The link below is to the essay as it was published on the pages of the Denton Record Chronicle: I submitted the article with the word sceptic in the title, but the editors evidently thought better of it, probably with good reason, as it was sure to confuse most everyone. Sceptic, however, is an accepted form of Skeptic (Webster’s), just not very well known. I liked it because it’s related by sound to antiseptic and because my brother Pablo was a person who questioned the validity of everything, including the way things were spelled . . . but that’s another essay.
For those that are interested, here is the first draft of the essay. . .
The last totem pole.
My brother once said that if you wanted to have the ivory-billed woodpecker back, let the government declare war on it, then he would go on a diatribe about the war on drugs, the war on poverty, wars in general and make his point. According to his estimate, before long, there wouldn’t be a pole safe in the country, totem poles included. Then, he would say he wanted investors for his ‘humane’ woodpecker-pest control company, to be named the Twenty-Gage Wingmaster. A company designed to cure the woodpecker’s addiction to wood in specific and life in general: “necessary after such government interference.”
Another one of his famous invectives was directed at his friends in the Sierra Club. “If they really want wildlife back,” he would begin, “they should have a nuclear accident.”
“Let it be a good one,” he would add, “nothing small, no half measures, with partial core meltdown and all . . . obviously in another part of the world, far, far away.”
He would then continue, reminding us of Chernobyl in 1986, where the accident cleared a 2000 square mile swath of land, now called an exclusion zone “which in Russian terms, Soviet Union then,” he would inform, “amounts to about an acre or two over here. We’re talking about a country with 9 time zones spanning two thirds of the way across the planet.”
“So what happened?” someone would ask.
“Well, for one, people had to leave,” was his ready answer. “Except for a few stubborn ones: the ones that stay home during a hurricane and are still there after the storm, standing tall, defying all predictions.”
And he was right. Not soon after people left the exclusion zone, wildlife returned to the area with a vengeance: brown bear, moose, lynx, fox, wolf, wild boar, deer, species that hadn’t been seen in a hundred years came back and retook their ancient lands. That, as well as a multitude of smaller critters, such as moles, badgers, squirrels, rats, voles and tiny mice, plus the myriad birds, etc., all food for bigger critters and all either missing or found in reduced to negligible numbers before the accident. Then there’s the plants and insects, the former, flourishing, making any ‘Old Master’ reach for brush and palette, the latter, swarming, forming into giant clouds.
All true, according to the many studies being done in the area now being conducted by different universities and groups. Bottom line: After thirty years of being left alone, I mean really alone, from humans anyway, the environment has shown an amazing ability to recover. It’s not back to where humans can go back safely, at least not yet, but animals seem to do okay. Turns out the greatest thing that ever happened to the flora and fauna there is a nuclear accident, if you believe the results of all the studies that are being published. “I think that’s because it got rid of people,” was his clinching argument. “People, one can easily deduce, are worse for an area than a nuclear disaster.”
33 thoughts on “Guest essay. “A skeptic’s opinion”. Denton Record Chronicle, 11-2-18”
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