måndag, augusti 22, 2005

jorden

Nicole Krauss The History of Love råkar i ett sidospår påminna om att jorden håller på att gå under:

7. IF THINGS GO ON LIKE THIS
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A few months back, the night before his fifteenth birthday, I'd decided to make Misha a card with a butterfly on it. I went online for a picture of a Russian butterfly, but instead I found an article reporting that most butterfly species had declined in numbers over the last two decades, and that their extinction rate was about 10,000 times higher than it should be. It also said that an average of seventy-four species of insects, plants, and animals become extinct every day. Based on these and other rightening statistics, the article reported, scientists believe that we are in the midst of the sixth mass extinction in the history of life on earth. Almost a quarter of the world's mammals face extiction within thirty years. One out of eight species of birds will soon be extinct. Ninety percent of the world's largest fish have disappeared in the last half century.

I did a search on mass extinctions.

The last mass extinction happened about 65 million years ago, when an asteroid probably collided with our planet, killing all the dinosaurs and about half of the marine animals. Before that was the Triassic extiction (also caused by an asteroid, or possibly volcanoes), which wiped out up to ninety-five percent of the species , and before that was the Late Devonian extinction. The current mass extinction will be the quickest in earth's 4.5-billion-year history and, unlike those other extincions, isn't caused by natural events, but by the ignorance of human beings. If things go on like this, half of all species on earth will be gone in a hundered years.



Jag kom då att tänka på två trädgårdsböcker

Jordens täppor. En bok som Karolinas kolonilottsmamma har godkänt. Lena Israelsson har åkt runt i världen och besökt odlingslotter och beskriver smarta lösningar för grönsaksodling.

Pests, Diseases and Disorders of Garden Plants. Fläckar, krulliga blad och bulliga bomullsbon reds ut i den här smart uppbyggda boken, där man börjar med att säga vilken växt man oroar sig för, sen kommer det en lista med kända problem för just den växten, där letar man sig ner till rätt problemformulering, kollar kanske av mot en plansch och läser sen vad problemet orsakas av, och slutligen vad man ska göra.

Sen läste jag en artikel som jag tyckte om i Guardian Review där Robert Macfarlane har svarat sina läsare på deras respons på en tidigare artikel om naturböcker. Artikeln handlar om att man inte kan förstå mer än kanske ett fält på ett helt liv och att om en naturbok handlar om en grästuva så vinner den över den bok som heter Antarktis.

Han berättar att folk skickat in hundratals rekommendationer för ett bibliotek av såna naturböcker:

These recommendations have come in many forms. Some people sent parts of their place: in one envelope a feather, and a hoop of dried grass, combed from a Carmarthenshire field; in another, a folding of a bark-rubbing from a Strontian oak-tree. Favourite passages of writing were transcribed, or photocopied. Books and images were sent. All the letters were passionate, and very generous-spirited.


Robert Macfarlane, liksom Nicole Krauss, påminner oss om att jorden håller på att gå under.
In 2003, the first report from the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MEA) - an inquiry board consisting of 1,300 experts from 95 countries - was released. Its dark conclusion was that 60% of the ecosystem services that support life on Earth are being degraded or used unsustainably. If these trends are not reversed, the report observed, the consequences will include "the emergence of new diseases, sudden changes in water quality, creation of 'dead zones' along the coasts, the collapse of fisheries, and shifts in regional climate".

Läs hela artikeln: Where the wild things were.

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Jag kan inte sluta titta på omslaget. Dom rosa människorna rensar kyckling.

Prenumerera här.

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Mer om människan och hennes absurda förhållande till naturen: Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard av Kiran Desai. Sampath slutar gå till sitt jobb på posten och klättrar upp i ett träd.

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Appropå träd: Träd i Stockholm. Beställ den här.
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Nicole Krauss
The History of Love. 2005. W.W. Norton: ISBN 0-393-06034-9

Lena Israelsson

Jordens täppor. Wahlström & Widstrand, 2002. ISBN: 9146182837

Stefan Buczacki, Keith Harris, Brian Hargreaves

Pests, Diseases and Disorders of Garden Plants. Collins, 2005. ISBN: 0007196822

Kiran Desai

Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard. 1998. Faber and Faber: ISBN 0-571-1957-7


Träd i Stockholm. Stockholms stad, 2003. ISBN 91-631-4850-1