elizabeth ann: a light in the darkness of fossil fuel burning
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This week, I took on a challenge of self-reflection and analysis of my contributions to the rapidly declining state of our planet. Typically, I tend to steer away from the notion that individual contributions are significant enough to impact the state of our environment, let alone a major cause of climate change. After all, plenty of researchers out there have asserted that the true path towards a healthy planet lies in the crucial move away from fossil fuels and towards renewable and clean energy. However, the root of our attachments to fossil fuels as a nation and as a species lies inherently in the convenient design of our current energy systems. Thinking about the way we create and design these systems at the individual level can have a significant impact on the way they affect us and our environment on a grander scale.
The Endangered Animal Challenge
The details of the challenge involved undergoing research of an endangered animal of my choice, and pulling together recyclable materials to create a prototype of the animal.
Gathering the recyclable materials proved worryingly easy — between myself and my five family members, I hadn’t noticed how quickly we stacked up the recycling bin every week. Here are some of the items I scrounged up from my room alone:
Mostly Amazon boxes and some plastics, but they filled up a large enough box to prompt a small cringe. There’s no doubt about it: I’ve gone package crazy since COVID started. And though it seemed innocuous enough to me to order a package as long as it’s being recycled, further research into the recycling industry revealed how little individual recycling actually gets recycled — which is a little but not that much. Even though many Americans dutifully recycle, much of recycled materials end up in landfills anyway due to an inefficient system. An effective and long term solution to excessive waste would involve developing the domestic market enough to allow for appropriate sorting of recyclable materials and incorporating more recycled material into products to create a higher demand for them.
Ideation
The next step was deciding which animal to prototype, which didn’t prove to be too difficult either. On Friday, I woke up to the notification from the Smithsonian that a black-footed ferret, named Elizabeth Ann, was successfully cloned at the US Fish and Wildlife Service in Colorado after decades of preparation and implementation. With only 400–500 of them currently alive, black-footed ferrets are one of the rarest land animals in North America, and are desperately clinging to existence with the help of captive breeding and reintroduction programs.
Prairie dogs are their natural prey — 90% of their diet actually — and with the aggressive extermination of the rodents by farmers and ranchers came the rapid decline of the ferret population. In fact, they were pretty much thought to be extinct by the mid-70s, until a tiny population was found in a Wyoming ranch in 1981. A decision at that time to preserve tissue samples from black-footed ferrets have spearheaded cloning efforts and have now resulted in the birth of precious Elizabeth Ann.
And not to make this about cuteness (this is about the environment, FOCUS), but is that not the cutest thing you’ve ever seen? I knew she was my girl the minute I saw her face.
Prototyping
I started off by sketching out some details in Procreate and went about collecting my materials. I wondered how to fully capture the essence of the ferret in a prototype and landed on initially listing out the most defining characteristics of the animal:
Next, I gathered my recyclables and started prototyping. I knew the ears were absolutely crucial, so I went about pulling those together first by tying the ends of a plastic bag. I also had the idea to create the face by stuffing it with the plastics and papers and lining the bag with black to create the black lined snout. Next were the feet, which I pulled off by tying the black ends of the bag to create the illusion of feet. Finally, I topped it off by pinning some crumpled aluminum foil to the center as a nose and voila! My own mini Elizabeth Ann.
Reflection
The story of Elizabeth Ann is a sad but hopeful one. It paints a future of human efforts successfully counteracting the negative impacts of human activity through aggressive and committed responses. Moving towards a cleaner future will require the same efforts, particularly through closer inspection and re-evaluation of the way we design the systems that hold our lives together. Reuse of recycled materials to create new concepts and ideas is one of the many ways we can step closer to a clean future but there are other steps we can take as a collective. Here are some links with more information:
Global Greenhouse Gas Emissions Data
Fossil fuels and climate change: the facts
Is it too late to prevent climate change?
You can also learn more about Elizabeth Ann here!
