My intellectual hero is Charles Darwin.
A courageous man with a heightened sense of wonder and curiosity about the natural world, Darwin lived from 1809 to 1882 in a “golden” age of exploration. While reading his thoughts about the Galápagos Islands or the Brazilian rainforest, I hunger sometimes to have his early-19th century experiences in landscapes now vastly different due to human accelerated changes across the planet. When Darwin wandered among the giant tortoises, for instance, the world’s population was 1 billion. Now, of course, we’ve climbed above 7 billion. In that interim, the impacts of biodepletion and habitat degradation have been incalculable for the fabric of life across the planet.
In 1835, nearly at the completion of his five years of journeying aboard the HMS Beagle, Darwin witnessed the aftermath of a horrific earthquake in Chile that left the city of Concepción in ruins. His journal description of the quake remains relevant today:
“A bad earthquake at once destroys our oldest associations: the earth, the very emblem of solidity, has moved beneath our feet like a thin crust over a fluid; – one second of time has created in the mind a strange idea of insecurity, which hours of reflection would not have produced.”
This excerpt flashed in my mind at 7:12 pm on Tuesday, 16 October 2012, when New England, especially southern Maine, shook from a rare 4.0 magnitude earthquake. I was there in Portland when the landscape rattled and rumbled for a few seconds as if the place was about to explode. Thankfully, we had no injuries or damages; but what a jarring toss by a restless planet!
Natural change: earthquakes, volcanoes, hurricanes, lightning strikes, sand storms, tsunamis. Human-caused change: global warming, mass extinction, habitat deterioration and fragmentation, pollution. All these phenomena have an underlying air of ambiguity about them. Earth should NOT move. Species should NOT go extinct. The atmosphere should NOT warm, and ice caps should NOT melt. Such changes connote instability, and how in the world can a planet – the very emblem of constancy – become unhinged? As it turns out, every planet in the Solar System orbits shakily with a motion billions of years old, the residual energy of an unimaginable “big bang” explosion. Nothing then on this side of Paradise is eternal!
This brings me back to Darwin’s reference to a “bad earthquake.” Bad earthquakes can be literal as well as metaphorical.
For Biblical literalists, Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection is a bad symbolic earthquake. His robust explanation of life’s origins cracked the veneer of Judeo-Christian fundamentalism and exposed so-called creationism for what it is: a myopic, fearful, black-and-white view of the natural world without a shred of evidence.
For our 21st century society, Darwin’s reference to a bad earthquake could also refer to human-accelerated influences on Earth and its biodiversity. When things get bad enough – the loss of the Amazon rainforest, for example, or a substantial disappearance of the Arctic icecap – then we may realize the impact of a powerful “earthquake,” in this case, the influence of a single species of ape-like creature with a godlike power to alter the world’s course forever, intentionally or not, beyond a new tipping point.
We will celebrate the publication of Darwin’s most influential book, On the Origin of Species, on 24 November 2012: its 153rd birthday!
It is my sincere hope that citizens across the country will recognize how this 500-page volume has withstood nearly two centuries of futile scaremongering and fundamentalism: a robust scientific text as relevant today as it was in 1859. It is also my hope that we may act righteously and wisely in our stewardship of Creation before we strike against ourselves with the overwhelming influence of a self-imposed earthquake. Bad earthquakes can sometimes rebound as devastating earthquakes. We have many tools in our proverbial toolbox for righting a wronged planet, the most powerful of which may be our commitment to the next generations.
H. Bruce Rinker, Ph.D.
Ecologist, Educator, and Explorer
The very word”earthquake” is a scary word…to think of the earth we live and walk on all at once beginning to shake causing unknown damage and deaths but also taking our security in our surroundings away from us .
We need to take care of Mother Earth …recycle your Garbage and keep her Waters clean and clear of Garbage.
I would like to see this Earth improve for my Children and Grandchildren so we all need to do what we can to protect her..
In my life time there has never been a Earthquake where we live but My Grandmother showed me a field that was level when I was a little Girl. She said a Earthquake leveled the high hill and caused a lot of property damage. I hope I never see one but if we don’t take care of Earth…One day Earth won’t be here..