Our Environment:: Not an Issue We Can Externalize

I have always had a place in my thinking for environmental concerns, but in the past 10 years those concerns have become more acutely focused. The average American produces 102 tons of garbage in a lifetime that is destined for the landfill, a grim metaphor for what we, as a species, are doing to this planet.1 In March 2012 when I saw the advertisement in the Whatcom Watch for editor, it seriously crossed my mind that I should send a message to the contact person in the ad. But I thought about all the other commitments I have and decided against it. When that same little ad appeared for the next two months running, I concluded that I absolutely had to do something, so on May 19, 2012, I sent Bill McCallum a note expressing my interest.

Still in the forefront of my thinking then were the words of Wes Jackson, founder of The Land Institute in Salinas, Kansas: “This [climate change] is the most important challenge for homo sapiens in our long evolutionary history.”

And the words of Janine Benyus, founder of The Biomimicry Institute: “We are heading for an evolutionary knothole. Many of the species that are with us right now are not going to make it through that knothole. I am not one-hundred percent sure we are going to make it through the knothole.”

Or the words of Jerome Ringo, a hurricane Katrina evacuee and now environmental activist: “We’ve messed this planet up. We have gone through several decades of lost opportunity, and now we’re in the decade of last opportunity.”

And finally, these are the words of Fred Small, Senior Minister of First Parish in Cambridge, Massachusetts, spoken in a most impassioned way: “Every day we live unsustainably, we steal from our children and our children’s children. In years to come, they will ask us the same terrible questions, the same awful and incredulous questions, asked of every human being complacent in the face of evil. How could you not have known? Knowing what you knew, how could you have failed to act?”

All four of these quotes come from the first few minutes of the marvelous and touching documentary movie “YERT: Your Environmental Road Trip”2 that played the Pickford in February 2012.

Wes Jackson’s words and the words of the rest of these individuals notwithstanding, I believe it is very difficult for many of us to understand how grave this situation is. Despite repeated warnings from people such as former NASA scientist James Hansen and 350.org leader Bill McKibben, we refuse to acknowledge the seriousness of the crisis for humanity and the rest of earth’s species. I suspect this is, in part, the result of continued denial emanating primarily from the resource and automobile industries (although there are others) of the reality of climate change. We find it hard to take seriously concerns with burning fossil fuels when we constantly see and hear advertisements for SUVs on television and elsewhere, or hear repeated reference to “clean coal,” a euphemistic lie if ever there was one.

I would recommend watching the short clip from the documentary “Chasing Ice” of the calving of a mile-wide and mile-deep “iceberg” from the Greenland ice cap.3 Please listen carefully as James Balog explains the magnitude of this event in concrete terms, relating it to the size of the island of Manhattan, terming it a “miracle and horror.” The 4-minute film shows that in the past ten years more of the Greenland icecap has melted and vanished than in the previous hundred years.

I wrote the following paragraph to a colleague at work after he had sent me a link to David Suzuki’s recent article “The baffling response to Arctic climate change” on the Suzuki Foundation website,4 but before that I saw the article “Is Our Fear of Death Destroying the Planet?” on Sustainable Man.5

“It is reminiscent of the puzzling question that Jared Diamond poses in “Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed.” “What was the guy thinking as he cut down that last tree on Easter Island, with relatively clear knowledge that it was the end of him and all his children and grandchildren? Was that guy yelling as he chopped, ‘Jobs, not trees!’ or ‘The evidence isn’t all in - there might be trees somewhere on Easter Island where we haven’t yet looked?’ Or is this just the human condition — no matter how stupid our actions, we are still going to do this because we believe we need to for our survival.” 6 

Let me put it in concrete terms that people in Whatcom and Skagit counties can envision. Imagine driving past Mt. Blanchard south of Bellingham on Chuckanut Drive as you come out to the Skagit River plain and having to stop short because you see water covering Blanchard community, Bow, Edison, and all of the land between them. Imagine living in Bellingham and working west of Ferndale at one of the industries located out there and having to drive all the way north to Grandview to come back around and south to Lake Terrell and Slater Roads because most of Slater west of I-5 is under water. Also imagine that this is not a hundred years away, but perhaps only 25 or 30 years in the future. That is the all too possible reality we are facing.

If you find that far-fetched, perhaps you should take a look at the recent Mother Jones piece “Humans Have Already Set in Motion 69 Feet of Sea Level Rise,” an article based on research from glaciologist Jason Box.7 I suggest the more dramatic timeline (30 years or so) because of many recent references to the speed of warming, with more rapidly melting ice masses globally according to every measure we currently use. For example, a February 14, 2013, article on the Inter Press Service News Agency website about permafrost breakdown says, “Thawing permafrost is emitting more climate-heating carbon faster than previously realised. Scientists have now learned that when the ancient carbon locked in the ice thaws and is exposed to sunlight, it turns into carbon dioxide 40 percent faster than when kept in the dark.” 8

Rather than make this entirely a gloom-and-doom editorial, I am happy to share Scott North’s words to me after I wrote him the bit above about Easter Island.

“Until we do a few things I don’t see our path changing.

1. Connect how each person makes an impact — positive or negative. It has to be personal.

2. Get both ‘sides’ of the debate to have a discussion. I think we have enough facts, time to assess how people weigh in.

3. Lead by example in a relatable way.

4. Accept it’s a journey, not a destination.”

I couldn’t agree with him more. We cannot roll over. We must continue to work for those things we can achieve on a daily basis.

I will leave you with two final thoughts from “YERT,” both of which can provide direction for our future. I believe that David Korten is suggesting that we dare not continue to measure growth in strictly classical economic terms, that we must acknowledge the other factors playing a role. James Wells also drilled into this concept in the excellent December Whatcom Watch article titled “Reclaiming Growth.” 9 And Wes Jackson reminds us that the time for debate is long past: it’s time to grow up.

“What economic growth really measures, for the most part, is the rate at which the rich are expropriating the real resources of the poor in order to turn them into garbage at an accelerating rate to make money for people who already have more than they need.” David Korten

“We’ve got to start thinking about the end of the growth economy. And if we aren’t willing to talk about that, we’re not grownups.” Wes Jackson

And let’s not forget the 50,000-strong event Forward on Climate in Washington, D.C. yesterday, (Sunday, February 17) where Van Jones, Barack Obama’s former green jobs adviser, said, “This is the last minute in the last quarter of the biggest most important game humanity has ever played. … President Obama, all the good that you have done, all the good you can imagine doing will be wiped out, wiped out by floods, by fires, by super-storms if you fail to act now to deal with this crisis that is a gun pointed at the head of the future. Everything you have done. History will judge you 20 years from now based on one decision alone.” 10

Our environmental carnage IS the single most important issue facing all of us. We cannot be complacent in the face of near-term disaster. We must all take up this cause, each in our own way. I am deeply honored to be working with Whatcom Watch, feeling it may be one of the most important things I have done in many years. Thank you to the entire community for your participation.

Endnotes

1. Garbology: Our Dirty Love Affair with Trash, Edward Humes, Penguin Group, 2012.

2. Your Environmental Road Trip, created by and featuring Mark Dixon, and Ben and Julie Evans.

3. Find it at Treehugger, http://www.treehugger.com/climate-change/watch-glacier-size-city-collapse-video.html

4. http://www.davidsuzuki.org/blogs/science-matters/2013/01/the-baffling-response-to-arctic-climate-change

5. http://sustainableman.org/is-our-fear-of-death-destroying-the-planet

6. Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, Jared Diamond, Penguin Books, 2011.

7. http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2013/01/climate-desk-greenland-and-69-feet-sea-level-rise

8. http://www.ipsnews.net/2013/02/thawing-permafrost-may-be-huge-factor-in-global-warming

9. http://www.whatcomwatch.org/php/WW_open.php?id=1497

10. http://www.democracynow.org/2013/2/18/tens_of_thousands_rally_to_stop