One-fifth of Sierra Nevada forests are zombies, more on the way

And up to 30% killed from 2011-2020 due to beetles, fire, and drought.

https://www.uniondemocrat.com/news/article_893b1d2a-564a-11ed-901f-fbc180b6a78d.html

Enjoy them while you can.

Unfortunately, this statement might sum up the true sentiments of the contemporary environmental movement (I’m not directing any of this at you Rex, I’m speaking generally here, because I also tend to think this way).

While inspirational talk about “saving” things might exist on the surface, the deeper narrative taking hold is rapidly becoming one of profound fatalism. I’m not certain that we are wholly conscious of how deeply it affects the outlook of young people.

I have been working full time with 17 to 19-year-olds for the past 23 years, roughly 200 per year, spanning one of the most diverse demographic spreads you are going to find in public education. I’m also fairly well connected to the 19-24 year-old demographic through my own children and their peers. My conversations with these kids- and they are numerous- tell me that there is a creeping apathy, an increasing loss of hope, all taking hold at a rate faster than anything I’ve seen in my career thus far. Not to say it is inappropriate or not factual, but articles like this contribute to this fatalism in a profound way…and they’re about the only sort of article I see these days.

We can wax about climate cycles and the extent of anthropogenic factors, but ultimately the message that rings loudest to young people is “Hey, no matter how hard we try, everything we know is in a state of massive decline”. We can get philosophical and try to assure ourselves and our children that change is the only constant, but articles like this don’t actually convey anything but a deep sense of loss.

What troubles me is that the infectious energy and optimism of youth that has made my career so rewarding feels like it is fading; COVID seems to have fast-tracked this. Rather than looking to the future with excitement, more and more of my students seem to be approaching it with a sense that it’s already lost. It seems a myriad of environmental, social, economic, and technological issues are coming to a head for this generation of young people.

Nobody is well served by having reality withheld from them. That said, older generations, including myself, would be wise to think hard about the narratives being generated. I believe we’re entering an era in which we would be well served by thinking very hard on how to re-frame the entire environmental discussion, if possible. Otherwise, we are are essentially offering a dead-end to the young.

If “enjoy it while you can” becomes the dominant mantra, do not be shocked or surprised by a society of young people slipping into a state of depressive hedonism.

For whatever any of this is worth. It’s simply where my head goes when I read articles like this….

Yeah!  well said Craig

Stories that project the doom of civilization get lots of eyeballs.  For a while.

There will probably be areas that lose their forests but we can still enjoy them.

we would be well served by thinking very hard on how to re-frame the entire environmental discussion

Yes. Take pictures and remember the conifers, but is it really so bad if they are replaced by deciduous trees?

I feel Craig’s words deeply as a fellow HS art teacher with a 20 year old kid of my own. You have described my experience of young people very accurately.

This extraordinarily cold, extended winter in Ca. must be killing off a lot–nearly all?–of beetle larvae. Very cold winter temps can do this,  if I’m remembering correctly. I may not be. This is good news.

I was thinking about the climate/vegetation mismatch mentioned in the article. First, it’s important to realize that it’s lower elevation conifers being discussed. Second, and this is pure speculation: we’ve all seen areas where a very young, small new forest is coming up, after a burn most likely. these can be very crowded. Many of those trees won’t make it and that forest area will naturally thin. I wonder if there isn’t already normal genetic diversity present throughout that new forest, where some trees skew towards being adaptable in a warmer climate. These may fail in normal times; perhaps they will be the successful trees in a warmer scenario. In other words, I’m hoping the conifer population is more adaptable already than its being portrayed. Probably this is wishful thinking on my part.

I’m actually glad that my kids don’t love nature as much as I do. They enjoy going for a hike now and then, but they are perfectly content in their urban lives, and don’t feel a sense of loss that the glaciers are melting, the forests are growing or disappearing (depending on where you are) and more and more wild land is being turned over to condos. Good for them. Those of us oldies can carry our sense of loss to the great beyond and the young will be busy coping with other emergencies, as they must.

I remember my kids burning out on nature tv programs because they always end in a doom and gloom forecast. I explained to them that those are real, but they didn’t want to dwell there, esp when they are powerless to change it. Can’t blame them for wanting to be happy instead!

Ready player 1? Geez.

“Nobody is well served by having reality withheld from them. That said, older generations, including myself, would be wise to think hard about the narratives being generated. I believe we’re entering an era in which we would be well served by thinking very hard on how to re-frame the entire environmental discussion, if possible. Otherwise, we are are essentially offering a dead-end to the young.”

Encouragement. Born from Love, Thanks for the reminder!

I see it in the above timberline krumholz too so it doesn’t seem to be limited only to dense forests below timberline.

“Learned Helplessness” is a real thing. And a sad thing. Sometimes helplessness is true, and sometimes the belief is a lie. We can’t all “change the world”, but we will all change the world, somehow or other. We have choices, and our choices have myriad consequences–whether in our social environments or in our physical ones.

That’s enough philosophical double-talk and musing from me. =D

https://youtu.be/PKe0UzqazuU

This talk, which I watched recently, made a lot of sense to me as something we who own a yard could all do to support our local ecosystems, and how important that really is.  It also made it clear to me that (barring some technological wizardry that would allow us to survive entirely devoid of an ecosystem) we also need to think about supporting these systems on a larger scale.  I know it’s politically suspect these days to argue for population control, but it seems without it we head towards a world where we need to survive on soylent green.

. . . but it seems without it we head towards a world where we need to survive on soylent green.

I wonder what the calories per ounce are for Soylent Green?

;-)

I got excited for a half-second thinking that Soylent had a new flavor.

I think the population control solution is a lot more than just politically suspect, it’s a dangerously flawed narrative to build an environmental movement on, feeding into the exact fatalism I mention in a previous post. I’d be happy to outline why, but I suspect I’ll be flagged as Chaff so I’ll save my breath.

On to more important things: Can anyone recommend a pair of ultralight underwear that won’t smell funny when they double as an ultralight pillow cover?

:)

Global thermonuclear war. Large asteroid strike. Another Carrington Event. Even a repeat of the 1918 flu pandemic.

These disasters and more threaten the world as we know it. Some are more likely than others. The important thing is taking action, not retreating into despair.

Yet for me and a lot of other people, backpacking in more natural areas, however much they change, helps calm the mind and prepare for struggle.

Why are so many young people retreating into despair instead of taking action?

— Rex

Nick: Soylent Green circa 1973 for backpackers? If you freeze-dried the traditionally eaten parts of the human body, you’d get about 6.5 calories per gram, or about halfway between pure fat and pure protein/carbohydrates.

Modern Soylent Powder is only 4.4 calories per gram. Slackers :-)

— Rex

“Why are so many young people retreating into despair instead of taking action?”

They are seeing all the social and scientific progress humanity has made over the last century rapidly regressing. We had vaccines to cure diseases, agricultural science to help feed the world and were making progress on poverty and famine. Now back into the Dark Ages of superstition and ignorance and greed and war. Not that those things ever left us, but our own American citizens no longer believe in the great things our culture did create that could stamp out ignorance and inequality – e.g., free public schools, the Civil Rights Act. No one believes in the public good. Ever-increasing wealth disparity instead of more equity. Species going extinct. And their elders instead of gathering together to listen and problem solve, fight like grade school bullies, call names, lie, cheat and steal. Back into their corners just waiting for the bell.

The other night at dinner at a restaurant in Anchorage, I overhead a group of well-dressed, well-off adults at another table mocking students who had testified at a school board meeting. They were so, so nasty, chortling because students are anxious, depressed, suicidal. Isn’t that incredibly funny?! When did this become acceptable behavior for adults?

It’s honestly overwhelming. The young are just waiting for everyone 40+ to depart. I hope they can find a better way than we did. We freakin blew it.

I’m 68. I worked in bookstores for decades. This is the kind of work where young people come to make some money while they figure out their future, then move on. So I saw many wonderful and a few not so wonderful personalities come and go over the years. I’m in a university town. Many, maybe most, of these folks had just graduated. My community trends liberal.

I’ll just say: yes, young people are inheriting a world of crap. At the same time, especially over the last 25 years, I found these folks more passionate about sexual identity and racial justice and making money than they were about environmental concerns. By and large they could care less that their old phone goes into a garbage heap. They really weren’t concerned about global warming and the plight of the forests. They thought technology made them somewhat super beings. Most had a sense of immediate privilege that was disconcerting. Almost none had any curiosity about the sacred in any form.  But they had a religious trust in technology; by which I mean, they had no idea how technology worked, but they bought into whatever new thing came along without question. They mostly displayed an amazing lack of critical thinking. One wonderful young co-worker told me that it was possible to laser print an entire Boeing 747. When I suggested this might not be right, she laughed at my ignorance. Another time she told me she was proud about how hers was the first generation in history to truly multi-task, as when driving and texting at the same time.   She had no patience or interest in nature. It was boring. For her, technology allowed a kind of magical relation to reality. It was all good; she didn’t want to hear about its consequences (global warming; mental distraction ). Most ironically, as the years went on, more and more bookstore workers had no interest in reading books. Too old school, and it took too much time and attention that they didn’t have.

All of this is jsut to push back a bit on the idealization of the young. We elders might not like the heaven on earth they would bring about if they could, bless their hearts. Many, maybe most, would celebrate a new shipping passage through the newly warmed arctic that brought in ships full of phones they could spend their days looking at.

Getting back to Zombie forests.

The conclusion of the article quoted below reminds be of the old debate in the environmental movement of whether we should be guardians of nature or gardeners.  The author seems to come down on the “gardener” side, replanting plants using a human construct of what nature should be given the human models.  I do agree that 150 years of fire suppression has created forests that are less resilient to environmental stress and wildfire management practices must change, and the types of human habitations built in wildfire areas also must change.

The species that will most effected by climate change is homo sapiens since so many of them live in cities close to coastal areas that will flood.

“Similarly, conservation and post-fire reforestation efforts will need to consider how to ensure forests are in equilibrium with future conditions, according to the researchers. Should a burned forest be replanted with species new to the area? Should habitats that are predicted to go out of equilibrium with an area’s climate be burned proactively to reduce the risk of catastrophic blazes and corresponding vegetation conversion?”

Why are so many young people retreating into despair instead of taking action?

Antifa and the Proud Boys are certainly taking their own forms of action and providing their own unique narratives for what activism should look like.

History tells me that we shouldn’t assume “action” will be rational or in the best interest of everyone at the table. Maybe retreating into depression is actually preferable to the alternatives some people imagine will be necessary to create change.

Thus the desperate need for a new, non-partisan narrative that a mass environmental movement could actually get behind.

Or is it too late? You tell me.

The answer to this question might very well elucidate the origins of the apathy young people face.

nice video dk.  I have a strip that had clay, landscape fabric, rotted barkdust.  I’m thinking of putting some native plants there for insects and birds.  This inspires me.

“Thus the desperate need for a new, non-partisan narrative that a mass environmental movement could actually get behind.”

Things seem unstable right now, primed for some major change.

Maybe similar to the decades around 1900 when there was a lot of inequality and occasional spurts of progressive movements that sort of died out.  Until 1940s when there were major changes followed by decades of peace and prosperity.