintenance is needed, or what to expect after years of use. Our goal for education and outreach is to expand technical knowledge and to demystify how these systems work. With a better understanding, we hope that owners are able to use the system as intended and have them last the expected lifetime.

For families that want photovoltaic systems, we also want to reduce reliance on fossil fuels needed for lighting or electricity. With the possibility of reliable electricity, we want to improve living standards by allowing students to be able to do their homework at night and increasing the productivity of all family members. I can’t explain how heartwarming it feels to see families turn on a light switch in their homes for the very first time and be excited about the possibilities.

What can the rest of us do to ensure access to reliable and clean energy for Native American communities?

First, it’s important for people to be aware that many Native American communities are at a disadvantage when it comes to energy access, like the tens of thousands of homes on the Navajo Nation that don’t have access to grid-tied electricity or running water. Some communities, like those in Alaska, pay significantly higher costs for their energy. While there is a lot of great work internationally to remedy these issues, we want everyone to understand that lack of access is not just a problem outside our borders.

Second, investing in indigenous communities and organizations doing the groundwork is so important to growing capacity from within the communities. This includes support through donations, volunteering, sharing our work, or continuing political actions that favor renewable energy, workforce development and STEM education.

Third, projects should aim to have strong partnerships with the local communities. As stewards of the land, there is valuable knowledge that exists. Building relationships can take time and transparency, but I think this is the best path to deploying successful projects.

Protecting Jaguars Across Borders

When big cats cross from one country into another, they can fall victim to wildlife traffickers, drug cartels, highways and more emerging threats.

In early April the mutilated body of a jaguar was discovered in Mexico’s Yaxchilán Natural Monument.

Researchers investigating the death quickly concluded that the animal, which had been tracked in neighboring Guatemala since 2015, had crossed the border and fallen prey to wildlife traffickers, who may have taken its head for sale on the black market.

Deaths like this, when a jaguar crossed the border from a protected area into a different country, may have something to do with the big cats’ plummeting populations, experts worry.

“The males have to move across long distances and sometimes go outside of reserves or protected areas to buffer zones and areas populated by people,” says Rony García-Anleu, director of the biological research department for the Wildlife Conservation Society in Guatemala.

Today the wide-ranging jaguar (Panthera onca), which once lived throughout South America and north into the United States, is considered a threatened species. Conservation groups estimate there are only 15,000 wild jaguars left, mostly due to poaching and deforestation.

As García-Anleu explains, the boundaries between countries are important for humans, but they don’t exist for animals. Jaguars require vast amounts of barrier-free land and don’t care about man-marked territories. While females stay in one area, males roam across continents in search of food and mates. They crisscross borders throughout the Americas, traveling as far south as Argentina and as far north as Arizona and New Mexico in the United States.

To learn more about how borders create problems for jaguars, WCS has used camera traps to track and study 14 jaguars in Tikal National Park, a World Heritage site in Guatemala’s Petén Province. Home to thousands of animal and plant species, the park’s 7,700 square miles of forested canopy stretch into neighboring Mexico and Belize.

The study found that the big cats were constant travelers. WCS compared photos of jaguars in Tikal with photos taken by conservation groups in Mexico and Belize and discovered the organizations were often tracking the same animals. Each jaguar’s coat has unique spots that, like human fingerprints, can be used to identify individuals.

Tikal is just one example of reserves across the Americas that exist along borderlines or occupy land in multiple countries. Such reserves attract people as well as wild creatures. In Central and South America, they’ve become home to guerrilla groups, refugees, cattle ranchers and traffickers.

Human vs. Jaguar

Drug traffickers “use the jungle like a shield,” says García-Anleu, explaining that criminals set ablaze swaths of forests to clear land for private airstrips. “This is why the majority of the forest fires occur in this [border] part,” he explains, pointing on a map to the western border of Guatemala and Mexico. “Here, you can see a lot of airplanes that narco-traffickers abandon.”

Along with the dwindling numbers of jaguars and rising numbers of drug gangs, you can also find vulnerable families who sought refuge from violence in central Guatemala during the country’s decades-long brutal civil war. The 36-year-long conflict ended in 1996 with hundreds of thousands dead, 83 percent of whom were estimated to be Mayan.

Many people were legitimately relocated and given land titles in these areas, while others, both before and after the 1996 Peace Accord, settled out of desperation as Guatemala’s population grew and land ownership was awarded only to an elite few, explains WCS program director Roan McNab.

Today some settlers are “clueless about the laws and get snookered, but most are well aware that the land is a protected area,” he says. Now people settle illegally — not as war refugees but “because they are desperate or because they are land speculators.”

WCS estimates there are now 10,000 people settled in Laguna del Tigre National Park and 15,000 in Sierra del Lacandon National Park.

“Land is one of Guatemala’s most precious commodities,” says McNab. “Given the levels of corruption and the undercurrent of influence from narco-trafficking on the border with Mexico, land speculation has been, and remains, rampant in these two border parks.”

WCS has worked with one of the rural communities, Paso Caballos, since 2008, training and employing people to assist with conservation.

The organization also fostered a conservation agreement with local and national government, including a grant of $25,000 every year, half of which is invested in vital services for 1,800 people. The other half pays for patrols of a 20-square-mile buffer area outside the village.

But Paso Caballos is the only community offering to assist with conservation, possibly due to threats from criminal gangs, McNab says.

Clearing the path for sustainable development and conservation will require the government to prioritize addressing organized crime. The situation now “is chaotic, providing a clear win for the organized crime interests that prefer weak institutions and instability in the area,” he says.

All of this growth and crime has hurt the local wildlife. As more people began to occupy reserve land along the border, jaguar habitat naturally decreased, as did the animals’ prey. This created further conflict between the cats and people. Hungry jaguars, which typically avoid humans, have been known wait until nightfall to prey on calves on cattle ranches located next to reserves. To protect their livelihoods, farmers often hunt and kill the great cats.

In response to this growing threat to jaguars, WCS decided to help one rancher by using a simple remedy, an easy-to-build enclosure to safeguard calves at night. The enclosure, similar to ones used to protect livestock from lions and wolves in other parts of the world, proved successful. The farmer told his neighbors and they all started to build their own cattle enclosures, says García-Anleu.

“We did not want to take a punishment approach,” says García-Anleu, adding that sharing information and pictures of jaguars with the communities that live on or near to reserves helps to motivate people — regardless of background, nationality or ethnicity — to join and assist in conservation efforts.

A New Threat Emerges

On the northeastern side of the Guatemalan border in southern Mexico, James Callaghan, director of the Kaxil Kiuic Millsaps Biocultural Reserve in Yucatan, explains how another human-induced obstacle threatens jaguars across the continent.

There are “a lot of fatalities from highways, with cars hitting jaguars and killing them,” says Callaghan.

One of the biggest emerging threats to jaguar habitat in southern Mexico at the moment is a proposed interstate train line called the Tren Maya (Mayan Train), which would cross five southeastern Mexican states (Yucatan, Campeche, Quintana Roo, Chiapas and Tabasco) and encourage domestic and international tourism. Multiple jaguar reserves, including Kaxil Kiuic and Calakmul Biosphere on the Mexico-Guatemala-Belize border, will be affected by Tren Maya.

Alongside other large infrastructure projects in Mexico, such as dams and wind farms, Tren Maya crosses Mayan communal land and will disrupt the migration paths of jaguars and their prey, degrade water sources and decrease forest area.

“We are not against development,” he says. “The big issue is, can it be sustainable? Can we create win-win situations for all of the animals, humans included?”

A Call for Cooperation

The same question of balancing human infrastructure needs with wildlife is also being asked further north, in the state of Arizona, where experts say jaguars — along with black bears and many other animals — are threatened by the proposed border wall between the United States and Mexico. Part of Arizona’s border with northern Mexico is also a 1,000-square-mile reserve.

The border wall “would be ‘game over’ for both jaguar and ocelot recovery in [the U.S.],” said Chris Bugbee, a senior researcher at Conservation CATalyst, in a statement alongside a video released this year of a rare ocelot spotted in Arizona.

Both Callaghan and García-Anleu say humans and jaguars alike can benefit from international and interstate conservation cooperation and the standardization of data.

“One of the biggest desires of [conservation] groups is to create a common database,” says Callaghan.

“We need a good monitoring system that we can share with other countries,” says García-Anleu. “This jaguar trail is a long trail, so we need to work closely with people in Belize and Mexico.” No international system like this currently exists, but several countries and organizations each have their own monitoring programs.

More importantly, for the border-crossing jaguar to thrive again in the Americas, experts say humans need to work together across state and country lines. That includes tackling a wide range of anthropocentric issues ranging from sustainable infrastructure development to the destruction of reserves by traffickers.

As Callaghan says, “To move anything forward with the conservation of the jaguar, we have to work with all people, indigenous, local and abroad, and we have to work together.”

A Dream of Mountain Gorillas Deferred

Is it worth flying halfway around the world to see an endangered species if the greenhouse emissions from flying put that species further at risk?

I may have just talked myself out of one of my dreams.

For years now I’ve held out hope of an opportunity to travel to Africa to see one of my favorite species, mountain gorillas, in the wild. This year it looked like that dream could finally come true. I have the vacation time, I have the money (well, the credit cards), and I don’t have any work or personal commitments keeping me close to home.

I could do it if I really wanted to.

But a question has been gnawing at me: Should I do it?

The more I thought about it, the more I realized that the big problem looming over a trip like this is its impact on the climate. Based on some quick calculations I made on a travel site, it looks like an airplane trip to Uganda would produce at least 2.13 metric tons of CO₂ emissions. That, according to the EPA website, is the equivalent of burning 2,329 pounds of coal — enough energy to charge my cellphone more than 271,000 times.

And that’s just for the trip there, using one possible flight path. It doesn’t even count the return flights, ground travel or other accommodations.

All told, any trip to see my beloved mountain gorillas could produce something in the neighborhood of 5 metric tons of planet-damaging emissions.

Damn, that’s a lot.

With climate change threatening just about everything on Earth — including mountain gorillas — does it make any sense for me to do something that would produce so much atmospheric damage, and something that could contributing to damning the very species I want to see?

We all know that ecotourism, done right, can do a lot of good. This may actually be a fair example of that. In order to see mountain gorillas I would have to buy special permits, and that money would, in theory, be funneled back into mountain gorilla conservation. Much of the other money I would spend on travel, tour guides and food would help support local economies, giving people a reason to support their local wildlife and habitats.

On top of that, as a journalist I would certainly write about my trip, hopefully inspiring others to understand the threats these animals face and the need to protect them.

But is that enough?

I know others have done it. A journalist colleague flew to China last year to see and write about giant pandas. I recently spoke to a professional conservationist who took some vacation time to fly to Asia to see snow leopards. Another friend regularly flies to remote parts of the world for important environmental journalism work.

So why can’t I do the same?

The thing is, I also know people who are not flying for the very same reasons that worry me. One of them is climate scientist Peter Kalmus, who runs a website called No Fly Climate Sci, where he and other researchers, academics and activists pledge not to fly, or to fly as little as possible, and to meet their professional commitments with less emission-heavy methods.

I reached out to Kalmus about my conundrum.

“That’s a tough one,” he told me. “It’s probably no surprise that I can’t answer for you. Personally, however, I would not fly there. I know too much about the damage that burning fossil fuel does.”

And that brings to me to my decision. Right now, I just can’t see myself making my longed-for journey. I’m not saying others’ choices to fly to these remote locations are wrong, but personally I can’t balance out the costs and benefits for myself (or even for my readers). I know we’re at a place in time where every single action we can take to reduce emissions on a personal and societal level is absolutely necessary. I already fly a few times a year for work, so adding a massive, continent-hopping journey like this would just feel wrong.

And so I defer my dream to see mountain gorillas. And beyond that, my other dream to see orangutans in Borneo. And the next dream to see rhinos in South Africa. And the next fantasies after that.

Perhaps someone can talk me back into it. They could argue that I’d use the opportunity to tell stories about conservation. Maybe they could offer information on techniques to offset the emissions from my trip, although Kalmus tells me he feels those exist more to make people feel good than to actually compensate for anything. Or they could encourage me to find out exactly how the money I would spend would directly benefit mountain gorillas and the species around them — messages and details I could convey to my readers.

Or maybe I could just take some of the money I would have spent on that trip and donate it to a nonprofit dedicated to mountain gorilla preservation — something that would help to keep these incredible species going for as long as possible.

That feels like a better dream after all, at least for now.

But damn it, I still want to see mountain gorillas.