Read Online The Next Species: The Future of Evolution in the Aftermath of Man by Michael Tennesen - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Michael Tennesen
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protected area of tallgrass prairie in North America. Tallgrass prairies once spread throughout the Midwest, supporting enormous buffalo herds, and though there are still buffalo here, their numbers are small. Private ranches surround the preserve, and land managers at these ranches find that if they don’t burn grassland areas every year, woody vegetation forms canopies, which makes them immune to future fires.
Woody vegetation is also invading normally bald mountaintop environments in New Mexico as well. Here, bighorn sheep typically gather because they can see mountain lions approaching and escape. But as woody vegetation moves into these formerly bald areas, it allows mountain lions some cover from which to attack, wreaking havoc on bighorn populations.
“Climate change, increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide, and on-the-ground changes like fire suppression and cattle grazing should speed the global transition to woody species,” says Jackson. “It’s not just a problem in Texas, but in South America, Africa, and Asia as well.”
Climate change, its causes and effects, is another issue Jackson is going underground to work out. He is currently looking at problems with natural gas, which was once thought to be an ideal solution for some of our greenhouse problems, since it burns cleaner. It’s certainly a cleaner fuel than coal or oil, but Jackson is concerned with leaks that occur in transport. Belowground fracking can result in leakage into groundwater on the extraction side and old pipes can sprout leaks into urban soils on the delivery side.
Jackson and the Boston University professor Nathan Phillips found natural gas (methane) escaping from more than 3,300leaks in Boston’s underground pipelines, where there is a record of natural gas blowing up homes, regularly sending manhole covers into the sky, and killing trees.
Still, despite all the importance given to greenhouse gases, Jackson thinks the spread of invasive species across the globe is more permanent and perhaps a more serious threat to our environment. We can reverse climate change in one thousand to ten thousand years, but the plague of invasives and the mixing of species worldwide is not one weare likely to recover from.
4
EVOLVING OUR WAY TOWARD ANOTHER SPECIES
T HE AUTHOR OF MOST of our conflicts with nature is our own species. But it wasn’t always that way. For an idea of how we once coexisted with the land and its animals, we visited Olduvai Gorge, part of the African Rift Valley near the Tanzanian border with Kenya. The gorge is a place where many have come to understandhow man developed intelligence, learned to talk, and eventually spread over the world, his numbers exploding in recent years. The idea of a future species of man seems fanciful to many now, but in or near Olduvai there is evidence of three other species of hominids distinct from Homo sapiens : Paranthropus boisei, Homo habilis , and Homo erectus . Their existence shows not only how we got here but how a world of one hominid may not be that natural after all.
A giant plume of magma pushes the land upward, lifting Olduvai Gorge to an elevation of four thousand feet. Even though it is close to the equator, the weather here is mild. In late June, it ranges from daytime highs in the seventies to nighttime lows in the fifties and sixties, which is typical even into the dry season.
The morning after my arrival the sun broke over low shrubs, thorny trees, and savanna grasslands that cover the dry landscape.Most of the vegetation here evolved with large animals and early man, and brandished nasty spikes or spines to discourage plant eaters. I was with a group of anthropologists, geologists, and paleontologists at a field camp hosted by the University of California, Berkeley. I emerged from my Quonset hut in the former camp of the notable anthropologists Louis and Mary Leakey, among the many scientists who have studied here.
There were field camps from various international
Woody vegetation is also invading normally bald mountaintop environments in New Mexico as well. Here, bighorn sheep typically gather because they can see mountain lions approaching and escape. But as woody vegetation moves into these formerly bald areas, it allows mountain lions some cover from which to attack, wreaking havoc on bighorn populations.
“Climate change, increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide, and on-the-ground changes like fire suppression and cattle grazing should speed the global transition to woody species,” says Jackson. “It’s not just a problem in Texas, but in South America, Africa, and Asia as well.”
Climate change, its causes and effects, is another issue Jackson is going underground to work out. He is currently looking at problems with natural gas, which was once thought to be an ideal solution for some of our greenhouse problems, since it burns cleaner. It’s certainly a cleaner fuel than coal or oil, but Jackson is concerned with leaks that occur in transport. Belowground fracking can result in leakage into groundwater on the extraction side and old pipes can sprout leaks into urban soils on the delivery side.
Jackson and the Boston University professor Nathan Phillips found natural gas (methane) escaping from more than 3,300leaks in Boston’s underground pipelines, where there is a record of natural gas blowing up homes, regularly sending manhole covers into the sky, and killing trees.
Still, despite all the importance given to greenhouse gases, Jackson thinks the spread of invasive species across the globe is more permanent and perhaps a more serious threat to our environment. We can reverse climate change in one thousand to ten thousand years, but the plague of invasives and the mixing of species worldwide is not one weare likely to recover from.
4
EVOLVING OUR WAY TOWARD ANOTHER SPECIES
T HE AUTHOR OF MOST of our conflicts with nature is our own species. But it wasn’t always that way. For an idea of how we once coexisted with the land and its animals, we visited Olduvai Gorge, part of the African Rift Valley near the Tanzanian border with Kenya. The gorge is a place where many have come to understandhow man developed intelligence, learned to talk, and eventually spread over the world, his numbers exploding in recent years. The idea of a future species of man seems fanciful to many now, but in or near Olduvai there is evidence of three other species of hominids distinct from Homo sapiens : Paranthropus boisei, Homo habilis , and Homo erectus . Their existence shows not only how we got here but how a world of one hominid may not be that natural after all.
A giant plume of magma pushes the land upward, lifting Olduvai Gorge to an elevation of four thousand feet. Even though it is close to the equator, the weather here is mild. In late June, it ranges from daytime highs in the seventies to nighttime lows in the fifties and sixties, which is typical even into the dry season.
The morning after my arrival the sun broke over low shrubs, thorny trees, and savanna grasslands that cover the dry landscape.Most of the vegetation here evolved with large animals and early man, and brandished nasty spikes or spines to discourage plant eaters. I was with a group of anthropologists, geologists, and paleontologists at a field camp hosted by the University of California, Berkeley. I emerged from my Quonset hut in the former camp of the notable anthropologists Louis and Mary Leakey, among the many scientists who have studied here.
There were field camps from various international
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