“Our Planet” is worth your viewing time

“Our Planet” is worth your viewing time

I never thought clean air and water would become such a political issue.

Of course, I never thought clean air and water would make for such compelling television.

I’ve known for some time now, as most reasonable people have, that our planet has a very fragile balance, that every living thing, from the simplest micro-organism to the most complex life form, is an integral factor in that balance. I truly believe in the principles of chaos, which explain how a butterfly that flaps its wings in New Mexico can cause a hurricane in China. The mathematical equations bear out the fact that if that butterfly flaps its wings in just the right point in space and time, it will generate that hurricane. It may take a very long time, but evidence supports chaos theory, which proves that chaos is the science of surprises, of things that are nonlinear and unpredictable. It’s a science that explains how bizarre occurrences in not only nature but our social and economic systems are really not so bizarre after all, instead being the aftereffect of seemingly random or careless actions.

My wife Cara and I have just finished binge-watching season one of a series on Netflix called “Our Planet,” an exquisite documentary series on climate change and our environment. Put together by the makers of the acclaimed “Planet Earth” in collaboration with the World Wildlife Fund, it is powerful in content while simultaneously appealing to our visceral and intellectual senses. The series was released on Netflix April 5, and more than 25 million households have watched it thus far.

It took a crew of 600 four years and visits to 50 countries — from our polar regions to South America, from the peaks of distant mountains to the deepest depths of our seas, from California to the Serengeti — to put this masterpiece together.

We learn that not only are we losing species at an alarming rate, we learn what the loss of those species results in, from dwindling fisheries to our food production.

It doesn’t just mourn the loss of some of God’s creatures, it explains how our ignorance has sped that process.

Here on the Baja, where we have the magnificence of the Sea of Cortes laid out to the east, we have seen how the exploitation of fisheries has changed and challenged our ecosystem. We are currently watching the collapse of a little sea creature called the vaquita, of which there are less than a dozen in all the world. The futile attempt to save them failed.

Jacques Cousteau nicknamed it the “the world’s aquarium” because of the thousand species of fish, thousands of invertebrates, and variety of sea lions, dolphins, and whales that we call neighbors.

It’s changing drastically.

Some of this change comes from the biology of the region, including irregularities with the flow from the Colorado River that have changed the saline content in some vital areas.

But most of it has come from overfishing, poaching, neglect, and arrogance. Waste has been flushed into the waters, and the bottom is piled high with discarded fishing nets, upsetting the gentle balance.

It’s all a part of the burgeoning climate change, or, as it is also known, global warming.

Now, the ill-informed, or those with a particular political agenda, will argue vehemently about how planet Earth is ever-evolving and has undergone a number of climate cycles over the millennia.

That is true.

But those are natural occurrences provoked by nature, which has a way of healing itself whenever possible, not the careless acts of mankind.

They are the planet’s natural cycles, and nothing we can do will prevent them.

The most threatening damage comes from the anthropogenic activities, human activities that pollute, destroy, or alter our environment. They hasten the abnormal variations to our climate, a fact lost on the louts and loudmouths who reject science.

I wish every single one of them would be open minded or curious enough to watch this series and learn how our glaciers are melting away, how our forests are disappearing, how our waters are being polluted and killing the marine life they hold.

I wish they would watch to see how the most insignificant-looking of insects can have such a strong impact on the food we eat.

I wish they would understand that although we are losing species at an alarming rate, that is not a part of the natural world, that the loss of rhinos and hippos or tiny sea creatures or animals of prey impact the grasslands, the forests, the waters that serve us and the oxygenation of the planet.

It might help them learn that we are in furious need of alternative fuels and that they should throw their muscle behind the elimination of coal and nuclear and to development of solar and wind power instead of digging their heels into shaky political ground.

It might help them understand that it’s the trash we throw away, the plastics that are so harmful even if we recycle, the chemicals in our solvents, cleaners; the exhaust from our automobiles; the foods we waste that threaten our existence.

“Our Planet” takes you to some places on Earth that are rarely seen, shows us the loving hand of nature and the harsh realities of life in the wild. It’s tenuous and we forget that.

We live cushy lives in nice, safe homes, eating food we do not have to hunt and gather and taking for granted that when we turn on the tap, our water will be clean.

But even at the human level, that isn’t always the way it goes with many living in abject poverty with meager shelter, food, and water. Starvation and illness are all too common in our world, and much of it comes from planetary disturbances.

In the wild, those disturbances mean the thing: a polar bear living and feeding from arctic ice that is rapidly disappearing.

In the wild, that means that families of elephants that have roamed hundreds of miles to a familiar food and watering spot may perish because global warming has altered the climate, which can also can change the rain cycles across the breadbasket of the United States.

In the wild, that means as the bees continue to disappear at high rates, we risk it all because of their part in carrying pollen during the Earth’s growing seasons.

We have been given a heavy responsibility as the Earth’s caretakers, and we have failed miserably.

We have trashed the planet, which means we have accelerated the pace of our own demise.

Mankind is unkind, and one of its cruelest acts is that it has lost respect for the place it calls home.

This is not only about us, it is about those who will follow.

So it is imperative that we understand, as Native American wisdom reminds us, “We do not inherit the Earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children.”

The viewpoints expressed above are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of The Independent.

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