Two fellows named Ed lit up the cause of wildlife last Wednesday night, a cause a clean energy policy can advance. I sat right between them at the Defenders of Wildlife dinner. One Ed was genius at humor, the other Ed in sciences. Together, this duo would inspire the most jaded to join the environmental effort.
The humorist Ed, Ed Asner, got the audience howling with a riotously bawdy take of the time he went to Yellowstone Park to support a wolf reintroduction program and ended up in a pack of howling politicians, braying in an attempt to call in wolves that simply were not there. When finally told there were not actually any wolves in the park, he questioned why they had gone to a park to howl for wolves that weren’t there and asked: “What, were we just supposed to be the bait? Or are you supposed to bring your own wolf when you come to the park, sort of a B.Y.O.W. Party?”
This Ed has been lending his talents to the cause of wildlife for decades. Here is a case of humor helping species that don’t have much to laugh about.
The second Ed, E. O. ‘Ed” Wilson is, of course, the father of biodiversity. His life’s work, from his finding the fire ant at age 13 to his multiple books detailing the complex skein of life that underpins us all, has given the world a true understanding of the beauty and necessity of diversity in the biosphere. In addressing eh centrality of diversity, he paid homage to the wolf that adorns the Defender’s organization’s logo and other “mega fauna.” But he identified the insect as his true passion, and called them “my constituents, all 10,000 trillion of them.”
It was shocking to hear him say that man has identified perhaps only 10% of the species on earth in this period of mass extinction. He has now started a massive project to digitally collate all knowledge pertaining to each known species. It is depressing to think of how many pages of this “book of life” are now being torn out, permanently, as the result of an archaic energy policy that is letting global warming run amok.
Two Eds, each who had brought their own talents to the table of sustaining life. They inspired others in the room to bring their own as well. On top of that, they both autographed the very first copy of the Apollo’s Fire book ever published, that I just happened to have with me. That’s a good night!
