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 seas