When a fearsome storm is bearing down on a great ship - the first winds shuddering in the sails, the first waves burying the bowsprit, sullen clouds obscuring the horizon - the captain shouts the order. "All hands on deck." Every sailor knows what that means. Each person on board, no matter their rank or watch, has an absolute duty to rush from their gambling tables or bunks to their stations, to do whatever has to be done to save the ship.
Concerned ecologists recently made the case for the ecological urgency of action to save the world’s terrestrial megafauna (Ripple et al. 2016). These large mammals, desperately endangered by human depredation and habitat destruction, are critical to the functioning of the world’s ecosystems, and thus critical to human survival. To the extent that we value human survival, then, we ought to value the survival of the great beasts.
I’ve just returned from Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter, Minnesota.
Gustavus is a pretty campus in the rain, with blue and yellow banners flapping to celebrate their MAYDAY! Symposium on divestment from fossil fuels.