On the night we arrived at a lodge in the Adirondack Mountains recently, we heard the haunting wail of a loon swelling from across the lake. And then, from a bit further away, came a responding cry. It was an enchanting welcome to the wilderness, and a romantic one: Loons make their nests as pairs, signaling to their mates as they search for food and shelter, seemingly offering an assurance of their abiding presence.
The common loon is an elegant large bird, about a yard long on the water, its boldly checked and striped plumage in black, white and gray making it the best-dressed at any fowl conclave. (By the way, ducks congregate in flocks, but a gathering of loons is called, much more colorfully, an asylum.) The bright red eyes of the loon in this season seem to miss nothing; it’s how they can spot a fish deep in the lake, which they dive to catch for dinner, often disappearing for long moments beneath the surface, only to emerge far across the water.
Loons appeared in North America during the Miocene epoch, which ended more than five million years ago – so they are survivors. But their population has been fluctuating lately, and now loons are at risk in many regions due to lakeshore development, pesticide use and, of course, human-induced climate change. The powerful storms that are increasingly common flush loons’ watery homes with bits of material from plants and animals, as well as fertilizer and pet waste, and cloud the clarity of lakes, which makes it harder for the loons to find food.
Scientists say that climate change doesn’t threaten the loon with extinction – at least, not yet – but it does mean they’re likely to become more scarce among us. A creature that predates homo sapiens by millions of years reminds us of the value of adaptability.
We humans, by comparison, are a young species, but our survival seems to be directly linked to our ability to think creatively — so that when threats faced our ancestors, they could imagine survival strategies. Some scientists say that humans are the most adaptive species of any that ever existed.
That outlook is reassuring to a point. That is, we may take comfort from knowing that our descendants generations and even ages from now will benefit because of our species’ ability to find a way to survive, even if scientists’ most dire predictions about the dangers of human-caused climate change come true.
Maybe that’s why the Republican Party platform this year makes no mention of climate change – and why a top environmental official in Donald Trump’s administration has assured us that since climate change is, in his words, “a problem that doesn’t exist,” a second Trump term wouldn’t engage in fighting it. The Republican-led House in recent years passed bills to allow more pollution from diesel trucks, to open more federal lands to oil drilling, and to strip protections for imperiled species. The notorious Project 2025 plan for a Republican administration advocates gutting federal support for clean energy conversion and eliminating the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Trump has labeled climate warnings as “nonsense” and a “hoax;” in his standard stump speech, he routinely minimizes the risk by citing fake statistics that are off by more than 1,000 percent.
In that, Trump is blindfolding his loyal followers to not just the threat of climate change, but also to the potential that humans have to adapt to changes around us – that is, the opportunity we still have to thrive. He’s asking us to cast aside our species’ great blessing, namely, our reasoning power, which means we can grasp the implications of turning away from reality.
There’s a political rationale to the don’t-worry-be-happy camp, because an effective effort to slow climate change will cost trillions of dollars and require lifestyle changes throughout advanced societies. It’s not an agenda that wins easy support from voters. But the United Nations describes climate change as “the defining issue of our time.” Already, 3.6 billion people are vulnerable to food and water insecurity. In just the next quarter-century, unless we take aggressive action, climate change will leave billions more at risk of famine and disease. That’s the future we’re being asked to accept by turning away from the knowledge and reasoning power our species has developed.
Back to the common loon, then. Lacking the intelligence of humans, the loon’s choices are more limited. It can respond to the threat posed by climate change, for example, only by fleeing its worst effects – so that in generations to come, it will likely abandon its nesting areas in the Adirondacks for more suitable sites, probably further north.
You may consider that regrettable but hardly tragic. Yet the cry of the loon across a mountain lake these days ought to inspire a deeper response. It could remind us that humans have the capacity to change the reality of their environment, to shape a future that is hospitable for our descendants and for the natural world that is now in our care. It is not just a pragmatic choice; it is a moral one – and the haunting sound of the loon could be an inspiration for our action, rather than a cause of eventual regret for our remorselessness.
Rex Smith, the co-host of The Media Project on WAMC, is the former editor of the Times Union of Albany and The Record in Troy. His weekly digital report, The Upstate American, is published by Substack.
The views expressed by commentators are solely those of the authors. They do not necessarily reflect the views of this station or its management.