penguinsunited.com

September 2, 2019
Mickey Friedman
Guest Human Poster and Friend of Penguins United

Current Events. The only time in school we actually talked about what was happening in our world.

These days I can’t bear the bad news descending upon us like the worst of Berkshire fogs. Enveloping us. It’s like driving through life with limited vision. What we should really do is pull off the road but, of course, there’s a really good chance a driver behind will just plow into us.

As if kids in cages wasn’t enough. Comes the heartless slaughter of Latino/Latina shoppers in El Paso looking for a bargain at Walmart. Or ordinary folks eating out and drinking in Dayton. The abominations pile up and my brain, heart, soul is overburdened. At the same time, I lost my amigo mio, Captain Frank Tortoriello, he of the oh so many McGuidos at The Deli, the egg, bacon, and cheese sandwich with which I started my days making films on Railroad Street, then later in the day half a Johnny Fever for lunch/dinner. Life so less bright without him, our book I now have to finish without him.

All of which brings me to temporary salvation: Little Penguins. Fairy Penguins. And some good news at a time when we humans are pushing enormous numbers of other species over the cliff into extinction. A story of redemption, a living example of the humane way forward.

This is a story of the aboriginal peoples of Australia, a suburban development, and the Little Penguins. The Australians called it Phillip Island, Victoria. It sits 85 miles south of Melbourne. To the Aboriginal and Torres Island Strait Peoples, it was Millowl: “Bunurong Country and part of Victoria’s Kulin nation. Our Country is highly significant, every square inch, every rock, every leaf, every dune and every artefact … Over 2,000 generations of our people have been here before us.”

Also the home to a small breeding ground for the Little Penguins, the smallest of the world’s penguins, about thirteen inches tall.

Penguins the Australians found so cute that beginning about 1920 they’d come to watch with torchlights what they called the “penguin parade,” the arrival each day of the penguins after a busy day of fishing and swimming.

Beginning in the 1920s the area was subdivided for homes, blocks created, trees planted in the Summerland Estate. While Spencer and Alexandrina Jackson gave about 10 acres to the ‘people of Victoria’ for the protection of the Little Penguins. By 1940, there was a nine-hole course, and more land subdivided. In 1955, the Department of Fisheries and Wildlife, recognizing the impact the Summerland Estate was having on Little Penguins, established a large reserve over the penguin colony. Fences were erected and viewing stands were built by Summerland Beach.

The penguins did the best they could to survive amongst the cars, and the residents of the development and their penguin-unfriendly pets, and the occasional predator. But it wasn’t easy and their numbers declined and declined. While once they were 10 colonies, there was only one.
And the possible extinction of penguins on the island.

And here’s where the typical deeply depressing story takes a major unexpected and inspiring turn. Because the state government decided to save the penguins.

Now I know in the Age of Trump in America where environmentalism has become a burden those in power can’t afford, won’t permit, this is a story almost impossible to believe.

But here goes: in 1984, after much study and the creation of a Phillip Island Penguin Reserve Committee of Management, the Penguin Protection Plan was announced. Which included scientific research, a fox control program and the buyback of the Summerland Peninsula.

And so, in 1996, the Phillip Island Nature Parks was created by the State Government of Victoria comprising over 4,460 acres of Crown Land. Land set aside under the provisions of the Crown Land (Reserves) Act 1978 “for the conservation of areas of natural interest or beauty or of scientific, historic or archaeological interest.”  

Let me emphasize the extraordinary part of the story. A buyback of private land and homes to provide a safe space for the Little Penguins. It took many years and many millions to buy back the land. And prompted a reconciliation plan with the “Traditional Custodians of the land on which we live, work and learn, the Bunurong people.” With respect “to their Elders past and present.”

Others beside the Little Penguins benefit: “hooded plovers, short-tailed shearwaters and other international migratory bird species, and mammals such as koalas, possums, wallabies, Australian fur seals and bats.”

This year a $58 million visitor center was built for the more than a million visitors from around the world to experience the Nature Parks. And, in addition: “Our position as a renowned conservation and ecotourism destination ensures we can authentically present and celebrate Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures …”

And so I say “long live the 1,400 Little Penguins!”

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For more information:

“To Save Tiny Penguins, This Suburb Was Wiped Off the Map”
Besha Rodell, August 8, 2019, New York Times
https://nyti.ms/2yUBoAJ

Phillip Island Nature Parks
https://penguins.org.au/about/our-story/our-history/

Things are heating up – a penguin joke. James Hansen testified before Congress 20 years after his famous warning about Global Warming. Famous, at least, for penguins and polar bears.

If I told you only two Congresspeople showed up to hear one of the world’s greatest experts talk about a threat that could end human civilization as you know it would you laugh or cry? Human civilization. Some of us consider that yet another penguin joke.

After reading Hansen’s testimony, Andrew Revkin of the New York Times posted his comments beneath the following headline: “Are Big Oil and Big Coal Climate Criminals?”

[Hansen] said everything he has been saying for years: unabated warming would erode the ice sheets, flood coastal cities and drive many species into extinction.

But there was a much discussed recommendation in both his oral presentation and a written statement he prepared beforehand: that the heads of oil and coal companies who knowingly delayed action on curbing greenhouse gas emissions were committing a crime. “These CEO’s, these captains of industry,” he said in the briefing, “in my opinion, if they don’t change their tactics they’re guilty of crimes against humanity and nature.

From the penguin perspective, you humans have some odd ideas about crime. You can imprison a man or a woman for stealing money from a grocery store, but you seem to turn away from the larger crimes: destroying the Amazon forest, allowing the glaciers to melt, allowing species after species to disappear.

You are the smart ones, after all. Fire, the atom, the Space Shuttle, the iPod.

And now you seem to turn away from the obvious.

James Hansen terms it the “global cataclysm:”

He testified:

Climate can reach points such that amplifying feedbacks spur large rapid changes. Arctic sea ice is a current example. Global warming initiated sea ice melt, exposing darker ocean that
absorbs more sunlight, melting more ice. As a result, without any additional greenhouse gases, the Arctic soon will be ice-free in the summer.

More ominous tipping points loom. West Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets are vulnerable to even small additional warming. These two-mile-thick behemoths respond slowly at first, but if disintegration gets well underway it will become unstoppable. Debate among scientists is only about how much sea level would rise by a given date. In my opinion, if emissions follow a business-as-usual scenario, sea level rise of at least two meters is likely this century. Hundreds of millions of people would become refugees. No stable shoreline would be reestablished in any time frame that humanity can conceive.

Animal and plant species are already stressed by climate change. Polar and alpine
species will be pushed off the planet, if warming continues. Other species attempt to migrate, but as some are extinguished their interdependencies can cause ecosystem collapse. Mass extinctions, of more than half the species on the planet, have occurred several times when the Earth warmed as much as expected if greenhouse gases continue to increase. Biodiversity recovered, but it required hundreds of thousands of years.

A kind lady wrote to us recently kindly suggesting that we use too many words. That humans have a short attention span. That if we wanted to get our point across we needed to be more like television. What, we wondered, would that look like? How about: The End Is Near! Or maybe: “You’re Killing Us All!”

While we all think about the perfect 30 second spot, how about you think more about what Dr. Hansen has to say:

The disturbing conclusion, documented in a paper I have written with several of the world’s leading climate experts, is that the safe level of atmospheric carbon dioxide is no more than 350 ppm (parts per million) and it may be less. Carbon dioxide amount is already 385 ppm and rising about 2 ppm per year. Stunning corollary: the oft-stated goal to keep global warming less than two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) is a recipe for global disaster, not salvation.

Like his very smart carbon tax, Hansen offered some clear ideas for action:

We must move beyond fossil fuels eventually. Solution of the climate problem requires that we move to carbon-free energy promptly.

Now I imagine many of you are looking for climate criminal part. Are you ready?

Hansen continues:

Special interests have blocked transition to our renewable energy future. Instead of moving heavily into renewable energies, fossil companies choose to spread doubt about global warming, as tobacco companies discredited the smoking-cancer link. Methods are sophisticated, including funding to help shape school textbook discussions of global warming.

CEOs of fossil energy companies know what they are doing and are aware of long-term consequences of continued business as usual. In my opinion, these CEOs should be tried for high crimes against humanity and nature.

Conviction of ExxonMobil and Peabody Coal CEOs will be no consolation, if we pass on a runaway climate to our children. Humanity would be impoverished by ravages of continually shifting shorelines and intensification of regional climate extremes. Loss of countless species would leave a more desolate planet.

What is the term you humans use? Oh yeah, we penguins are interested parties. Count us among those “countless species” who can lose.

I guess the question for you how much are a bunch of polar bears or a bunch of penguins worth? And if corporate greed and your need for a carbon economy kills us, are any of you quilty?

James Hansen calls it a high crime against humanity. Polar bears would call it a high crime against polar bears. And we’d call it a high crime against penguins. All of us would call it a high crime against nature.