Maybe it's global warming, maybe it's just the zeitgeist. Whatever the reason, it seems like apocalyptic books and themes are in the air (and no, I'm not talking about Going Rogue!). I just finished reading margaret Atwood's The Year of the Flood, a grim story of people and events mostly in the years leading up to a deliberately released plague that destroys human society (and most of the humans, too)
Another once upon an Apocalypse-novel is Cormac McCarthy's The Road, which is headed for my re-read list. And there's a few more recent novels dealing with humans surviving a societal and ecological collapse of one sort or another.
One thing all these books make clear is that environmental concern is not truly about saving the planet, or at least clear-eyed environmentalism isn't. The planet will do just fine. Been here 4 billion years and counting. Seen the Pterodactyls come and go. Great Extinctions? I've had two. I can take another one.
This is a mission, first and foremost, about Saving the Humans. Maintaining the planetary conditions that support human living and prosperity.
It's a point that Alun Anderson hits home in New Scientist. It's one thing to say goodbye to the polar bears, but we'd better be thinking about our own rear ends.
While things aren't nearly that bad yet here in the Puget Sound Region, the connection between environmental conservation and restoration, and the quality of life in our neighborhoods and communities, is paramount. It's become widely-recognized that the health of the places where we live is inextricably tied up with the health of the environment. In acting in some enlightened self-interest, trying to make our habitat better, we might just make a better, more sustainable world.