This summer, I have seen only three butterflies; one alone, two dancing together in the air, but that is all, despite a garden full of milkweed and eight foot tall butterfly bushes.

In my yard in northern New Jersey -- where I have not used pesticides on my lawn or garden for 15 years -- I have come across very few bees, each alone, floating around my flowers and shrubs. When I moved to my new home thirty-five years ago, despite the presence of only tiny bushes, my property hummed with bee activity. About 5 years ago I noticed a precipitous decline in insect life. I severely doubt whether my neighbors’ yards are any better. Everyone around my neighborhood sprays pesticides, and, if they miss these industrious, productive, beautiful creatures -- here millennia before man stood upright -- they have not changed their landscapers’ practices. Can you imagine how free, fruitful, and wild their lives were, free of poison they could not see?

Just short of 400 years ago (20 generations!) a Scot, John Donne, wrote: “No man is an island, entire of himself”. Each day, science is discovering how true this is in environments across the planet. One person discards a plastic bottle or bag, and 1000 miles away, soon, someone will drink plastic micro nodules (in 80-90% of water supplies, and bottled water). Pesticides applied to one neighbor’s lawn kill bees and butterflies for blocks around, and weaken birds, who are also pollinators. One family runs its air conditioners at full tilt, and leaves the lights on all night. We need to think beyond ourselves, to have empathy for others, large and small, human, or not.

Our one home with solar panels, one home avoiding pesticides is not enough. It is clear, at least in my state, and at least for the next two years at the federal level, we cannot expect the appropriate leadership and incentives to reverse a host of terribly damaging and threatening environmental wounds. One million species threatened, and we are one of them.

There are measures to take on the local level: I have fought for solar programs for residential, municipal, and school buildings; the banning of 2-stroke leaf blowers and trimmers in favor of electric battery powered tools; educating the community on the futility and hazards of pesticides, and plenty more. Someday, state and federal legislators will do something, but likely too little, too late. In some ways, action on a community level could be simpler, if the administrators are educated and motivated. And if they care about issues that do not immediately and directly affect themselves. Foresight and empathy are the name of the game.

“Any man’s (or species’) death diminishes me,
because I am involved in mankind;
and therefore never send to know, for
whom the Bell tolls:
It tolls for thee.”

Dr. Mark Kahn is a retired vascular surgeon. He lives in northern New Jersey. His passion for the environment has taken him beyond the Arctic Circle. He works towards improving life for all, reducing pollution, and cleaning our air and water resources.