photo by Keith Griner
Mickey Hart has penned an opinion piece for CNN.com on the very real danger we face of killing off many of the living things on Earth, which is disrupting what the Grateful Dead drummer calls “nature’s rhythms.”
“My fascination with the rhythms of our planet—and the universe beyond—goes way back, and exploring them has always been a passion for me in my long, strange musical journey, which began with the Grateful Dead more than five decades ago,” Hart writes. “It has also led me to the realization of how closely our universal soundscape is tied to nature and its voices. As an artist, I have had no choice but to become a passionate environmentalist and an active preservationist of the natural world.”
The drummer goes on to describe his visit with Professor E.O. Wilson and their conversation about the worldwide declining population of non-human animals as the population of humans continues to increase. Hart also explains his own work attempting to capture and amplify “the sonic resonance of the universe” and wraps up with a warning:
“My time with Dr. Wilson brought me to a revelation—that our destruction of this planet is entirely arrhythmic, the opposite of creation. We have lost our groove, lost our place in the grand musical composition called life. Like Dr. Wilson, and so many others, I am concerned about the creeping and devastating impacts of climate change on the biodiversity and basic ecosystem functions of our planet. If this continues, we’ll lose everything: we’ll lose home, we’ll lose Earth.”
Read the full article here.
This Saturday, May 18, Hart will appear at the Concert to Heal the Planet, which will help launch Earth’s Call, a new nonprofit that is “dedicated to finding and funding innovative solutions to fight the climate crisis.” The event will be streamed live from Aspen, CO, starting at 7 p.m. MT.
4 Comments comments associated with this post
Dan
May 20, 2019 at 3:23 pmIf you breathe air, drink water or eat food, you should support ending burning fossil fuels. Without drastic action to stop greenhouse gas pollution, humans will soon not be able to breathe, drink or eat. This is a scientifically proven fact, not a mere hypothesis.
Dan
May 20, 2019 at 3:17 pmIf you breathe air, drink water or eat food, you should support ending burning fossil fuels. Without drastic action to stop greenhouse gas pollution, humans will soon not be able to breathe, drink or eat. This is a scientifically proven fact, not a mere hypothesis: https://climate.nasa.gov/scientific-consensus/
Wyatt Marshall
May 17, 2019 at 7:34 pmDear Mickey, you’re heart is in the right place, but I find the idea of climate control as rather contrary to that of respecting Earth’s natural rhythms. Earth’s climate has always been changing, however its historical changes don’t bode well for humans. Humans, I feel, would rather control Earth’s climate from changing or from naturally responding to us. Sea level rise isn’t catastrophic to the Earth, it’s only catastrophic to humans due to our material possessions, our coastal cities and waterfront properties. However, maybe that should be the aim, to control climate change in effort to avoid human loss and inconvenience? Maybe. What’s the worse that could happen? We start tinkering with climate driving variables like CO2 levels and the Earth responds by accelerating into a deep freeze? Who knows, maybe? There certainly can be amplification effects. That’s what carbon theory is based on anyway, the idea that increases in a trace gas, namely CO2 or carbon dioxide, can produce disproportionately signficant changes to the overall system. However, I cant fully buy that simply the addition or subtraction of CO2 can control Earths climate like a thermostat. Earths climate system is so complex that this seems hard to buy. Especially since Earth already uses weather to cool itself from the greenhouse gas effect. Sure without the greenhouse gases Earth would be a ball of ice but without weather, especially cloud cover in the tropics, Earth would be around 135 degrees on average, far too hot to sustain life. So I think we are part of nature and so are all the gases and Earth is and will respond naturally to us and it may very well be inconvenient. Furthermore, it doesn’t seem wise to rush in to acting on a theory that would essentially allow world governments to place limits on CO2 and thereby create a new commodity literally out of thin air-which would only drive the price of energy through the roof, devastating world economies and hurting the poor the most in the end. I’m all for taking action to clean up the planet, but let’s start with sure things like getting all the garbage out of the water. Climate control just seems to, I don’t know, resonate with a certain air of hubris. And that’s not clean air either.
Mickey Hart Writes CNN Opinion Piece on “Nature’s Rhythms” and the Necessity of Conservation Efforts – Learning from Nature
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