Transcripts For CSPAN3 Warren 20240704

Good evening. Welcome here to welcome here to the st. Juliana. Thank you all for coming. I am Arsen Kashkashian from the boulder bookstore. We appreciate everyone coming out. Im sure that doctor warren hern does, as well. We would like to do a brief introduction before we bring him out. Doctor warren hern is a boulder physician an epidemiologist who has conducted ecological and research in the peruvian amazon among the ship people, native amazonian people in 1964. He is professor adjunct at the department of boulder and the department of colorado medical campus. His Scientific Research and reports concerning ecology, human fertility, demography, population matters, and abortion which have been published in a wide variety of International Scientific journals. In 1973, dr. Hern was a founding medical of a first private nonprofit Medical Clinic in colorado which opened in boulder in november, 1973. He opened [applause] he opened his private medical practice, boulder abortion clinics, on january 22nd 1975. Almost, 30 years ago . Almost to the day. Now, 48 years. 48 years and. Dr. Hern is the chairman and cofounder of the Legal Defense fund which stopped we want to divert from product that wouldve destroyed the Holy Cross Wilderness by diverting most of the wilderness is won or to the lawns and golf courses around colorado springs. Dr. Hern has been a professional photographer for almost 70 years. Specializing in photojournalism and National History projects. 67 of the photographs are featured in his new book, homo ecophagus. A deep diagnosis to save the earth. The photos are, really, quite amazing in the book. Be bolder bookstore is proud to offer dr. Hern focus in the event. The book is discounted 10 off tonight. Off the table over there. Doctor herman will sign after his talks. He will be signing at the table over there. Welcoming doctor hern, a round of applause for one of boulders finest citizens, doctor warren hern. [applause] what. Thank you, thank you, arson. Thank you, so much. Its a lot of people that i love in my life who are here tonight. Thank you for being here. And i want to thank you all for being here, thank you for that introduction. I am honored that you taking time out of your life to be here to learn about my book which i hope you find interesting and we are going have a good time talking about this a little bit. I have so many wonderful friends here that i cant call you all out. Since you mentioned, arsen mention the clinic that we opened here in 1973,. Maryland was a member of the board of directors for that clinic. Marilyn, would you stand up for a second . I want to honor her. [applause] so, the first thing i would like to do is to thank the bolder bookstore for sponsoring this event. This is a very, very important event. Certainly for me. And i hope that you all feel that you spend your time well in coming to hear about this, this thing. So the other thing is that i want to thank kirby olson and the hotel for the really superb work and arranging all of this, making sure that this happened right. It is a very impressive job theyve done. I want to thank them for it. They really fantastic job [applause] i would think the camp. Dean is a publisher. He represents and this book would not have happened without his constant support and encouragement and help. So im eternally grateful for him. Hes a supreme publisher and writer and has a knowledge of the literally publishing world so thank you for being here, dean. The other thing i want to do is think the offduty police who are here to protect all of us. [applause] they risk their lives every day. It is quite strange. We have to have a heavily Armed Police Force to protect a book event. The original incentive, because of the work i did in my day job, helping women have safe abortions, im on a hit list. A number of my colleagues have been assasinated, so we dont want to make an opportunity for somebody get famous and we dont want to be part of some mastering news. So here we are, we are well protected in very secure. I thank you for being here. What i want to do is first i want to talk a little bit about how this book happened, why i wrote it and how i got some of the ideas that are in the book. Im going to talk im gonna give some examples within that. The origin of this book is from a long long time ago. You read about it in some of the book. The first third of the book is about experience that i had in my life that it helped me get to the point of seeing one of talking about in this book. It is a pretty horrible idea it is much more complicated than that but in any case, when i began looking at some of these issues back in the 60s, when i was a medical student and when i was also studying Public Health for the first time in North Carolina in 1968, 69 following medical school, working at amazon, two years in the peace corps position in brazil. Observation in this country and in latin america. So i described some of that in the book and i will touch on a little bit here. So, that is the first third. Look at the second third of the book is manifestations of this malignancy were talking about, both at the local small habitat level and the global ecosystem. So we go with the lance, from the trails in the forest, in the wilderness to what we are doing to the planet. So that is the scope. Obviously, there are lots of examples and information there. But you have to leave a lot of stuff. Anyway, you get the idea. Then the third part of the book is analysis in the following situations, we are going to touch on that too. Im going to begin by showing some slides, a little bit of an introduction. Im an going to read a section of the book that gives a very interesting, i think, microcosm example of what we call cultural ecology and anthropology, the way that human beings interact with their environment and their cultures are adapted to the environment, what they do about that. Here we have a situation where it is not just and began working in 1964, still work with them. They are family now at this point. But they are being subjected to the forces of western society and Industrial Society and how these play things turned out in that particular part of the amazon. And then, im going to show the rest of the slide which will give you a little bit more graphic idea of how i got to this idea and you can see my observations and reasoning. And then, at that point i will go through some of the species that we are threatening as a species. And the last part will be a poem that is in the book that i wrote 30 years ago. After i made a solo backpacking trip into the part of the Holy Cross Wilderness that had not been affected by this project. And went to the place where my father and i used to go fishing. 75 years ago. , 70 years ago. And so i think that you will get a little bit of a sense of the snapshot. So what i would like to do is begin, and i hope i can run this complicated machine up here. Ive seen lots of world class scientist come down with this, it is been a problem. So, here is the title of the book. Dean chose this photograph which was similar to one that i had seen and one of those in the book earlier. I think it is very expressive of anguish of the wildlife and their species. Let me first explain that the title homo ecophagus is my new name for the human species. It means the man who devours the ecosystem. That is what we are doing. At the diagnosis to save the earth, im making a diagnosis. This is not an analogy, no one ever died from an analogy. So this is a diagnosis, there are prognosis, the things we can do. In any case, the point here is that we are now no longer home oh sapiens sapiens, lies, wise men. We are not wise obviously. We are the most misname species on the planet. And we are a new species which is really essentially a planetary super organism that has malignant characteristics, that is what we are doing. To go on from here, the first thing im going to do, there is a preface that has several quotations and the first one is an anthropologists named warren paulsley. There is work in the book that shows you a little bit of how i got acquainted. He wrote something incredibly eloquent, it really summarizes what we are talking about. A long time ago. Lets take a look, 60 years ago or Something Like that. Here is his statement. It is with the coming of man, the vast, whole open nature. A vast black will pool spinning faster and faster, consuming flesh, stones, soil, minerals, sucking down the lightning, wrenching power from the atom until the ancient sounds of nature are drowned in the cacophony of something which is no longer nature, something instead which is knocking in the worlds heart. Something demonic and no longer planned, escaped as it may be, spewing out of nature in a giant scheme against its master. When my friends is the great photographer elliott border, who was a master photographer. He began his career as a physician, chemical engineer, brilliant photographer. That is the legacy of elliott porter. We were good friends. We were talking about this idea at one time when i was visiting him in mexico a long time ago. Elliott said its simple, we talked about parsimony. And then he made the statement, man isnt operation. The next quote is from a friend fernando when he was still in the fourth grade at Elementary School in boulder, colorado. We have been talking about pollution and all the source of things. I was giving fernando a ride in the car because it was a very cold winter day. We often watched, but not always. He was sitting back there in this seat there for kids. We were making ourselves extinct. Fourth grade, we just had a president of the United States for two years who couldnt possibly understand that idea. Next quote. Wally hickle was john kennedy secretary of the interior and the governor of alaska. He is famous for saying, we cant just let nature run wild. It makes you think of the Current Governor of ohio who declared the other day that methane is a green energy source. So margaret wrinkle is a writer for the New York Times who i do not know personally, but who writes eloquently for the New York Times on a variety of stuff one for colleagues a shot we have been waging unceasing war against nature for the entire history of humanity. You will read about that in my book. So, what is the problem . Uncontrolled Global Warming, loss of global bio diversity, ocean warming, and acidification. Atmospheric pollution, accumulating trash in ecosystems, toxic waste, and the environment. Continuing growth of the human population, eight billion and counting, that is the short list. This is not explain why this is happening. What is the origin and one of the dynamics of these events and changes . How long has this been going on . These are some of the questions that i ask and answer in the book. Now, lets go to the microcosm that i spoke about. Small scale deforestation in the amazon basin. And then we can subtitle, human ecology and ecological consequences. This is from a section of the book in chapter 13. As the fourth Year Medical Student in 1964, i worked for six months in the amazon. During part of that time, i conducted a health study of a native amazonian Indian Village called a cota. It is located on a lake called the river, the main tributary to the amazon. The lake and ancient River Channel of the meandering river was separated from the river in its current track by a band of low ground about the people lived a subsistence economy as they had thousands of years. Fishing in the river at lengths, gathering food and hunting in the forest. And using forest materials, wood for houses, and other necessities. There was not much money and that would selling Forest Products to passing merchants. They had a small herd of cattle and animal not native to the amazon, and not adapted to survive there without human assistance. Why . At the hospital where i worked as a medical student, in the hospital for a while, a german woman who was a refugee from communist east germany was an administrator, she hated communism. She saw the natives as ripe targets for communist infiltration, domination. In her determination, to keep this from happening she decided to make capitalist out of the two people, unaware that the other native americans had carried out capitalistic trading arrangements with other tribes for thousands of years before the idea of capitalism occurred to anyone in europe and many of their societies felt Communal Property ownership. Her plan for turning these people into capitalists was to give them a herd of cattle with one bowl whose name was proximal. And several cattle. The plan was for the bull and his women to make lots of little calves that they could sell at a profit and then pay back the hospital. They would get milk from cows, calcium and other nutrients from the milk and sell the milk and profit. They would then learn what it was like to be a happy capitalist. Better to fend off the scourge of communism in the heart of the peruvian amazon. But to take care of this herd, the people had to cut down a lot of old growth forest next to the river so the cattle could have pasture. Not to worry that the forest was protecting the village from the hard current of the river and providing the people with many resources. There were several problems with his plan, first, the people were unable to drink milk. Most of their digestion wasnt suited for it and they didnt like it. Most adult human beings cant drink milk. Second, they got a lot of calcium anyway by eating dried fish every morning that had been heavily scored by the machete, thereby making the tiny bones digestible. The people wouldnt need milk for calcium which they also got from other foods. Third, maximo was the wrong name. [laughter] minimo wouldve been better. Since none of the cows got pregnant. He wasnt up to it. No passion. A major problem however was the deforestation caused by making a pastor for the cattle who werent much use in the first place. Cutting down the trees next the river made easier for the river to erode the bank on the coast or cutbank where the channel is deep and the water swift. This is what happens to the deforested land and it threatened the village. The Forest Products needed by people in the village were no longer available a few steps away. The forest was gone. Maximo was shipped back up to the hospital by a dugout canoe which was constantly filled to overflowing during the threeday journey upriver after digesting his diet of plants. His final indignity was that he was turned into tough meat for dinner. The cows were sold to river merchants, to find better suitors. The erosion process accentuated by the four station accelerated a changing River Channel, elimination of the band between the link and the river, elimination of the lake after which there was and gain lots of fish. For the erosion of the village land on the backs of the river, severe flooding that made the village uninhabitable, and ultimately relocation of the village to somewhat Higher Ground upstream where priceless forests containing many animals and other resources were destroyed by commercial logging. The relocation was made feasible by a series of other decisions dominated by money and deforestation. Within the Committee Lands there is a section of high ground that was excellent for hunting in the wet season because it was not inundated. Men went there with bows and arrows, spears, and sometimes shotguns to kill dear, color peppery, or large rodents this was a critical resource because fishing was difficult and impossible during the high water season. In 1974 during one of my fiveyear research trips, i learned that some of the village authorities had made a deal to sell the timber on high ground up the river for a few hundred dollars. I told him that this was a bad deal that would eliminate their important ground. Second, the deforestation of this terrain could produce a more severe problem with River Channel change that could change the village. The machines that we brought in for cutting timber costs unimaginable, hundreds of thousands of dollars each. The timber was worth a lot more money than they received which was about enough to buy a few minutes worth of gasoline for one of the machines, but it was made. Five years later, my research we help study the village. On arriving, i learned some people had already moved to Higher Ground where the timber was being taken. Here is what it looked like. There is the culprit there wait a minute. Heres what it looks like. So, the timber that was taken included rare and valuable tropical hardwoods worth millions of dollars. Some of the trees had diameters up to three millimeters, they were centuries old. In 1983, returning for another research ship, our quarters were in the village this was remarkable because all of the bird species that formally inhabited the now missing forest came to this place. There were hundreds of birds species, many of them extremely rare. We saw them all day and heard them all night. In time, what i had predicted happened. The deforestation of the new village allowed the river to erode the bank quickly. It was lost as a place of residence and they had to be extended further back into the forest as riverbank supporting houses was eroded and fell into the river. Hunting and fuel for fires now required longdistance travel. This is a picture of the new village from 1992. The villages now rests on a levy or bench left by an ancient river flow centuries ago when average flows were higher. At the local level, human sentiment was severely affected. The river continues. But because these changes were occurring all around here and tributaries, because of similar deforestation upstream, the effect was to increase rapid runoff of water during both the wet and dry season so that the amplitude of the river became much more severe. The highs were higher and the lows were lower. The virtual chained out along its course as the swift water cut through the loops. More sentiment was carried off, the deforested areas into the river. The sediment accumulated and the riverbed became higher. The river shallower, currents flooding in the wet season with more severe and longlasting, damaging important food crops. In the dry season, the deforestation meant that less water was retained when it did rain, it was hotter. There was less rain. He caused the rain clouds to pass over. Rapid runoff after arraignment that the force became drier. When slash and burn techniques were applied, as had been the custom for thousands of years, the fires quickly got out of control and burnt much larger areas than intended. This produced a positive feedback loop with more deforestation, less retained moisture. More rapid runoff, higher ambient temperatures, poor crop yields, more flooding, it sandra. This is a picture of the floodplain in 1964. I took on a flight with a missionary pilot. You can see here let me get my pointer here. Okay. I can see this, but anyway, here you will see the river. And here are the remnants, they loop here. The loop that is cut off that becomes a lake. And so, now, we have a situation. This is a picture taken in 1994. Showing the deforestation that occurred along the delta. Now the river will cut through here, straining out the river. You have all these other things that are affected. Higher water flows in the rainy season resulted in the river cutting off a loop above. The result of increasing speed inflow volume is a positive feedback loop. Now, im gonna go to a couple other slides and show what is happening. This is on the tributary of the river. Where some of the villages i studied. You can see here, well, sorry. You can see wrong button. Yeah, pretty high tech stuff. Anyway. Here we have deforestation. This dome, the riverside. This is the most complex part of the ecosystem. The air between the river in the forest, now we have more very severe deforestation. The people did not do this. Encouraging people going to the amazon, its the garden of eden. You just go and pick the food off the trees. The people from the coast in areas where there are no trees. Theres something wrong with them. We have to cut them down. They go and they cut down the forest. With these very severe dissented slopes, you cant grow anything there. Its a total waste. This is part of the problem. Lets go on to the next part here. My point there is that this is a gradual process. A positive feedback loop in this is one of the parts, of the destruction of the amazon. Going on, so back to our main theme. One of which is uncontrolled growth of the human population. In this slide, done by a friend, another photographer. This slide here you have the last 9000 years. Shows you the rate of the growth of the human population. This little wiggle is the black death that we took out of the human population in the 15th century. And the bottom of the scale, over 2 million years. You can see it go straight up at that point. We are moving faster. Its like going through an art gallery on a motorcycle here, okay . Anyway. Here i am, North Carolina. Im studying Public Health. One of the courses i took had to do with urban geography. One of the books here it show was a high contrasts image of the more philology, the shape and the growth of the city of baltimore over a period of 150 years. I looked at this. Im a trained physician. I trained in pathology. I thought, this looks exactly like a cancer. That is what cancer looks like. Okay . Next slide. Now, another, even better, example is from london. Same period of time. A textbook about urban geography. Here is london in 1800 and 1950. Same pattern expanding metastatic legions and invasive growth. This is a five city cluster in North Carolina. Same pattern. This is colorado front range growth 1927 to 1997 with the first one is 1937, 1957 1977 1997. Same patterns. Independent of geography or culture. Baltimore 200 years 1790 to 1992, same pattern. These are the malignant images here we have a malignant melanoma a three dimensional irregular border and, as you can see one of the characteristics of a malignant melanoma not only have a raid in a three dimensional kind of thing. One of the characteristics of the cancer is the more irregular the border, more aggressive the tumor. The higher the rate of growth, the more aggressive the tumor. Look at these five images. Two of them represent cities. The other are cancer. Can you tell the difference . The one on the left is pulmonary carcinoma. The other on the right is the metastatic malignant carcinoma. The third is baltimore. The third is metastatic molina carcinoma. The fifth is a cluster five cities in south carolina. I look at this stuff, i cant repeat what i think. Not in play company. I was astounded and horrified by this. I is this but i really think it is . In the book at describe how this evolves. Im going back now to medical school. The first four of these characteristics of cancer where described in my book by anderson in pathology. Rapid uncontrolled growth. Destruction of adjacent normal tissues and good ecosystem. Dissing hall in the nation. Differentiation, execution of top substances. Progression a metastatic lesions grow faster. There is a long list to cater his tax now that we have some characteristics of cancer any two of the first four characteristics are cancer until proven otherwise. Cancer continues to grow until the host organism dies. What if the host organism for humans . The biosphere. In terms of growth declines just before the host organism dies. The human population has all the characteristics of a bullet neurological process on the planet. Has the same mathematical growth characteristics of a malignant process a. Brain mathematician is right here he can tell you about it and its all the characteristics of a super organism that is brilliant it is doubling every 40 to 50 years. There is a great catalog on ecologist named mulat who i have a great pleasure of meeting in barcelona. His respective ecological theory published in 1968, one of the first things that red one is working on this here is his picture of a negative feedback loop. The pressure on the ecosystem increases until finally there is a decline, negative feedback. Here is the population growth and crash in the early 20th century. One of the things that happened at this point in the early part , ariana have the little clicker but anyways here is where athena roosevelt said to me enough to protect in nature here in the United States. It. Took out all the predators the coyotes the jaguar was everything. Anything that would kill the deer. This is what happened to the deep population. It went through the roof. Then we have the capacity shown on the dotted line. The deer population crashed and it went below the carrying capacity. This is the population in biology schematic sketch of out of control growth followed by a population crash. Then there is a comparison in which the population stabilizes around the limit. This is where we are, right at the top of this. Thats where were. And anthropology and other sciences you have annotation and mail adaptation. Adaptation is getting along. The way of surviving. Through cultural adaptation humans have removed normal ecological limits to growth and expansion. Human has created positive feedback loops that eliminates limits to growth and make problems worth. These are malignant mal adaptations, in my formulation. We had a wonderful, brilliant, journalist named eric one of the things that he said was the real cause of problems is solutions. Its hot, you turn on the air conditioner, uses energy to make the outside hotter. So, my definition of homo ecophagus, the man who devours the ecosystem. The new species of man, homo ecophagus, it is a predatory of no echo features process. Engaged in the conversion of plants, animals, in organic and plant materials in the human via matt adapting adjuncts and supporting systems. Pogo said we have met the enemy and he is us. The next is another quote not yet. The difference between the humans and a cancer, we can think. We can decide not to be a cancer choices. We know what to do. Will we do it . The answer is indigo. At this time as a species we are choosing extinction. When he was in the eighth grade, our salon who have been listening to some of the stuff at home. Goes to middle school, eighth grade. 13 years old. He came home from class one day and asked me, what will be the limiting factor for the human population . Is there more important question . He puts with question right on the button. Now, i want to show you a few pictures of some of the species of places we are endangering. I want to go through this quickly because we are behind schedule here. Here are some supporters in the wilderness. Here is a greater speed crown in northern colorado. A mating ritual here. A peruvian jaguar a picture i took in 1985. All of these are my photographs i took this while on a wild encounter. Either scarlet and green shoulder to cause in a national park. This is one of the oxbo lakes and part of that pristine jungle. This is a red howler. This is a lion and africa. A total population down five to 10 from what it was 100 years ago. Here is a photograph of an emmy fish along the coral reefs the Great Barrier reef. This movie was showing me is blue feet. He decided that i was his next roddick attraction. He was trying to convince me to mate. The ease are arena grand as, it harassing about my wife shes inherent. They will go extinct. These are a way of albatrosses that goes out to one on these tonight. A fascinating and beautiful mating dance. Here are the two lovers are touching each other. These are king penguins on the shore of the south georgia and south atlantic near antarctica, which is being stored. This is a great eager and the Cypress Swamp and louisiana. This is why i sculpture near antarctica. This is a walrus hospitality committee. Coming over to see the green growth you are visiting their place. To say hello to us. This is one of my favorite photographs of my life. These are ivory goals during a courtship. This is in the norwegian antarctic off the island of im sorr y,this is a polar bear waiting for the next seal or maybe a grim go to all of the ship. Here are kitty in front of the glacier of this picture was taken in 2014. The glacier now is about one fourth of the size. Here are a chinstrap hangland near the end of south florida. A sticky geranium leaf, little elk and Rocky Mountain national park. Holy cross wilderness, crane taking off. The Sandhill Crane coming right at me. For aspen and the park in northern mexico. Fred aspen right by our home in the mountains in colorado. The maroon bell penguin. Absolutely charming creature change to check out the visiting green go on the island of magellan, or magellan first saw them. This is an imperial cormorant. Flaps down in a landing pattern coming in from landing with nasty material. Just right out of the airport. This is a wandering albatross with the largest wingspan in the world off the coast of georgia. Here is the albatross again an absolutely stunning bird on the galapagos. Now we are gonna wind this up now. We are going to get back to the beginning of this here i am sitting by almost a creek watching the fish trying to figure where to cast my line in 1945 on a trip that i made with my father in 1955. The summer before i graduated from high school. We had gone up to home state lake in 1955. A pristine grader lake left by the glaciers. Enough of the gorgeous place. I am going to be able to take my own children there. Now this was turned into an irrigation ditch for these cities around colorado springs. Two new water bluegrass lawns and golf courses. At the end of the book as an employer of a poem i want to read to you and then we will be done. This poem i went on this backpacking triple myself up into the headwaters of home state creek. And above what is now the reservoir. Above what used to be the lake we made out a night to go fishing. The dams in the area right above the lake. I went on this backpacking trip by myself. I walked over the edge and i could look down on this area where we used to go fishing. I went by myself. I got some finish. I thought about stuff, i had a book made read. When i got back home i wrote this poem which was called great bringer of death to paradise. Crossing the creek on a log, i looked down to study myself. The water run deep in clear below us, so cool to drink. Nothing better in the world. I am going to a place unknown, and then to a place in the past, to see the truth of what is gone and what is their. To know to feel the pain, to see the work of the great bringer of death in paradise. The bank is steeped, the thick it hides the step in place. Each step an act of faith. Takes all of my strength. The mountain doesnt care. The past rises up of the bold bottom by a blue lake. Bewildered that is wild i watch this guy for the suddenly goal crackle leaping bravely from cliff to cliff i create slowly across the litter careless knowns im lightning. Down down down the other side. There is a lake, theres two. That is not the one im heading for. Im heading for another and a ravaged place beyond. Now i find a quiet place and find a block to look out to see the splendid mountains in the monument if issue is hungry. Im at, i am fat. It cannibal full of an smelled eggs. Yet another native noble phrase. Blazed with tourists. Plays with the colors of the flaw. Shall i go or stay interest . Enjoy the comfort of this cold spot . Down, down, down i go. Down and clips to the valley floor. To see the wretched remains of what i knew. Rocks bleached bones. Skeletons shorn. Gray swamps and sparse mud death has come to paradise beneath the crater in the memory only lies meadows brooks beaver works telegraphs. The boys dream, a fathers loving teaching. Teaching. For weather and time working its way to make a corporate for the living. Staff have come to paradise. Untimely death, such as told, before the universe winds down. The bringer of death to paradise, inpatient, takes its coal. Back to the tattered remains of paradise. A quiet lake. So quiet. Bloody working to stay alive. Each chipmunk squeak, each chirp, each note of every bird. Every ripple of the lake. Up there on the mountainside somewhere on the timber coyotes shimmering falsetto echoes down the mountainside splashing off the rocks in a waterfall ripping sound. And courses to the mountain gods, a howell in the jungle. The animals together, we are here. To another language, and we get a much. And golden brown hungry trout, old, long, past knowing where to. Look matt up and wanted for prey. Mine only for a moment. One small trout swirls all the water in that classy lake. He will survive there. Does he know more than i . Morning sunshine through the velvet of bucks horn. They quietly step up to ask me. What is the strange creature that advances on us . Making this wheezing, gurgling, sound. What would they think . Putting in this so i am still for a moment. Browsing, looking, relaxing tense again. Hold my breath, dont move they watch me go about. Top the path, another woman. A hawk just overhead. Winning steady, not a sound but wind. There by a tundra pond. A lone coyote pop speck the other way. Cutting its quarry ripping heads up. Satisfied lies down. Laced down and links himself. What is the world trouble. Only if he is in the way of the great bringer of death. Death is coming to paradise. [applause] i think you have to say, that plays. I apologize for getting so motional. It is very difficult for me to think about that. This is not a pure intellectual endeavor, as you can see. So that is the main part of what i wanted to say. I wanted to see if there is anyone with questions that i can try to answer. [inaudible] is there anything that gives me hope . Well, lets put it this way. First of all, as i say, we can think and we can decide not to be a cancer. I think that there are lots and lots of people out there trying to do the right thing. I think there are lots of young people who understand this quite a few older people who understand, it also. I think the challenge is to elect people, public facials, the challenging is, as a society, choose leaders who understand that this is an existential crisis. The diagnosis of cancer. That is a bad diagnosis. The prognosis is very poor. We can change what we do. I dont know whether this can be changed. I really dont know. I think i have a number of colleagues who are very important and influential scientist who have been talking about this project kates. Here we are. We in colorado have had the great good fortune of having some wonderful, fantastic, political leaders from Boulder County all the way into governor to National Federal officials. We have also had some clunker. Weve had some great people in congress trying to do stuff about this with limited success. If you look at how the republicans struggled to elect their own leader a few weeks ago it was a towering display of political incompetence, sniffling cowardice, and hostage taking. It is hard to have confidence that our institutions can really respond to this. Putin trying to start world war iii. Brazil we have balsam not a whos objective it was to destroy the amazon. He destroyed a lot of it. Even though the brazilians kicked him out, about a third of it is already gone. I think that we have an existential crisis. Im sure youve all heard that before. Im sure this is true. The problem maybe much worse than we thought. I think, as a society, as all human societies must make these changes right now. We are at a time. I think, i cant overstate that, i, basically, a positive optimistic person. I would like to say that there is hope. We can change this. But im not so sure. I think the main thing is we can make ourselves aware of these problems. The interconnectedness of all of this and try to make changes. I think our own political system is not very responsive. A new chairman of the Energy Committee is joe manchin, whose family fortune comes from false fuels. As i said the governor of ohio just declared that methane of the green energy. Come on, the laws of physics and biology do not matter to these people. Im not so sure what the answers are in just how much hope there is. I do think that we are heading for the cliffs. Some people have their foot on the accelerator. Mr. Hern, i appreciate your message this evening. This is the first time of my. You i was curious to know, i realize that we cant really control overpopulation, but we can control what the population does to the earth. Hard in maine. Could you speak a little more slowly. Mr. Hern, i was curious to know, we cant control population. We can control what the population does to the earth. What is your opinion on how we can do that successfully . In the first place, the second part of your statement is certainly true. We can control what we consume and how we manage our resources. That is absolutely critical. I think what we have lots of good ideas on how to do that. What we will do is another question. The statement that we can control population may be true. But the tools that we have one hand are not very complicated. We can help people control on a voluntary basis their own fragility with access to contraception and also active obviously, the reason we are surrounded by heavily armed police right now is talking about a lot of . [inaudible] in you hear me . Is this better . Can you hear me now . Okay so one of the things i talked about in the book the critical need to limit population growth. As long as a human provision of growing, there is no hope of solving these problems. The rate of population growth is slowing but except the base is so large, and cancers the cancer slows down its growth just before the host organism dies. This is not comforting. Minus the fact that a lot of the fact some of these doctors are my best friends but they are not true. I think that we cant accept and deal that there is no possibility of limiting population growth with a very tiny fraction of the u. S. Military budget, we can get voluntary fertility controlled every family on the planet. It would have to include all methods. Not just a few things. One of my very dear friends, a guy named malcolm pot. The first president to International Planned Parenthood Federation back in the 60s. A british physician. Every day and he accomplished a Health Program in thailand. Back in the 70s. They dropped their average number of from seven to 1. 2. This was a spectacular success. There is successful, can be done. The american delegate to the International Conference on population. In cairo egypt in 1994. The american Public Health association. I gave a paper on the Public Health aspects of unsafe abortion in the world. Talked about how many tens of thousands of women. Hundreds of thousands of women die from unsafe abortion in childbirth every year. The muslim brotherhood, the ones that killed in warsaw. They got rightly facing said, when you raided i . Because i talked about abortion. We cant do much about that. I am a physician. Ive been taking care of people, women in particular, for decades and decades. I have met very few women who want to have more than one or two children. If they can have access to some kind of fertility control, they take it. There is tremendous resilience to that in the case of abortion in United States. Opposition is violent. The antiabortion fanatics, the policies to kill the doctors and they do. They say do what we tell you to do, or we kill. You and then do. My colleagues have been assassinated. Others who have helped them evidence estimated. One of my best friends were shot to death in the lobby of the heaviest rain church because he said he didnt need security at church. They wouldnt bother him a church. This is a violent, fascist, movement. They have control of the republican party. That is one of the two major parties in the country. How you find hope and that is difficult for me to see. I wanted to say, we have choices. We can make different voices. Yes . They i wondered if you could talk just a little more about this journey that this poem does beautifully. When clearly started a looking at the maps earlier, is an analogy that became more and more of a reality, not a metaphor. You saw that very early on. Decades before many others. Although some of your fellow scientists did. I wonder if you could talk about that and the reality. And you say, people did not die from metaphors. The fact is, people are dying from climate change. I wonder if you could talk about that transition for yourself to know we had a point the world where more people can recognize that. That is an excellent question. A mom, complicated, answer. Its in the book. But i would say that when i first encountered these ideas, from various sources, and i began to realize and i was looking at what was, clearly, 1 million process i also looked at all of the literature on the use of metaphor in the formation of scientific hypothesis. Its a very rich history. Metaphor is different from an analogy. Which does not have the same role. Metaphor has been very important. And talk about the metaphor of the field assistants, about being an idea of the more faulty of an atom. Back there over 100 years ago. What i would say is one of my first chart of thinking about this, i started visualizing the. As i started writing about in trying to formulate it, i was really horrified by the media. I think this is an important idea. I discovered that other people thought about it. They dismissed it as an analogy. I began to see on of the characteristics that you list for a malignant process. We had all of them. It wasnt just one or two. Trained as a physician, i began to say, as a physician you have a patient who is sick. You have to rule out that someone pain in the abdomen and you rule out ovarian cysts and other things. All these other diagnoses that you allow. We need look at this, in fact i heard a lecture by in my car the ski scottish psychologist. Quoting idly saying that he flew over the country and said one person from out of face looks like it says that looks like the earth has some kind of disease. Wait a minute, if we are disease, what is the model . India plans to do the . Considerable . Right away, neoplus moms mike. Im sorry. I have a lot of time blood to me. I move when i talk. You know . I think obviously the thing is we characteristic that i mentioned of cancer, rapid uncontrolled growth. Invasive destruction. Adjacent tissue. So on. At that point i began to see that this is a real diagnosis. It was very terrifying. Ive got on to this idea and i was so upset i didnt do anything except for a certain share and think about it for three days. What does it mean for us . Who would listen to me . Why would anyone listen to what i had to say . Im just a doctor, im not a scientist. But, i began pursuing it. Every place i looked i found evidence of this. Still, once you see this, you can see it happening in many places. Seeing is believing. Believing is seeing. You are either aware of this. You see the patterns, or you dont. I would like to be proven wrong. I state that in the book. I dont know whether this is true. I hope its not. Because it is a terminal diagnosis. The amino, many wonderful things on this earth that ive enjoyed. I want others to continue to enjoy. It we have killed off 95 of all the wildlife in the world. Lot of that in the past 150 years. And every day is a torrent of bad news. They are building a railroad through southern mexico. One of the most pristine parts of central america. And ecuador, they have a natural preserve like a national park. They are putting Oil Drilling Platforms in the middle of it. It goes on and on. If you see the news, you see. That im saying that all of this fits this pattern, from what i can see. That is my have offices. That is my theory. I really like to be proven wrong. To be proven wrong, we have to do a lot of things differently. Getting there is a political problem. Yes . I have heard part of two of your interview. One with National Public radio, i think it was. And this morning on kten you. They are so astonishingly useful. I am really interested in the general media picking them up. I dont know how to get to that. Im sorry, youre interested in what . Trying to encourage discussion. Im sorry, youre interested in why . I am interested in the general media picking up your interviews. So that people wont discuss your ideas. Thank you. I appreciate that. I hope that they do. It is a long shot. I think just being here is part of the process of making people aware of this. I understood that cspan have been covering this. I havent talked to them, maybe they. Are i think the book is being widely published and distributed. Advertised and i think that the publisher has done their part, which has been extraordinary. Somebody in the major media has to pick this up and say, this is worth reading. And one of the good things that happened to his march back off here in boulder, a great person. Well known and very eloquent. Mark has a column in psychology today. Mark saw the review of done by the see you. Bayer evans, klay evans. About my book and mark called me up and wanted to do an interview about my book. There is published in psychology today. I saw this morning. He said, it gets a lot of hits. It is getting speculation. If you go on the internet, he put homo ecophagus in there, you will see a lot of places. I dont know. It is hard to know whether people are really gonna take this seriously. Some people do, some people dont. We have many important new stories that people really dont take seriously. For which there is no adequate political response. I can say that i agree with you. And i hope it does happen. Dr. Herman, last question . James, yes. Dr. Herman, what do you prescribe for the healing of this disease on the planet . If you could prescribe someone and they would follow the course, what would you recommend . What is your solution . Even a solution to the problem. Excellent question. I am not sure about the answer the only thing i can say as a point out in the book, our total dependence on fossil fuels has to end. We have to stop using fossil fuels or energy. It is a suicide pact. The and we have to stop raising animals for food. I document in the book the enormous amounts of space used for cattle pastures for example. It is about the size of the total africa in south america. It is astounding. Brilliant scientists in stanford have done a number of studies showing the human transformation of the earth. We have 0. 01 of the bio mass on the planet. We are wiping out the rest of it. I think we have to look, first of all, look at ourselves and who we are, what we are as a species. Think about how can we change what we are doing . One of the things is the stop using fossil fuel. The Counter Point that is an incredible movie by jeff gibbs and michael more, planted of humans. I recommend everyone who sees. Jeff go through and shows all of these efforts to use alternative energy sources, which use enormous amounts of energy to create. They require digging for a rare materials and stuff like that. That is not necessarily the solution. One of the things that must happen for us to survive is the number of humans on this planet must diminish. If we dont make decisions that are remaining rational to help limit fertility and diminish the number of humans, nature will do it for us. And epidemiological terms we are a standing motto culture crop. We are very vulnerable to diseases. We just had what is a relatively mild epidemic of covid. Certainly not mild for the people who died of it and having experience myself it was not mild but compared to smallpox and all this stuff is pretty mild we are a candidate something will wipe out hundreds of millions of human beings Global Warming is going to rapidly get to the point where human beings are not adapted to the level of heat. People will be dying by very large numbers. I think we are in an effort situation. We have to figure out a way to do that. All of us have our homes, lives to leagues. We need things in our daily lives. We can no longer go out and raise our own food. Path of the river to catch fish. They are stuck. Its going to take a lot of ingenuity. I dont think i know the answer. You yourself are brilliant architect. You Design Energy efficient buildings. That is part of the answer. I happen to live in an old house that is energy deficient. Built in a time when the contractor, builders, and said the 16inch starts in the walls they would say, where do you feel like having the stud . It was like, they built sewer systems not understanding that the water runs downhill. All that stuff comes out of your house and goes into the sewer. We have to stick around how to build how to build our cities in homes in ways that are more efficient. There are lots of brilliant people who have given many, many, volumes and answer to this question. One of them is my friend, lester brown. He used to watch and he could Read Everything that leicester were. It is extraordinarily good. Here we are, okay. There is a long list of brilliant people. I dont have the answers. My purpose in this book was not to provide an answer to the question. To raise the question and to show what we are as a species at this point in history. It is alarming. I am afraid that i can only make a few suggestions. Thank you very much. Youre welcome. Can we take one more question back there . Okay. Thank you. So, another round of applause for dr. Hern. I the cspan bookshelf podcast makes it easy for you to listen to all of cspans podcast and future nonfiction books and one place. Discover new authors and ideas. Each week we are making it convenient for you to the multiple episode with critically acclaimed authors discussing history, biography, current events, and culture. From our signature program, about books. Afterwards, booknotes and q a. Listen to cspans bookshelf today. You can find all of our podcast on the free cspan now mobile video app and on our website cspan dot org. Weekends on cspan two are an intellectual feast. 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