Ignore Mother Nature at your peril
By now we Americans may have forgotten that Japan is reeling from a nuclear meltdown caused by a Tsunami. Floods are threatening an American nuclear reaction in Nebraska. This morning in New Mexico, a fire threatens the Los Alamos Nuclear Lab—a retrograde atomic bomb facility mired in the politics of WWII and the practices of the cold war.
President Obama recently said that we would reduce the number of our troops in Afghanistan and focus on nation building at home. An aging infrastructure and declining industrial and manufacturing base threaten he security of America. But, despite the accelerating decline of a habitable earth due to climate change, the candidate, Obama, moves further to the right in an attempt to appease the flat earth folks and block attempts at reducing our worldwide carbon footprint. Getting re-elected at any and all costs is the goal of our two-party system leaders.
Meanwhile, the message from the “Green Energy†folks has been co-opted as Corporate America masks fossil energy extraction with its propaganda machine. Look at our right hand as we build solar and wind systems even as we use our left hand to feed our appetite for fossil fuels. We’ve got to mine those mountaintops for dirty coal and “drill baby, drill†for black gold and natural gas as we frock and frack the streams and aquifers with poisoned water. To heck with the farmers along the Mississippi or the fishing fleets in the Gulf.
A reader, call him my “Carbon Conscience,†reminds me and others of the way we all contribute to global warming via our habits: long distance travel, driving back and forth to town, operating extravagant appliances. But you can’t expect the middle and upper middle class—even so-called liberals and progressives–to sacrifice their privileges. Those of us who can’t afford a trip abroad dare not ride a bicycle on local roads lest we get rundown by a careless driver. At the supermarket or general merchandise store, we all get caught in the folds of cellophane and perils of plastic designed by former NASA engineers to secure our munchies. Even our local landscape is compromised by visual pollution: check out the density of road signs from El Prado to Taos to Ranchos.
In Taos, the battles between politicians and their dissenters ultimately emulate the national scene. For every citizen who stands on principle, a dozen would rather fight and lie to each other than switch and do the public good. It’s about winning this election or that vote at the meeting. We need a new paradigm, a different way of thinking, eating, and a different relationship to nature and each other. Like Voltaire’s Candide, we must turn away from the American Dream toward our gardens and lower our expectations.
Indeed, I have one friend in elected office, who is turning slowly away from the insanity of public life and is setting an example by becoming a “Constant Gardener.†Still, tragedy dogs his steps. My friend bought a well-nourished tomato plant at a local nursery. He plaited the ground with fertilizer and prepared a bed for the plant with nurturing hands. He planted the tomatoes with loving care. He left for a couple of hours to attend a rosary for a friend. Let’s say he bowed his head and prayed like his companions to the God of his forefathers. When he came home and went out to check his new plant, sure enough it had disappeared down into the earth, thanks to thieving mole or gopher. Neither science nor faith will intervene to save us from ourselves.
Yes, the meek shall inherit the earth—the gophers and the prairie dogs—see the baseball field at the high school and the acreage around the Martinez Hacienda. As a friend once said, the indigenous inhabitants, the insects and creatures, will have their way with Mother Nature since the humans ignore the signs. The belief in the Enlightenment that we can gain scientific mastery over the earth is coming to an end.
As this piece is posted, Los Alamos is being evacuated. Hmmm. The American Southwest, like the African sub-Saharan, is apparently undergoing climate change: hot and dry. Yet, our leaders would fiddle with plutonium triggers while the forest burns.