Wisdom Of Roger Payne

I find myself at 88 years of age, very close to the end of a long life, coming to terms with the fact that I will not be around to find out what we learn. But what I can tell you is why this monumental journey of discovery matters.

The way I see it, the most consequential scientific discovery of the past 100 years isn’t E = mc2 or plate tectonics or translating the human genome. These are all quite monumental, to be sure, but there’s one discovery so consequential that unless we respond to it, it may kill us all, graveyard dead. It is this: every species, including humans, depends on a suite of other species to keep the world habitable for it, and each of those species depends in turn on an overlapping but somewhat different suite of species to keep their niche livable for them.

But there’s a problem here. No one can even name all the essential supporting species, let alone describe their full roles. We do know that some of the most essential species are microscopic plants and animals that we kill, unintentionally, by the trillions. But we know so little about them, they don’t even have common names, just Latin names. And many are unknown, unnamed, and undescribed species.

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The challenge now is figuring out how to motivate ourselves and our fellow humans to make species preservation our highest calling—something we will never cut corners on, delay, postpone, diminish, or defund.

How can we get this idea across to the whole world? Inspiration is the key. Antoine de Saint-Exupery, the author of The Little Prince, understood this and how to use it positively when he wrote: ”If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up the men to gather wood, divide up the work, and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea.”

I believe that awe-inspiring life-forms like whales can focus human minds on the urgency of ceasing our destruction of the wild world. Many of humanity’s most intractable problems are caused by disregarding the voices of the Other—including non-humans.

- I Spent My Life Saving the Whales. Now They Might Save Us