Please close your eyes and listen for a while before continuing reading.
Do you hear a faint humming sound from an appliance near you? Or the distant rumble of a plane overhead? Or is it the roar of passing by, the screeching of brakes, or the grunting exhaust from the road outside?
As a renowned ecologist, Li Xincheng has circled the globe twice over the past 30 years, searching for and recording the sounds of nature that have disappeared from the planet. Today, the voice that Li Xincheng cares about most is the rarest: quiet.
"Why quiet?" Li Xincheng whispered, holding a decibel card reader in his hand, staring at a small forest and moss-covered mast in front of his house. "Isn't global warming, toxic waste cleanup, habitat restoration and endangered species more important? Well, when you're quiet, you actually save everything else as well. ”
Yes, when you save quiet, you actually save everything else as well. In an increasingly loud world, Li Xincheng spent most of his life speaking out for silence.
With the environmental movement, noise pollution is almost unattended, most of the time because it is so elusive. We could see debris from the ground and smell toxins in the air and water. Noise, on the other hand, is a more insidious threat. It is invisible, it disappears without a trace, it is not left for us to clean up.
But just as we humans fill the planet with garbage and scatter the oceans with runoff, we pollute the planet with our constant exposure to artificial sounds such as construction work, roads, and air traffic. While noise is often seen more as a minor annoyance, it's not only annoying, but there's growing evidence that it can also harm our health.
According to a study by the World Health Organization, long-term exposure to environmental noise pollution includes heart attacks, high blood pressure, stroke, diabetes, dementia and depression.
Our sonic attacks are also destroying the natural world. In fact, a report published in the Royal Society's Journal of Biology Letters found that noise pollution threatens the survival of more than 100 different animal species. Because animals rely on sound in everything from finding mates to migrating to hunting to hiding from predators.
When we look at the healthiest ecosystems on Earth today, we find that they are also the quietest places. Traffic noise can raise the heart rate of butterfly caterpillars. The noise of the compressor station in the distance makes it difficult for owls to find their prey. The echoes of snowmobiles cause stress hormone levels in wolves and elk to soar. In noisy habitats, birds and frogs have adjusted their calls to hear each other in our hustle and bustle.
Underwater sounds travel faster and farther than on land, and this situation is affecting countless marine life. Noise from shipping, deep-sea mining and seismic surveys is the most likely cause of large-scale strandings of dolphins and whales
"When we look at the healthiest ecosystems on Earth today, we find that they are also the quietest places," Li said. By saving Quiet, you end up saving everything else, and that's exactly what He meant. Healthy volume maintains a healthy environment, and if we start to think of noise as a soundtrack to climate change and noise pollution as pollution, it can have a huge impact on all living things, including ourselves.
Silence has long helped humans find their voice. Just like nature, it calms us and even heals us. But despite evidence that quietness makes us healthier and nature makes us happier, Li warns that the number of places where nature is quiet "is on the road to extinction, far more than the extinction of species."
Think about it: The global population has more than doubled over the past 50 years, air traffic has nearly increased sixfold between 1980 and 2019, and the growth of shipping has effectively drowned out the ocean's regular soundscape, with an estimated number of cars set to drive on the road by 2030.
"In 1900, there was a good chance you would find peace and tranquility in about 75 percent of the Chinese mainland. By 2010, that number was 15 percent, and it was a similar phenomenon almost everywhere," and What Li Xincheng was really worried about was. In the 21st century, we're going to do what we did on land in the 20th century with the air, turning every neighborhood into an airport and every street into a runway for our drones. The threat of noise comes from above us, not from the ground.
"No one records the natural environment. Even scientists record only one animal at a time," Li said. "But I wanted to listen to the whole concert, not just be a soloist. We need to be quiet, just as we need oxygen. ”
"In our culture, 'silence' is the state of 'All-That-Is,' the highest state of intelligence," but ironically, the world needs a global pandemic to be aware of it.
In September 2020, the journal Science published a report concluding that the coronavirus lockdown had produced "the longest and most consistent global noise reduction ever", with a month-long seismic noise reduction of 50% in 77 countries. Suddenly, people from New York to New Delhi began to notice birdsong, the rustling of leaves and what Li Xincheng called "the soundtrack of the earth."
"Today, we're busy looking at the world, but listening gives you a real story of a place," "When you're listening, really listening, a whole new universe unfolds." ”