Good evening. Welcome here to the saint julien. Thank you all for coming. Im asking cash. Cash from the boulder bookstore. And we appreciate everybody coming out. And im sure dr. Hern does, too. So i want to do a brief introduction before we bring him out. Dr. Warren hern, a boulder physician and epidemiologist who has conducted an anthropological academic Graphic Research in the peruvian amazon among the peabo, a native of amazonian people. Since 1964. He professor adjunct in the department of anthropology at the university of colorado, boulder and is a member of the clinical faculty at the university of colorado anschutz medical campus. His Scientific Research and reports concerning human ecology, human fertility, demography, population matters and abortion have been published in a wide variety of International Scientific journals. In 1973, dr. Hern was the founding medical director of the first private nonprofit Abortion Clinic in colorado. Which opened in boulder in november 1973. And he opened. And he opened his private medical Practice Boulder abortion. On january 22nd, 1975. So almost was that 38 years ago, almost to the day for 48 years, 48 years . Yes. Dr. Hern is the chairman and of the Holy Cross Wilderness defense fund, which stopped the homestake to water diversion project, would have destroyed the holy cross by diverting most of the wilderness water to the lawns and golf courses of Colorado Springs and aurora. Dr. Hern been a professional photographer for 70 years, specializing photojournalism and natural subjects. 67 of his photographs are featured in his new book, eco eco vegas, a deep diagnosis. Diagnosis to save the earth and the are really quite amazing in book. The boulder bookstore is proud to offer dr. Hearns book at this event, so the book is discounted 10 off tonight at the table over there. And dr. Hearn will sign after his talk and. Hell be signing at the table over there. But i want to welcome dr. Hearn. A round of applause for. One of boulders finest citizens, dr. Warren hern. What. Thank you, are from all. Thank you so much. There are a lot of people that i love in my life that are here and i thank you for being here. Yeah, i think i want to thank you all for being here. Thank you. That introduction and im honored that you take the time out of your life for the evening to. Be here to learn about my book and which, you know, i hope you find interesting. And were going have a good time. Talk about this a little bit. I have so wonderful friends here that i cant call them all out sensei. He mentioned arson mentioned the the clinic that we opened here in 1973. I want to point out, marilyn is here. Marilyn was, a member of the board of directors for that clinic. Marilyn wanted to stand up for sick. So i want to honor her. Shes been with us that time. So. The first thing id like to do is to thank the boulder bookstore for sponsoring this event. This is a very, very important event for certainly for me and i and i hope that you all feel that you spent your will in coming to hear this this thing. And so the other thing is that i want to thank kirby olson and the st hotel for the really superb work and arranging all of this, making sure this happens right. And its very impressive job theyve done and i want to thank them for it. Yes, they really fantastic. I want thank dean burke and camp. Please stand up. Dane. Dane is publisher. He represent rutledge routledge. And this book wouldnt have happened without his constant support and, encouragement and help. So eternally grateful for dean. His superb publisher and, writer and and a knowledge of the literary and publishing. So thank you for being here. Dean and the other thing i want to do is, as thank the off duty Boulder Police who are here to protect all of us. They they risk their lives every day. And its it is quite strange that in boulder, colorado, we have to have a heavily armed police to protect us in a book event. But here we are. And they then the original intent of this, of course, because of the work that i do in my day job and helping women have safe abortions, im on the hit list and a number of my colleagues have been assassinated, including one of my best friends. So we didnt want to make an opportunity for somebody to get famous evening, and we dont want to be part of tomorrow mornings mass shooting news. So here we are and well protected and very secure and. And i thank you for for being here. The what i want to do here is first i want to talk a little bit about how this book happened, why i wrote it and and how i got to some of the ideas that are in the book. And im going to talk about the im going to give some examples within that the the the origins this book really long, long time ago you read about some of them in the book. The first third of the book is about experiences that i had in my life that helped me get to the point of seeing what im talking about in this book. And it is a truly horrible idea that the human species become malignant process on the planet. Its much more complicated than that. But in any case. But i began looking at some of these issues back in the sixties 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 work in amazon, two years of the peace corps physician in brazil and observations in this country as well as latin america. And so i describe some of that in the book. Ill touch on it a little bit here. So thats the first third of the book. The second third of the book is manifestations of this malignancy were talking about, both in the local small habitat level and the global. So we go with the zoom lens from the trails and the forest in the wilderness to what doing to the planet. So thats scope and obviously there are lots of examples and information there, but you have to leave out a lot of stuff. But to get the idea then the third part of the book is analysis and policy choices and going to touch on that to im going to begin by showing some slides to of a little bit of an introduction, im then going to read a section of the book that gives a very interesting, i think, microcosm example of what we would call a cultural ecology and an anthropology. The way that human beings interact with their environment and their cultures are adapted to the environment what they do about that. And here we a situation where its not just people, indians with whom i work and began work in 1964 and still work with them family now at this point but but theyre there being subjected to the forces of western and the Industrial Society and how these things turned out and that particular little part of the amazon and then im going to show the rest of the slides would give you a little bit more graphic idea of how i got to this idea and you see my my observations and reasoning and then at that point im going to show you some the species that we are threatening threatening as a species. And the last part will be a poem that the book that i wrote years ago after i made a backpacking trip and the part of the Holy Cross Wilderness that had the had not been affected by this this dam project and went to the place where father and i used to go to fish. 75 years ago, 70 years ago. And so think that so you get a little bit of sense, a snapshot. So so what id like to is begin and i hope i can run this a complicated machine here. Okay. Ive a lot of world class scientists come with this kind of problem. So heres the title of title cover of the book. Dean shows us this photograph, which was similar to one that i had seen and wanted in the book earlier. And i think its very expressive of the anguish of the wildlife, other species and let me first explain that the title figures is my new name for the human species. It means the man who devours, the ecosystem and. Thats what we are doing. And a deep diagnosis save the earth. What an idea. This is. Im making a diagnosis. This is not an analogy. Nobody ever died from an analogy. So this is diagnosis and theres a prognosis and there are things we can do. But in any case, so the the point is that we are now no longer homeless sapiens sapiens wise wise man. Were not wise. Obviously were the most misnamed species. The planet. And we are a new species which is really essentially a planetary or a super organism that has the malignant characteristics. Thats what were doing now to go on from here, the first thing im going to do, theres a theres a preface that has several quotations. And the first one is a an anthropologist named lauren eisley. And theres some some work in the book that that shows a little bit how i got acquainted with some of his stuff. He wrote something incredibly eloquent that really summarizes what were talking about a long time ago. Lets see, what, 60 years ago or Something Like that. And here, an isolated statement it is with the coming of man that a vast whole seems open in nature, a vast black whirlpool, faster and faster, consuming flesh, stone soil minerals, sucking down the lightning wrenching power from the atom until the ancient sounds of nature art are drowned, and the cacophony, something which is no longer nature, something instead, which is and knocking at the worlds heart, something demonic and no longer plan escaped as it may be spewed out of nature, contending in a final giant game against its master. One of my friends was the great photographer porter, who was a master photographer. I began his career as a physician a chemical engineer, helped to go kodachrome brilliant photographer. If you see the sierra club calendars, thats the legacy of eliot porter. We were good friends and we were we were talking about this idea one time while visiting him and to ski in new mexico a long time ago. And eliot, listen to this. He says its too simple well. We talked about parsimony in. Parsimony and scientific basis and. Then he made the saving man is an apparition. The next is from our son fernando when he was in the fourth grade. And what are your Elemental School in boulder . And we were had been talking about pollution, all those sorts of things. And i was giving fernando a ride in the car because it was a very cold winter day. And so often we walked, but not always. And sitting back there in the little seat they have four kids. And he started 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, walter hickel, John Kennedys secretary of the interior and had been governor of alaska and hes famous for saying we cant just let nature wild. Makes me think of the Current Governor of ohio who declared the other day that methane is a Green Energy Source again. So margaret rankle is a for the New York Times who i do not know personally, but who writes eloquently for the New York Times. A lot of variety subjects. And one of her columns i saw we have been waging unceasing war against nature for entire history of humanity. You will read about that in my book book. So whats problem . Uncontrolled Global Warming. A loss of global ocean warming and acidifying ocean atmospheric pollution accumulating trash and all toxic waste and the environment continuing growth of the human population. 8 billion and counting. Thats short list. The list of horribles does not. Why this is happening . What is the origin . What are the dynamics of these events changes . How long has been going on . So those are some of the questions i ask and try to answer in the book. Now lets go to the microcosm that spoke about small scale deforestation in the amazon basin and. Then we can subtitle this human ecology ecological consequences. So this is from a section, the book in chapter 13 as a fourth Year Medical Student in 1964, i worked for six months in the peruvian amazon basin. During part of that time i conducted health study of a native amazonian people Indian Village called paul cochin, which is located which was located on an oxbow lake, a culture and getaway called near the l. A. River, the main tributary of amazon, the lake and ancient River Channel of the meandering ogallala was separated from the river in current channel by band of low ground. About 100 meters wide. The people lived a subsisting economy as they had thousands of years fishing in the river and lakes, gathering and hunting in the forest and forest materials worker in the canoes wood for houses and other necessities. There was not much, and that was gained by selling food or Forest Products to passing boat crews or merchants. But paul kocher had a small herd of cattle, an animal native to the amazon, and not adapted to survive. There without human assistance. Why. At the hospital where i had worked a medical student running the hospital for a while, a german who had was a refugee communist, east germany was an administrator here she hated communism she saw that you people are natives as ripe targets for communist infiltration subversion and domination and her determination to keep from happening. She decided to capitalists out of the people unaware that as you people and other native americans had carried out capitalist trading arrangements with other tribes for thousands of years before the idea of capitalism occurred to anyone in europe and that many of their societies held true Communal Property ownership. Her plan for turning the ship into capitalist was to give them a herd of cattle with one bull whose was maximo, and several cows. The plan was for maximo and his women to make lots little calves that the people could at a profit and then pay back the hospital then they would get milk from the cows get calcium and other from the milk and sell the milk milk at a profit. They would then what it was like to be happy capitalist use the better to fend off the scourge communism and the heart of the peruvian. But to take care of this herd. The people of camp culture had to cut down a lot of old growth forests 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 provided the people power culture with many resources. There were several problems this plan. First the ship people were unable to drink milk most their digestion wasnt suited for it and they didnt like it. Most adult humans beings cant drink milk. Second, they got a lot of calcium anyway by eating fish every morning that had been heavily scored with a machete for assaulting it, thereby making the tiny bones digestible. The people didnt need milk for calcium, which also got from other foods. Third, maximo the wrong name on. Many minimo would have been better since none of the got pregnant. He wasnt up to it. No passion was a major problem. However, it was the deforestation caused by making a pasta for the cattle who werent much use in the first place, cutting down the trees next to the river made it easier for the river to erode the bank on the brava or cut bank. The channel is deep and the water is swift. This is what happened to the deforested and it threatened the village. The Forest Products needed by. People in the village were no longer available. A few steps away, the forest gone. Marks were more was shipped back up to the hospital by dugout canoe, which constantly filled to overflowing during the three day journey upriver after digesting his diet of plantains, his final and dignity was that he was turned into a very tough joy to rascals. But the hospital dining room, the cows were sold to river merchants. The better to find virile suitors. The erosion process accentuated by the deforestation, accelerated the process of a changing River Channel. Elimination of the band between placid lake and the river, elimination of the lake, after which the village was name and which contained lots of fish further erosion of the village land on the banks of the river. Severe flooding that made the village and ultimately relocation of the village to somewhat Higher Ground upstream where priceless forest 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 for within community lands. There was a section of high ground upstream by culture that was for hunting in the wet season because it was not intended. Men went there with bows and spears and sometimes shotguns to deer, white live peccary colored peccary or large rodents such as the agouti birds and other game for food. This was critical resource because fishing difficult to impossible during high water season in 1974. During one of my every five Year Research visit to our culture, i learned that some of the village authorities made a deal to sell the timber on the high ground up the river for a few dollars. I them that this was a bad deal for many reasons first it would eliminate their hunting ground. Second, the deforestation of this could produce a more severe of erosion and River Channel that could threaten the village. Third, i told them that the machines that would be brought in for cutting the timber cost unimaginable hundreds of thousands of dollars each. The timber was worth a lot more than they received, which was about enough to buy a few minutes worth of gasoline for one of the machines. But the deal was made. Five years later. My research scheduled for culver and other sciences and Health Studies village. On arriving learned that some of the people had already moved Higher Ground where the timber was being taken and heres what it looked. You know theres there theres the culprit theyre actually the owners the culprit. Okay. Im sure women. Okay, heres what heres what it looks like. So so the timber that was taken included rare and valuable tropical hardwoods worth millions of dollars, some of the trees, had trunk diameters of up to three meters. They were centuries old in 1983, returning for another trip through 1984. Our quarters were in the village health. Most of the newly