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the birds will fly to exhaustion, looking for reasonable habitat to nest in, or in confusion about where they are, and what the season is. So it could be exhaustion. Global warming itself is radically altering temperatures in the ocean, air and land, and changing the weather. Birds are extremely sensitive to weather and its patterns. Weather triggers their migrations. Birds may navigate by the stars (I'm trying to remember the latest studies--also, they have an inner compass, tuned to the poles), and if they thus migrate along the same paths, and return to the same nesting sites--guided by the stars, or the poles--but conditions are radically altered--it's too cold, or too hot, or food sources ripen too late or too early, they are stranded, and a flock of them might take off in confusion, get lost and fall out of the sky from hunger, stress and exhaustion. Add to this the wanton destruction of habitat by our global corporate predators--the destroyers of forests, the polluters, the strip-miners, the real estate developers--and you greatly increase the amount of birds that, essentially, can't find "home."
Alarming prediction: The World Wildlife Fund gives us 50 years to the death of the planet--at present levels of consumption, deforestation and pollution. These birds falling out of the sky could well be the "canaries in the coal mine," telling us of extreme disruptions in earth's atmosphere and biosphere. We have gravely disturbed the "web of life" on planet earth with our last hundred years of evolution into an industrial society. Scientists have been warning of this for some time--chronicling the decline of biodiversity (loss of whole species), polluted water and other impacts. But global warming may be the capper--the final blow that causes mass dieoffs. When you disrupt nature to this degree, and this quickly, nature has no time to recover; species have no time to adapt; and the resources that WE depend on--farm lands, ocean fisheries, clean water, breathable air--are intimately connected to the elements of "wild" nature that are suffering major impacts. For instance, trees hold the CO2 that we are pouring into the atmosphere from fossil fuels. When we cut them down, we not only cause flooding and other serious impacts, we reduce the ability of the air to cleanse itself. And the weather disruption will then add drought to the farmer's woes. One year, catastrophic floods; the next year, severe drought. Two seasons of crops lost. Or those five thousand birds carry seeds that grow plants that may feed entirely different species that may be the birds that control insects on farm land. Add pests to the farmer's troubles. It is truly a "web of life" involving intricacies that we barely understand--microbial life, fungi, seeds, millions of different plants and animals, all interacting and interdependent. Trash one filament of the web, and it ripples throughout. Trash many filaments--as we are doing--and you may pull down the entire web.
I've seen these considerations regarding the delicate balance in forest ecosystems utterly disregarded in the state of California, as it has permitted large corporate interests to destroy the last of the redwood forests--and California is considered a progressive state supposedly with "tough" environmental laws. Big logging corporations have literally ripped the web of life in redwood forests to pieces, and now, one of the main species in these forests--the oak trees--are suffering something called "sudden oak death syndrome," caused by some sort of fungi that can be tracked around by loggers' boots and the tires of logging vehicles. The tree just suddenly dies--and this is occurring massively. It is a major dieoff. But why did it happen? Why are trees that have thrived in redwood forests and nearby woodlands and meadows for thousands of years suddenly subject to this disease? We allow radical alteration of these ecosystems--and then wonder why disease strikes? But common sense never enters into global corporate policy. They have the money, the power, the political clout, to defy both science and common sense, and all attempts to regulate them. They say forests are a "renewable" resource. But obviously they are not. We are killing networks of life and are killing off many species, that perform functions that we have almost no knowledge of. If it were a few trees, that would be one thing. But corporate loggers cut down acres and acres and acres of trees. They kill all habitat within those acres--microbes, fungi, mice, spiders, beetles, snakes, grasses, herbs, as well as the larger more dramatic species like birds--with vast clear-cuts, then they go in and poison the place with herbicides to kill the non-commercial trees and "weeds." Then they plant the commercial species (redwoods, Doug fir), but the forest--or should I say, tree farm--that grows up barely resembles the forest that was there, that may have been growing and thriving in that network of life for 500 up to a 2,000 years. None of this matters to the corporate loggers or to the politicians in Sacramento, who only see this year's or next years dollars. They see the money value of a particular species and ignore all the rest. And, not incidentally, the trees that they grow up in these tree farms are significantly inferior to old growth trees--they make weak, pulpy and disease-prone wood; they grow too fast; builders call it "yellow redwood"--good for fence posts or pulp--not the gorgeous, fine-grained redwood of old, which was impervious to disease, insects and fire.
There is virtually no wood that you can buy any more whose harvesting is not destroying the planet. The so-called "green forestry" of the Forest Stewardship Council, for instance, is total B.S. They clear-cut, they use poisons--on a large scale. They merely put a "green label" on typical corporate practices on the promise of reform in the future. It's a scam, now tied to the World Bank and the exploitation of third world countries.
This catastrophic decline in the quality of wood is harbinger of an even more serious decline in the quality of the network of life that sustains us all. We see this decline throughout the planet, in many species and ecosystems, and in many manifestations--and it is all caused by us, and our insatiable appetite for profit and for growth--or rather, mostly by the insatiable greed of the few. A whole new economy COULD BE created for truly "green" products--and truly fair trade--and many people are working on this, but the current global corporate predators, with their money and political clout, block reform and large-scale change. It all comes back to that, and to my mantra--election reform, starting with throwing these Bushite electronic voting corporations out of our election system. They are inflicting us with horrible leaders, and are preventing a change of course.
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