Post 7: Ignorance of Innocence, Cognitive Adaptation

Posted on January 24, 2026 by GarryRogers

Humans possess something no other species has: the capacity to think about our own thinking.

We can identify our biases and design systems to counteract them. We can study collapsed civilizations and extract lessons applicable today. We can model futures and change course before critical impacts. We can consciously direct cultural evolution rather than stumbling through it blindly.

This metacognitive capacity is the ultimate human adaptation. Chimpanzees solve problems but cannot design institutions to overcome their cognitive limitations. Dolphins communicate but cannot write histories documenting their mistakes. Only humans can anticipate distant futures and deliberately choose to evolve.

Cognitive adaptation means recognizing that optimism bias, temporal discounting, and shifting baselines are not character flaws but universal features of human information processing. It means building governance systems that account for these biases rather than assuming rational actors. It means cultivating ecological consciousness through direct nature experience, systems education, and intergenerational knowledge transfer.

The transformation from conqueror to citizen is no longer just an ideal. It is a survival strategy. The ultimate test of human intelligence will be our ability to live wisely on Earth.

[Read the full essay here.]

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Post 4: The Thermodynamic Reality

Posted on January 15, 2026 by GarryRogers

Industrial civilization runs on a one-time inheritance. Fossil fuels represent millions of years of accumulated sunlight, compressed and concentrated by geological processes. We are burning in centuries what took eons to form.

This is the carbon pulse, an artificial monsoon that allowed extraordinary population growth and technological development. Under its influence, we built complexity far beyond what sustainable energy flows could support. We constructed global supply chains, sprawling cities, and fragile just-in-time systems on the assumption that the rain would never stop.

But pulses end. Monsoons cease.

Energy Return on Energy Invested tells the story. Early oil wells delivered 100 barrels for every barrel invested in extraction. Modern unconventional sources fall below 10 to 1. As easily accessible reserves deplete, the surplus enabling complex civilization shrinks.

Historian Joseph Tainter showed complex societies require continuous energy surplus to maintain. When that surplus declines, complexity becomes unsustainable. The system sheds expensive structures to survive.

Physics does not negotiate. The thermodynamic correction is not a policy choice. It is the universe balancing the books.

[Read the full essay here.]

[Read the series introduction and access all nine essays here.]

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Post 3: Pathological Industrial Adolescence

Posted on January 12, 2026 by GarryRogers

The adolescent brain possesses adult capacities for reasoning and manipulation but lacks mature judgment. The adolescent believes themselves invincible, resists external constraints, and prioritizes immediate desires over long-term consequences.

Industrial civilization exhibits these same symptoms.

Omnipotence fantasies drive our faith in technological salvation. We will engineer our way out of climate change. We will replace depleted fisheries with aquaculture. We will escape Earth’s limits by colonizing Mars. The pattern is not confidence, but denial dressed as optimism.

Immediate gratification structures our economies. Quarterly earnings drive corporate decisions. Election cycles shape political priorities. The long-term becomes invisible. We extract concentrated energy accumulated over millions of years, enjoying abundance now while externalizing costs to future generations.

Rebellion against limits defines our response to ecological boundaries. We treat constraints not as laws of physics but as challenges to overcome. Soil depletion? More fertilizer. Water scarcity? Deeper wells. Climate change? Air conditioning.

The adolescent is not evil for being immature. But the adolescent must eventually grow up—or face the consequences of perpetual juvenility.

[Read the full essay here.]

[Read the series introduction and access all nine essays here.]

Post 2: The Human Paradox

Posted on January 9, 2026 by GarryRogers

Bacteria detect chemical gradients and remember previous exposures. Plants learn from experience and communicate through fungal networks. Crows fashion tools and teach solutions to other crows. Rats choose to rescue drowning companions even when food rewards are offered as alternatives.

These are not anthropomorphic projections. They represent measurable cognitive capacities distributed throughout the tree of life. The biosphere is not a collection of mindless resources surrounding islands of human intelligence. It is a vast network of thinking beings processing information at scales from molecular to planetary.

This recognition transforms how we understand human compassion toward animals. When we rescue stranded dogs or tend injured birds, we are not projecting emotions onto empty vessels. We recognize fellow participants in an ancient cognitive community. Our empathy reflects biological inheritance, not cultural overlay.

Human cognition is extraordinary—but it is an elaboration of capacities found throughout life, not a break from them. We are not the sole possessors of mind. We are participants in something far larger.

[Read the full essay here.]

[Read the series introduction and access all nine essays here.]

To save the Great Barrier Reef ‘we need to start now, right now’ – video | Environment | The Guardian

Posted on June 7, 2016 by GarryRogers

GR: The video leaves us with a grim outlook. Human wastes running into the oceans coupled with global warming will soon destroy all the reefs. Do enough people care to force our governments to act? Probably not. Do you see any answers?

Josh Wall and Michael Slezak, theguardian.com: Jon Brodie from James Cook University says to give the Great Barrier Reef even a fighting chance to survive, Australia needs to spend $1bn a year for the next 10 years to improve water quality. If we don’t do that now, he says, we might need to just give up on the reef. ‘Climate change is happening much more quickly and much more severely than most scientists predicted’•

The Great Barrier Reef: a catastrophe laid bare – special report. Source: To save the Great Barrier Reef ‘we need to start now, right now’ – video | Environment | The Guardian

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Hydropower dams worldwide cause continued species extinction

Posted on May 31, 2016 by GarryRogers

GR: The decline of species on the islands is consistent with the theory of island biogeography. No ecologist would be surprised by the decline.

Archipelago of forest islands within the Balbina hydroelectric reservoir, Brazil. Image: Eduardo M. Venticinque via C. Peres

University of Stirling: New research led by the University of Stirling has found a global pattern of sustained species extinctions on islands within hydroelectric reservoirs.

Scientists have discovered that reservoir islands created by large dams across the world do not maintain the same levels of animal and plant life found prior to flooding.

Despite being hailed as conservation sanctuaries that protect species from hunting and deforestation, islands undergo sustained loss of species year on year after dam construction, a pattern otherwise known as ‘extinction debt’. These findings represent a significant environmental impact that is currently missing from assessment procedures for proposed new dams.

Source: Hydropower dams worldwide cause continued species extinction

This Is The Side Of The Great Barrier Reef The Government Doesn’t Want You To See – BuzzFeed News

Posted on May 28, 2016 by GarryRogers

Australia Coral Reef Deception: BuzzFeed News:

Photos and text from: Rob Stott, BuzzFeed News Reporter, Australia

Take a quick look at the Tourism Australia website and social media channels and you’ll find all of the things you’d expect from the Great Barrier Reef: glossy photos of divers, happy turtles, and coral. Lots of coral. But the Australian government has been working hard to make sure you don’t see just how badly damaged by climate change the reef has become.

The Australian government has even been caught trying to censor a UN report.

Source: This Is The Side Of The Great Barrier Reef The Government Doesn’t Want You To See – BuzzFeed News

Biodiversity Day – May 22

Posted on May 21, 2016 by GarryRogers

A Day for Biodiversity

The United Nations has declared that May 22 is Biodiversity Day. The goal this year is to publicize biodiversity. After studying the text of the UN Convention on Biodiversity, I believe that the UN is doing little or nothing for biodiversity. I have studied plants and animals for many years. What I’ve seen, and what others report, is that all of nature is in steep decline. Humans are the cause. I fear that people might be led to believe that the United Nations is taking effective action to protect biodiversity. It is not.

The theme of the UN Convention on Biodiversity is sustainable development. It’s text has lofty goals with vague strategies for their attainment. The text makes clear the Convention’s desire for acceptance by even the most growth oriented government. Each Article begins with phrases such as: “Each Contracting Party shall, in accordance with its particular conditions and capabilities. . . .” and this: “Each Contracting Party shall, as far as possible and as appropriate. . . .” Since human desires are the conditions that define what is appropriate, the phrases prohibit no “contractor” from full-bore growth and development if they say that these are needed to provide jobs and improved standards of living.

This is the UN’s definition of the Convention:

Signed by 150 government leaders at the 1992 Rio Earth Summit, the Convention on Biological Diversity is dedicated to promoting sustainable development. Conceived as a practical tool for translating the principles of Agenda 21 into reality, the Convention recognizes that biological diversity is about more than plants, animals and micro organisms and their ecosystems – it is about people and our need for food security, medicines, fresh air and water, shelter, and a clean and healthy environment in which to live (United Nations).

Biodiversity is definitely not about the needs of only one species. It is a general term that gives equal importance to all species. By placing humans ahead of all other species, the Convention’s definition replaces biological validity with the human bias that is destroying the Earth.

This year’s meeting focus is on promoting biodiversity. The meetings never do much more than report on small achievements. They serve as an opportunity to search for funding for their development-friendly activities and they let governments reward their environmental managers with a two-week vacation in an international resort.

Homo sapiens’ unrelenting rape of the Earth and the rapid decline of biodiversity is taking us toward the greatest mass extinction of all time. No one has found an effective means to stop this. In 1992, the United Nations decided to formalize their support for continued devastation by sugar-coating human impacts with the term “sustainable.” A genuine Biodiversity Day would focus on curtailing human:

Population growth
Habitat destruction
Material aspirations

Over and over, our leading biologists call for emergency responses to our impacts on the Earth. This blog has more than a thousand well-reasoned warnings and suggestions related to biodiversity. However, biodiversity decline continues. What do we do? Even as our impacts grow beyond the hope of remediation, our environmental managers lay by the pool sipping rum punch, eying the pretty young servers, and discussing funding proposals and plans for more meetings.

What can we do for biodiversity?

I intend to look for ways to oppose development, call for population control, live a simpler life, and learn more about plants and animals.

The Beast that Burns; the Saviors We Kill

Posted on May 20, 2016 by GarryRogers

Accurate and artistic discussion of wildfire and beavers.

Exposing the Big Game

Canadian Blog

by Barry Kent MacKay,
Senior Program Associate

Born Free USA’s Canadian Representative

http://www.bornfreeusa.org/weblog_canada.php?p=5547&more=1

Barry is an artist, both with words and with paint. He has been associated with our organization for nearly three decades and is our go-to guy for any wildlife question. He knows his animals — especially birds — and the issues that affect them. His blogs will give you just the tip of his wildlife-knowledge iceberg, so be sure to stay and delve deeper into his Canadian Project articles. If you like wildlife and reading, Barry’s your man. (And we’re happy to have him as part of our team, too!)