No Species Is an Island
The following is adapted from a speech Roger Payne gave at this year’s Interspecies Internet conference. His remarks have been lightly edited for clarity.
Because I am involved with the Cetacean Translation Initiative, or Project CETI, I receive criticism for spending time and treasure trying to translate what I refer to as WhaleSpeak. My accusers complain that the needs of humans should always come before the needs of animals.
But the reason humanity finds itself in its present predicament is in major part because we have always put the needs of humans before the needs of the rest of life. It is our fatal flaw—our lethal blindness.
Because I believe that science can help us survive our folly, I’ll start this essay by looking at what science has to offer in the way of consequential discoveries. I don’t mean the most exciting, most monumental, or grooviest discoveries such as E = mc2 or plate tectonics or the structure of DNA or translating the human genome … They all have major consequences, sure, but humans lived without knowing such things for over 200,000 years.
I’m looking for a discovery so consequential that unless we respond to it, it may kill us all … graveyard dead.
I believe that awe-inspiring lifeforms such as whales can focus human minds on the urgency of ceasing our destruction of the wild world.
As I see it, most consequential scientific
