The island we call Earth

By Richard Sevenich
Reader Contributor

The Iran war (a.k.a. “Operation Epstein Fury”) has served as a very real distraction from other national and international issues. Countering this distraction, I will write about humanity’s extraction of Earth’s resources, whose most well known feature (among many) is anthropogenic climate change.

In the December 2025 issue of The Sun Magazine, I came across an interview with William Rees, who had much earlier coined the phrase “ecological footprint.” There he gave a quite accurate account of the introduction of caribou to St. Matthew Island, Alaska. This true story provides an analogy with humanity’s time on Earth. It is easy to find this information from various sources on the internet, and I will repeat the gist of what is readily available.

St. Matthew Island is in the Bering Sea, 183 miles west-northwest of Nunivak Island. Late in World War II, the U.S. Coast Guard planned to install a LORAN site to aid U.S. ships in their navigation. This remote, otherwise human-unoccupied island suddenly had about 20 Coast Guard personnel moving in to sustain operation of the LORAN site. In August 1944, the Coast Guard transported 29 Caribou from Nunivak Island to St. Matthew. This herd would provide the new inhabitants with a source of protein, lessening transported foodstuffs needed to nourish them. However, with the end of WWII looming, the Coast Guard pulled its men from the island.

The abandoned 29 caribou found themselves in Caribou Heaven. The only predators would have been the Coast Guard folks, now long gone. The mainstay of the caribou diet is lichen, which was abundant on the island. So the caribou, like any invasive species, were delighted to munch on their favorite food.

David Klein, a biologist employed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, visited the island in 1957, only 13 years after the introduction of the caribou. The happy and healthy herd was now counted at 1,350 animals. Klein visited again in 1963, and made a count of about 6,000 animals. However, there were ominous signs — the average size of the animals was smaller, the percentage of young caribou was lower and the lichen were in shorter supply.

On his next visit, after a very harsh winter, Klein’s group returned and found only 41 females, no fawns and one male with abnormal antlers, suggesting that its ability to reproduce was suspect. By the 1980s the caribou were entirely gone. They had consumed too much lichen for their own sustainability.

Of course, Rees points out the analogy to our planet; essentially that Earth itself is an island.

Like any species lacking any significant predator — in our case, other than ourselves — humanity has expanded exponentially. There is much greater depth to the article than what I have recounted above.

For example, Rees points out that technological fixes to our dire threat are not easy. In particular, the vaunted renewable green energy solution is not moving forward with the hoped for efficacy. 

In 1992, our consumption of fossil fuel energy was about 80% of total energy. We are still in about the same place now. Why? Well, the total demand for energy has increased dramatically since 1992, despite the increase in green energy. To quote Rees, “The annual increase in demand for electricity alone exceeds the rate at which we’re putting new renewable energy supplies in place. The difference is made up with fossil fuels.”

For those interested, the salient interview with Rees is conducted by Leath Tonino and appears in the December 2025 issue of The Sun Magazine, titled “Glass Overfull.” Read it at thesunmagazine.org. Also find Rees’ writing at substack.com/@standstoreeson.

Richard Sevenich is a Sandpoint resident.