More Suzuki excerpts

Since much of my week required that I travel by transit more than usual, I've continued to read the David Suzuki Reader. It was published in 2003 so keep this in mind when you read the excerpt from "Global Warming" and think about recent disasters like New Orleans. He does talk about New Orleans and Louisiana's astonishing loss of marsh and farm lands due to flooding from rising sea levels, which sadly makes the recent disaster seem inevitable.

Of course if you're sick of reading my Suzuki excerpts then you may just want to skip my blog today and on other Suzuki related days.

"Later that year, I stayed in the traditional Kaiapo Indian village of Aucre, deep in the Amazon rain forest. Each time I asked a Kaiapo about a plant or animal, he or she identified it by name and told an anecdote about it. Kaiapo knowledge of forest flora and fauna is by no means complete, but it has enabled the people to survive in harmony with the forest biodiversity. Scince, in contrast, allows us to extract great detail by sacrificing that sense of nature's vast breadth and immeasurable complexity. In the Monteverde Cloud Forest, one is overwhelmed by the immensity of our ignorance, a sense of humility about our abilities, and a reverence for nature, which put our sense of achievement into perspective."

- from "How Little we Know" in the David Suzuki Reader.

"The most predictable consequence of warming is the effect on the oceans. When water warms, it expands. When a mass of water as large as an ocean heats up even a bit, sea levels rise. As a result, ocean currents are change, marine ecosystems altered, and plankton populations affected. Warmer oceans will increase the intensity of tides, storms, erosion, salt water intrusion in aquifers, and corrosion of underground subways and pipes. A sea level rise of a few centimeters will greatly affect human societies.
(...)Although sea level rise is occurring with astonishing speed in geological terms, it is invisible to most people. In spite of our capacity to plan ahead to avoid danger, we don't react to incremental change, only to major disasters like hurricanes or floods."

-from "Global Warming" in the David Suzuki Reader.

Until next time...