We are making the Earth uninhabitable for ourselves and those that live most like us, but we are not making the Earth uninhabitable for itself.
Michigan really does feel like home. Some sense of longing in me is quenched by the Lake, the rivers, and the leaves just turning red. The dune grasses on the sides of the highway billow through my bones. I see the image of a Sandhill crane moving through them. I hear the song that was on the radio when my father and I pulled over to watch them years ago. I feel the anticipation of a camping trip coursing through my veins. Memories on top of memories on top of the moment. Transposition happens easily in familiar places.
Sand dunes blanket the sides of the highway for a while after the Mackinac bridge. I gaze onto them, pondering, what a beautiful place to rest. There is no sand like Great Lakes sand. The way it finds itself inland, piling up far from the shore. The dunes here drift for miles, wisping from bed to bed. My friend from the coast says it’s softer than ocean sand. The grains are rounder, with no salt to scour them.
I have a deeper appreciation for sand now. In studying to become a geologist, I have learned that sand is not just sand, but a grain size, a depositional environment, and a sediment. This sand holds history in its grains. The geology of Michigan is a language I have begun to learn. I drive past outcrops and stare, admiring the igneous petrology of the region. The Upper Peninsula has the oldest rocks in Michigan: early Archean igneous and metamorphic formations: schist, slate, quartzite, basalt. Banded iron formations at Jasper Knob. Peridotite at Black Rocks. Their histories speak to me, and I am beginning to understand them. It is a beautiful conversation between past and present.
The greatest extinction of all time was not the extinction of the dinosaurs. When they went extinct, approximately 75 percent of life on Earth disappeared. We care about this extinction because we care about dinosaurs (thank you, Jurassic Park), and because we are captivated by catastrophe. An asteroid impact is a glorious and dignified way to go. It satisfies our need for instant gratification and simplicity, and sparkles with a sense of divine intervention. What better way to die than obliteration via hurtling space object? We mourn for the dinosaurs, with their awe-inspiring size and endearing gaits, but we also prefer them dead. The extinction of the dinosaurs is what paved the way for us, and our beloved bears, foxes, horses, and cats, to emerge. We are familiar with this extinction so we assume it must have been the greatest, but it was a relatively moderate mass extinction in terms of species lost.
The real calamity, the worst mass extinction of all time, was at the end of the Permian period. 250 million years ago, approximately 90 percent to 95 percent of all living species went extinct, including nearly all marine invertebrates and most terrestrial life. This was a mass extinction, like most, that didn’t happen on a Monday. The total length is unclear, some suggest one hundred thousand years, others, a few million. Most species died out towards the beginning of those windows, but the ongoing effects of the crisis continuously reduced the number of species for thousands, if not millions, of years.
The Permian extinction was likely caused by a cascade of climatic changes incited by the Siberian Traps volcanic eruptions, which continued for two million years and produced one million cubic miles of lava. These continuous, large-scale eruptions released planet-warming volcanic gases, ignited coal deposits from the Pennsylvanian period and sparked massive forest fires. The high levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere created oxygen-depleted oceans that suffocated marine life. Methane-producing organisms rose to prominence and disrupted the carbon cycle, increasing global temperatures and worsening ocean acidification. The Permian extinction was caused by prolonged environmental devastation that led to rapid climate change. Humans are not the first species to stand on the precipice of Earth as it tips closer and closer to uninhabitable extremes.
Many species suffered. The trilobites, hearty arthropods that survived in the oceans for 270 million years, succumbed to the Permian extinction. Sharks, terrestrial reptiles, and amphibians suffered great declines in population. Many insect groups, the most common survivors of mass extinctions, shrank. Even still, some species survived. Ancient land plants took a relatively small hit. Therapsids and archosaurs survived. After the Permian came the Triassic and Jurassic: out of the wreckage walked the reptiles.
It took about 50 million years for the ecosystem to recover from the great Permian extinction. Fifty million years seems like an incomprehensibly long period of time, but geologic time exists in a different dimension than human time. Fifty million years in geologic time is equivalent to one year of a 90-year-long human lifespan. It may not have been the same life that recovered, some species were eradicated forever, but life as we imagine it returned. The Earth once again became hospitable for great biodiversity. The first dinosaurs, small mammals, and colonial corals emerged. Eden was restored.
For all my scientific reasoning and analytical thinking, there are equal amounts of wonderment and faith.
I’m sitting in the pews at my friend’s funeral, thinking about how people aren’t supposed to die so young, while the pastor talks of expansive beauty. He says when he sees the ocean, he scoffs at people who see such natural wonders and think “science” instead of “God.” I imagine myself standing in front of Lake Michigan, on the patch of coast where I used to camp with my father. I see my grief tumble down a sand dune before floating away into the deep blue water. I find myself agreeing with the pastor’s inclinations.
I am both a scoffer and a scientist. I work in a scientific research lab governed by procedure and data collection, yet I am inclined towards the spiritual and miraculous. I marvel at the sight of large bodies of water. I feel my body ignite with awe and admiration when faced with mountain ranges. I would be brought to my knees in worship at the base of an active volcano. For all my scientific reasoning and analytical thinking, there are equal amounts of wonderment and faith.
Science cannot describe the wonders of the world because it does not have the language to. Science speaks in logic and reasoning, not in the language of the soul. Science cannot prove why, upon seeing a body of water with no other side, we feel gratitude blossom in our chests. Science works to explain the Earth, its processes, cycles, and changes; it tells one story of everything. But explaining how something happens is not the same as explaining why something is. Science explains the Earth, but it did not create it, and that is the intangibility from which spirituality and religion grow.
I think scientists and pastors are seeking the same thing: a sense of peace in what is known and unknown. Science is a method for understanding, which can be a means for connection, for feeling whole in the absence of complete knowledge. So is religion. Through studying natural science, I have come to love the Earth on a deeper level, on the level of recognition. I feel more spiritually connected to the Earth because I know it better now. I understand the how, which has hinted at the why.
At the funeral, I think about the body in the casket. How serene it looks encased in oak. We put significant effort into making the dead appear peaceful. In many ways, I think they are. We are the unsettled ones, left behind to face our own mortality, our own unknowns. I fear death all the same, but I do enjoy some comforts of the religious. I have some version of faith. I have faith that the Earth will not collapse beneath my feet. I have faith that the universe will continue on without me. I find comfort in knowing where my afterlife will be. When I die, I will not be going up into heaven, but back down into the Earth. Sediment to sediment.
I tell my friends we are currently living in an ice age and they do not believe me. I pull up a graph showing the peaks—the post-Permian and Eocene climate maximums, both unbelievably hotter than it is now. Our climate, in the grand scheme of natural history, is mild. What we are heading towards, a few degrees Celsius in temperature increase, it not inherently catastrophic. The problem has always been the rate of change. The problem is not the temperature itself, or the rising seas, or the melting glaciers. The problem is that change is happening on the scale of human lives. Between my mother’s childhood and mine, global temperatures have risen.
People move on the scale of their lives, decades. The Earth changes naturally on the scale of millions, billions of years. We move and we work and we produce, all fast enough to catch up, to do all the things we want to do before our time runs out. We want to build the biggest bridges, create the most world-changing inventions, and amass enough wealth to live comfortably in this world we have created where nothing is free.
We measure our lives in terms of accolades, possessions, and productions. We feel the need, deep within our soul, to leave our mark. To ensure our lives have meaning. We cannot both tread lightly and feel fulfilled when fulfillment has been imposed upon us as something we must earn. We live fast. We live for decades. Some of us die young. We live, and we die, and in a few thousand years of human society we have created a way of living that requires the exploitation of Earth’s resources in such a way we are facing our own extinction.
But, the Earth has a remarkable capacity for remaining. It has survived many phases of inhospitality. In the Hadean, the Earth was engulfed by magma oceans, the heat from which is still contained in Earth’s core. During several ice ages, the Earth existed as “Snowball Earth,” almost entirely blanketed by snow and ice. Throughout all of Earth’s history, tectonic plates have collided with each other and torn apart, creating mountains and oceans, inciting earthquakes and tsunamis. The Earth can be a violent body.
I like to imagine though, that these are just Earth’s growth spurts, its emotions, its experimentation with being a transformable being. What we see as destruction the Earth experiences as change. The Earth is playful on cataclysmic magnitudes. The Earth does not care whether its changes make “life”, as we consider it, possible. The Earth is alive itself, an autonomous planet not dependent on whether or not we are here to acknowledge it.
We think we are powerful, with our nuclear weapons and oil rigs and excavators. We imagine ourselves a great destructive force, wreaking havoc on this planet and all of its inhabitants. And in many respects, we are. Ask the squirrel smeared across the road. Ask your neighbor who had a heat stroke because summer heat waves are increasingly common and asphalt is convective. Ask the cows lined up at the factory farm, awaiting mass slaughter. Humans are capable of cruelty, violence, and technologically-assisted negligence, but we are not capable of killing the planet.
The Earth has never buckled under the destruction of a single species. The Earth has never been the victim of extinction, and it will not start with us. It is simpler, more cinematic, to imagine that when we humans go extinct, the Earth will combust alongside us, just another body left in our wake. It is easier to say we are killing the planet than admit we are killing ourselves. But the Earth is much stronger than that. We will likely pass unaccompanied, with a final breath rather than planet-wide devastation.
And when we do go, there is so much that will survive. What will be left is the living, and the beings we consider not capable of dying: the rocks, the water, the soil, which is itself, rock and water and decaying organic matter. Beetles have been around for 330 million years, surviving more than one mass extinction. They will be here, in their 331st millionth year, even if we are not. Terrestrial plants are remarkably adaptable and diverse, they will prevail. The rocks that have survived billions of years will not melt under the heat of our global warming. Many of the things we love may die, but the Earth itself will not. We are making the Earth uninhabitable for ourselves and those that live most like us, but we are not making the Earth uninhabitable for itself.
I am humbled by the rocks as much as I am uplifted by them. They feel neither urgency nor acceptance, just existence.
I do worry. I worry about the fish populations in the river my dad and I used to kayak down. I worry that my favorite hiking trails might not lead anywhere in 20 years. I worry about the water. I worry that the Great Lakes I grew up playing in might someday be polluted and poisonous. I worry about cancer, and how zip code can be the most significant indicator of health outcomes. I worry about landfills. I worry about pipelines. I worry that the Ziploc bag I put my peanut butter and jelly sandwich in might someday suffocate a sea turtle. I worry about ants and their stomp-able kingdoms. I worry that my boots might transport invasive species. I worry about the people and creatures displaced by drought. I worry about roadkill. I worry about losing winter. But I do not worry about the Earth. I do not believe us capable of killing the planet.
My friends and I are sitting on a porch in New Hampshire, talking about where we see ourselves living in the next ten years, when we might have enough money to buy a small plot of land somewhere and build a house. We all dream of simple lives. Building a home in the woods, growing our own food, living in time with the wilderness. As young people, we consider climate, mostly, and we are the lucky ones, with enough means and opportunity to choose, to pick the most habitable place.
“All I’m saying is, you can come down and shoot me if I ever move to Florida,” Alex says. He does not wish to live underwater.
Emma says she wants more snow; Michigan, where we both grew up, has become less reliable as a winter wonderland. She and I both reminisce on childhood memories of lake-effect dropping two feet of snow overnight, and historic blizzards and ice storms that closed schools for weeks at a time. Winters that used to sparkle with snow cover seem mostly barren now, engulfed by a pervasive grayness. All Reuben says is that he doesn’t want to live near an active volcano. I am hesitant to live anywhere that experiences yearly hurricanes, earthquakes, or forest fires, which is now most of the United States. I also want to live near water, for practical and intangible reasons. I was raised in a peninsular state, I feel most at home surrounded by water.
I’m lying on the shoreline of Lake Superior, where rocks blanket the coast instead of sand. I let my body relax into the cold and damp early-May pebbles. I close my eyes and breathe, calming myself until it feels like I am part of the Lake, part of the landscape. I feel welcomed; a sense of kinship washes over me as my body sinks deeper into the Earth. I feel as though I too, were carried here by glaciers.
I am 21 years old, lying on rocks that are a billion years old. The scope of geologic time swallows any sense of self-importance. I am humbled by the rocks as much as I am uplifted by them. They feel neither urgency nor acceptance, just existence.
This is where I find peace amidst the peril, comfort in the wake of self-destruction. This is where I learn to see what will remain, instead of just what will be lost. This is where the Earth shows me how it will prevail. Because I know this place did not always look like this. This water was once ice, these pebbles have been weathered, some animals that used to roam here no longer do. Everything around me exists in its own moment, for its own time. And everything around me will change, inevitably, some things faster than we’d like. But for now, I bask in this landscape of solace. I let myself be held by the promise that some things really will survive. I relax into the knowledge that this Earth, no matter how far we push it out of orbit, will always return to its equilibrium.
Photo of Lake Superior shore by John McCormick, courtesy Shutterstock.
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- Source: https://www.terrain.org/2024/nonfiction/why-i-do-not-worry-about-the-earth/