CPR for a Planet

Hands performing chest compressions during CPR, a life-saving intervention used when a patient is in critical condition—an image that mirrors modern conservation efforts focused on keeping ecosystems alive under severe stress.

After recording a recent podcast, the host and I kept talking after the microphones were off. Our conversation had started a little awkwardly. At first, he seemed to think we might disagree about what conservation actually means. By the end, he was asking thoughtful questions about environmental agencies, NGOs, and why so many well-intentioned efforts seem to produce so little real change.

He was frustrated—especially about what he sees as greenwashed logging projects in Colorado being promoted as “restoration.” His frustration was justified. Many people working close to the land feel the same thing: that the language of conservation is sometimes used to describe activities that look very much like the problems it was meant to address.

During the conversation he told me a story.

While taking a wilderness rescue course, he was asked a scenario: imagine you’re leading a Boy Scout troop in the backcountry and someone collapses from a heart attack. Do you attempt CPR?

Some people in the course argued that it might be pointless. In a remote wilderness setting, far from advanced medical care, the odds of success could be very low.

He said he would do CPR anyway.

When he finished the story, I told him that his example captured modern conservation better than almost any policy discussion ever could.

In many ways, that’s exactly what environmental protection has become.

The patient is in serious condition. In some places the damage is already profound. Ecosystems have been simplified for centuries. Species have disappeared. Hydrology has been altered. Soils have been lost. Many systems are already operating far outside the conditions that created them.

The prognosis, in many cases, is dire.

But abandoning the effort guarantees the worst possible outcome.

So conservation becomes a form of ecological CPR.

We try to stabilize what remains. We protect fragments. We reduce pressures where we can. We keep species and ecosystems alive long enough that the future still contains options.

It may not restore the world that once existed. That world is already largely gone.

But the attempt matters because it preserves possibility.

This is where a great deal of confusion arises in modern environmental debates. People often expect conservation to produce recovery—to return landscapes to the conditions they once held. When that doesn’t happen, frustration grows. Critics declare conservation a failure. Advocates sometimes respond with overly optimistic narratives that stretch the evidence.

Both reactions miss the point.

The goal of conservation today is often not restoration in the classical sense.

It is time.

Time for ecosystems to persist a little longer.

Time for species to survive another generation.

Time for knowledge to accumulate.

Time to keep options from completely disappearing if we abandon these systems now.

In emergency medicine, CPR does not guarantee survival. But the decision to perform it is rarely debated. The act acknowledges responsibility. It keeps the door open, however narrowly, to a different outcome.

Conservation operates in much the same way.

Even when the odds seem insurmountable, the alternative—doing nothing—ensures that the patient dies.

So we keep working.

Not because success is likely, but because possibility still exists.

And sometimes, keeping the patient alive longer is the most important thing we can do.