I read my little daughter books, usually at bedtime.  We curl up in the evening quiet, the low light of a single lamp casting shadows on the wall, just enough illumination to see the words and pictures.  One book is about dinosaurs.  It’s strange, the book describes these creatures in such friendly and loving terms, I warm up my voice and put inflections on it, spin and gurgle the words happily for her: Tyrannosaurus, Brontosaurus, Diplodocus.  I pronounce the words, and stop and look at her, she stares intently at the book, running her finger gently over her mouth as if practicing the pronunciation of these daunting words.   After a while, it’s easy to forget that we are reading a book about species that long ago went extinct on earth and have never ever been seen alive by human eyes.  And yet clearly we humans have no difficulty writing dreamy books about them, and we create a sense of love and affection for them in our children, imaginary creatures of epic scale and long ago places.  Startlingly, I realize, one of the first words my daughter will ever learn will be “dinosaurs,” a group of massive reptiles that roamed the planet millions of years ago.
 
Other books I read to her are about other animals contemporaneous with humans.  Yet that is about the only difference from dinosaurs, for the authors still create the same warm, loving environments around these other animals as they do for dinosaurs.  Lions, tigers, zebras, whales, dolphins, seals, hippos, rhinos.  We were at a holiday party recently and Abby took a tiger ornament from the Christmas tree and approached everyone – “Raaahhhrrr!!!” she roared jamming the little tiger in every face she could find.  Her mother takes her to the Houston zoo, so she has seen these animals, if only from afar. 
 
And then other books are about the only animals she is ever likely to see in any great numbers, those that we have domesticated.  Cows that say moo, horses that say neigh, pigs that oink, sheep that baa, and ducks that quack.  For Abby, there is not much difference between all of these animals, they are all animals, they are all cute, they all make her happy.  I’m no child psychologist, but animals, even those that do not exist, apparently play major roles in the development of children, and the books that we read together are ultimately to her a jumble mish mash of Brontosauruses, rhinos, and cows.  Only later in life will she learn that Brontosauruses are long gone, that cows are everywhere we want them to be, and that the last of the rhinos were, at the current rate, probably killed off during her childhood by the same human species that so lovingly portrayed them for Abby in her books.
 
Last week, a special expedition to the Yangtze River in China, Asia’s longest river and previously akin to the Amazon in its biological diversity, formally declared that the baiji, the white river dolphin that once happily swam the Yangtze, is extinct.  As Andrew Revkin, science writer for the New York Times writes, “For some 20 million years, the baiji, also called the white-flag dolphin, frequented the Yangtze’s sandy shallows, using sonar to catch fish in the silty flow.  In the last few decades, the dolphin’s numbers plunged as rapidly as the Chinese economy surged. The Yangtze’s sandy shallows, which the baiji frequented, have largely been dredged for shipping.  The baiji sought fish that have been netted or driven from the river by pollution. And its sonar may have been disrupted by the propeller noise from boats above. A 1997 survey counted 13 baiji in the river. None of the dolphins survive in captivity.”
 
Where does natural selection leave off and stupidity start?  What is the point of intelligence if it leads to the destruction of our earth and its species?  What is the point of compassion if we select uncaring leaders ill-equipped to lead?  For me, the news of the demise of the baiji calls into question the very purpose and meaning of our own existences.
 
Our current leader declares that this century’s main “battle” will be with fundamental Islam, rather than, as I believe, for the health of the planet.  His advisors have probably never passed him a briefing paper on the baiji, on the plight of polar bears on a warming planet, of the many species now struggling in the wake of the immense success achieved by humans in the past few 10,000 years, since crops and animals were domesticated.  Or perhaps he has received the news but cannot be bothered to care or does not believe that he has either power or responsibility to act on behalf of the poor creatures that now depend upon our kindness and mercy.
 
The pragmatic among us will declare that the baiji failed to adapt, failed to expand its environment beyond one river to others, failed to adapt to massive human intrusion on and destruction of its habitat, and therefore was naturally doomed to extinction.  But that is blaming the victim.  The truth is that the human world, yet again, failed to utilize its intelligence and innate compassion - its Buddha nature - to save a beautiful and helpless creature.
 
So many products that I buy these days arrive in cargo containers by ship from China.  My heart is heavy these days as I slowly awake to recognize the escalating price of those products, and how little of that price is reflected in what I actually pay.  Now the baiji dolphin is added to the cost, and yet global consumers of Chinese products, me included, will in all likelihood never pay that cost until it’s too late.  As one Chinese economist says, it is becoming more difficult for “governments to count on the beauty of investment covering up 100 other kinds of ugliness.”
 
One day, I hope, it may be that my daughter will read books to her daughter.  They will cozy up at bedtime, the lights dimmed, under the covers, a heartwarming scene of a species rearing its offspring with love and caring.  They will read about animals: dinosaurs, rhinos, cows, toucans, and maybe even a story about a little white river dolphin in a faraway place, a kind of swimming unicorn.  The story will be happy as the little dolphin frolics and plays all day and turns in with its mama at night.  And there will probably be a small sticker on the back cover.  And my daughter’s daughter will stare intently at the cute creature in the book, not knowing that, like the dinosaurs before it, the little dolphin once truly lived on earth, not only Made in China, but also Betrayed in China.
 
I’m Leo Gold.  This is The New Capital Show.