PBS Double Feature: April 2023
It’s no surprise that I’m a huge nerd who appreciates many things in life, and one of those things is PBS. One of my cherished pastimes is dialing in to my local PBS station on Wednesday evenings to enjoy the double feature of Nature and NOVA. This week’s programming was magnificent. Both episodes are fully available on YouTube.
The Hummingbird Effect | Full Episode | NATURE | PBS
Weathering the Future | Full Documentary | NOVA | PBS
We started with Nature, “The Hummingbird Effect.” With breathtakingly beautiful cinematography capturing the Costa Rican microclimates, we got an inside look into the life of the diverse hummingbirds. You know I’m a sucker for birds, and hummingbirds are among my favorite order. Their plumage is so pretty with structural coloration leading to vibrant iridescence. The mechanics of their wings, unlike any other bird in the world, allow them to hover in flight. This comes at an extreme energy cost, so they must constantly feed on flower nectar. This need drives fierce competition among these tiny birds, and it’s apparent these avians embody their ancestry from dinosaurs. I often see hummingbirds zoom around my neighborhood, fighting for control over my neighbor’s feeders. It can get even more intense in the jungles despite the diversity of both plants and birds. The hummingbird co-evolved alongside flowering plants, and some species have specialized into symbiosis based on beak and flower geometry. The pollination service the birds provide enables the bounty of forest fruits, which supports a lot of life in the ecosystem, from birds like the macaw and the quetzal to monkeys like the capuchin and howler. These animals in turn spread the seeds, closing the loop and enabling successive generations. They even showed us the rare mangrove hummingbird, whose job is to ensure the propagation of a plant network that forms essential coastal infrastructure.
Speaking of infrastructure, NOVA, “Weathering the Storm,” showed us how humans are adapting to the changing weather patterns that arise from climate change. At this point it’s self-evident that extreme weather events are increasingly common due to changing climate. Seeing how people are adapting to these events and working to mitigate future ones, it becomes apparent that climate change is a consequence of colonialism. Whether we look at erosion and soil quality, wildfires, heat waves, droughts, and flooding as effects, the cause is always human consumption and the solution is always turning to indigenous practices. As a STEM professional, the ugly truth makes me feel uncomfortable. Industries provide so much of what our civilization needs, with great efficiency, but at a dire long-term cost. Maybe Malthus was right after all. The agricultural and industrial innovations that enabled the expansion of our population have not only displaced but also depleted the natural systems we ultimately depend on for survival. We are on the brink of a Fourth Agricultural Revolution, or a Second Green Revolution. I don’t think genetic engineering is going to play as big a part in this as previously predicted; instead, indigenous pre-industrial practices will become paramount. Ideally, a synthesis of the two would enable us to feed our people while minimizing the cost to the environment. Controlled fires, planting trees, and no-till farming are certainly nothing new. More broadly, we need to shift away from the consumption-driven capitalism that was laid in place by colonizers. Let’s eat less so that our grandchildren can eat at all.
I do feel inspired by seeing both a wild ecosystem with interconnected inhabitants followed by humans adapting their systems to be more resilient. I also see that connection is key. Rather than thinking of ourselves as a separate entity from nature, a notion that occidentalists violently cling to, we must acknowledge with humility that we are but a part of nature, interconnected with the whole.