I want to save silence from extinction | Gordon Hempton | TEDxAmazonia

This talk was given at a local TEDx event, produced independently of the TED Conferences.

One day, Gordon Hempton slept on the grass. A storm fell and he continued asleep in the rain. That was the day he became fascinated with the sounds of nature. For 25 years, his job is to record sounds that people have forgotten to hear. He warns us: silence is becoming extinct.

Thank you Helder.

I'm really so happy to be here.

Everybody that speaks
and as this event continues and continues

my heart swells because all beings,

quality for all beings.

That means to me

that I'm truly not the last speaker.

We'll have an opportunity,
at the very end of this,

I'd ask you to hold your applause

because it is not really me
that I hope to present to you,

but all those beings that are out there,
inseparable from ourselves really,

inseparable from ourselves,

that are speaking right now.

Ladies and gentlemen,

we live in a solar powered jukebox.

And the Earth is our music.

Thirty years ago,

this sound transformed my life.

I was making a long drive
from Seattle, Washington,

to the University of Wisconsin,

I had plans of becoming
a plant pathologist.

I just pulled over
to the side of the road,

got out of the car,

walked into a field,

laid down to rest.

The thunder rolled up the valley,
and rolled through me,

filling parts

that I had never known even existed.

This was the first time I truly listened.

And I asked myself,

"How can I be 27 years old

and have never truly listened before?"

I felt like I was living life
incredibly wrong,

and if you're going to listen,

you have to be willing
to change, and I did.

I dropped out of graduate school,

and I became a bike messenger

earning 1 dollar per delivery,

and I only had one goal, and that was
to become a better listener.

Roughly 10,000 deliveries later,

I found my one teacher,
which is a binaural microphone system.

An excellent teacher,
two ears, flash density head,

replicates human hearing,

but the important thing is
that it has no brain.

And that's the problem that I had.

Because I had a brain,

so my whole life I was making choices

between what was worth listening to,
and what wasn't worth listening to.

And that's not listening.
That's controlled impairment.

But every time I listened,
through this teacher,

the master came more messages.

Can you hear?

Can you hear the joy in their voices?

I got to know these coyotes, a pair,
over the course of the summer,

I never heard them sing
before or since like that.

I want joy like that!

They have a message

and even from something
as insignificant as snow

melting in the sunshine
comes another message.

Unedited.

The more I listened, the more I heard.

The more I listened.

And then these messages started
adding up to something really big:

Earth is a solar powered jukebox.

It really is, which basically means,

the more the sunlight
strikes the surface of the Earth,

the louder it plays,

all you need is those solar panels
that are there to harvest the sun's energy

and cycle them
into the bio-acoustic system.

This is the Amazon,
maximum solar energy,

maximum loudness, very diverse.

Let's go further North.

This is Belize,
a little less solar energy,

and you can hear it already.

But still, a lot of activity,
so let's jump up a little bit further,

this is the state of Georgia.

Plays a different tune,
but it is not as loud.

And finally,
to my home state of Washington.

A western meadow lark,
it's an almost poetic of space,

huge contrast with the Amazon.

Earth is a solar powered jukebox,

which helps explain why noise pollution
is such a global problem.

The brightly lit areas
are the noisiest places on the planet

because their consumption of fossil fuel

is really the consumption
and release of ancient sunlight.

And in the United States,

which you can see outlined quite clearly
in its energy consumption,

there are only 12 places left
which have been identified

where is possible to have
just the experiences of nature,

without noise pollution,
for at least 15 minutes.

In our average national park
is less than 5 minutes

during daylight hours.

This is the town of Colstrip, Montana,

and we're listening to it, right now.

This is a recording that I made in 2007,

those four large stacks in the background

in terms of acoustic ecology,
are large flutes,

dumping huge amounts
of low frequency noise

into the atmosphere and, understand this,

that consumes

more than a 1,000 square miles

- because of how far
sound and noise travels -

of what would otherwise be

just the opportunity to listen
to the messages from Earth.

Natural silence, the experience
of places without noise pollution

was once as common
as pure water and pure air,

has become an endangered species

that it may slip away to extinction

without us even becoming aware of it.

We do a lot of talking.

And pretty soon is going to be time
for all those other beings to talk to us,

and I certainly believe that's possible.

It's an universal language.

As some people do so much talking

that we grow up talking that we think
that our ears actually evolved

so that we could hear each other speak.

That makes total sense! OK?

Except, if that's true,

we would be the first species
on planet Earth

to have evolved so isolated
from the rest of nature.

So, let's look at human hearing.

All we have here is, basically,
the range of human hearing,

low frequencies on the left hand side,

and then we have the high frequencies
on the right hand side.

What's interesting going on across here
is those are not straight lines,

these are equal loudness contours,

and that bottom line
is our threshold of human hearing.

Our ears are tuned like instruments,

and that highlighted yellow area shows

that we have a peak sensitivity,

we are super sensitive to everything

between 2 kHz and 5 kHz.

Well, that's kind of odd,

because almost everything
I'm saying right now,

except the "s" sounds, are way below that.

What in our environment

neatly fits into 2 to 5 kHz?

Let's listen.

(birds chirping)

Bird song.

This is the willie wagtail singing
on the Australian outback.

And willie sings for a mate
and also sings to establish territory,

and let's listen
to what willie has to tell us.

All the time, he is belting it out here.

Yeah, all the time is
passionately belting it out.

Not only is he calling for a mate,
establishing territory,

but revealing its identity
to all potential predators,

and I get a message from willie:

love and risk are inseparable.

Thank you, willie.

There is a larger question:

what in our ancestors' past,

with any benefit be
to listening to distant bird song,

have towards human survival?

Imagine yourself now,
a member of a nomadic tribe.

There are twelve of us in the group,
men, women, children.

The whole reason why we are moving on

is because we have run low on provisions.

So we've come to a mountain ridge,

and we have a choice between two valleys

and from one valley,
this valley, we hear nothing,

there is no information coming in;

and from the other valley,

we can barely make our bird song,

and if the birds are singing
there's staking territory,

there's a natural resource space,
there's food, water,

and an extended season of prosperity
enough to raise young.

Everything we need to survive.

Each one of us,

no matter what our age,

we are still our ancestors.

And we are still on that mountain ridge.

And we are still choosing

between two future valleys.

Except the valleys have changed.

There's no longer that valley of silence,

all we have is the valley--

This is Seattle, Washington

- where I was a bike messenger -

and this is a recording of Seattle.

The tremendous noise pollution
that that area produces.

Alright?

But we also know,
cultural vitality, people we love;

and then, in the other valley,

we have the music of nature.

This is Olympic National Park,
near my home.

And our ears tell us again quite clearly

which is the healthier environment,

but the answer that we will choose
is not really clear.

Not to me.

I know that I am still evolving,

but I do know

that we can save our National Parks
and National Areas from noise pollution,

so that we can receive
the messages from nature

and bring them back,

make them more natural, more habitable.

And there is not one place
on planet Earth that has been set aside

to be an acoustic sanctuary

free of all noise pollution.

The last message comes

from planet Earth itself.

The largest being of them all.

And the Earth is speaking.

Yeah, actually the Earth is singing.

When the sun rises

all of life raises its voice.

And it's called the "Dawn Chorus".

And just as the sun has continued
to circle the planet,

the sunrise phenomenon,
since the beginning of time,

so does this wave of bird song,

as an endless planetary song
that continues to evolve

and change in composition
with the evolution of life itself.

And we are going to listen
to one 24h-circle

reduced to a little over a minute.

We begin on the Australian outback,
past through Asia,

then Africa, Europe,

and the Americas.

The Earth is music.

But before we come in to tune,

or attempt to,

there is only one thing we need to do

before we start thinking
about how it all happened,

and that is simply listen.

I ask that we be
as quiet as we can right now.

Can we shut down the air conditioning?

Can we open the doors?

If it's possible, thank you.

We've had such a busy time,

talking to each other, all the time,

having ears that were meant
to listen to somebody else,

all those other beings, and here we are,

in the center of it all.