This week I’ve been looking at satellite photos of the Niagara River and wondering about a hypothetical leaf floating on its surface. From the pictures, it seems the leaf would only be a few hundred yards from the renowned falls before it began to pick up speed.
The leaf, of course, is a metaphor for us and the river is the damage we’ve done to our planet. Environmentalists are constantly accused of doom saying. I know, I’ve been in this business 20 years. When I first got into this, I could not have imagined global warming would be as bad today as it is, nor could I have imagined the state of our oceans, nor extreme-drug-resistant tuberculosis. I would not have foreseen endless wars for oil or terrorist attacks or the secret police and security checkpoints that are parcels of everyday life.
It was the newspapers that got me started thinking about the leaf and the Niagara. There are stories about Colony Collapse Disorder, in which honeybees are disappearing from their hives. In one week, there were stories on the phenomenon in the New York Times, my local daily and the alternative weekly “arts” paper. The day after the local daily ran the CCD story, it carried a wire piece about VHS – Viral Hemorrhagic Septicemia – an Ebola-like disease that scientists worry may decimate freshwater fish. It’s showing up in the Great Lakes and in Conesus Lake south of Rochester, New York, where I was a summer camp counselor 30 years ago. The same day, reports from Europe show weather in the past 12 months to be significantly hotter and drier than normal. My parents in central Florida say their skies are hazy with smoke from drought-induced wildfires in Georgia, 200 miles away.
This isn’t doom saying and this isn’t a wake-up call. I hope we’re all awake by now. It’s true, politicians or the media or the public at large probably do not appreciate the full range of consequences we face for our past and current behavior. I doubt even environmentalists get the full picture. We’re the leaf in the current and while we might have noticed our increase in speed, the cataract that lies ahead is like nothing any of us have experienced.
So when the legislatures and the media debate fuel efficiency and carbon taxes and clean, renewable sources of energy, environmentalists have an important role to play in that debate. In my professional circles, you can feel a certain kind of relief. While none of us are glad about global warming or drought or wildfire, the relief environmentalists feel is akin to the relief a family must feel as they watch their house burn but finally hear the sirens of the fire trucks in the distance
Now that serious discussion of global warming and other environmental issues are inside the political comfort zone, it’s up to environmentalists and people like us to take the next step, to look further downstream, because we are going to go over the falls. Avoiding the consequences of what we have done to the planet might have been an option on the first Earth Day in 1970, but it’s not an option now. Considering the difference between 1987 and 2007, it’s clear that in many ways we’ve gone over the falls already.
The next step is about sustainable energy and sustainable agriculture and sustainable fisheries, but there’s a big part of this that’s not about science or appropriate technology. The hard times that are here and the harder times ahead will mean economic disruption and political upheaval and if history is any guide that spells trouble. Both great leaders and despots rise in eras of fear and uncertainty, but they don’t come from nowhere. Democracy, debate and yes, dissension are the parents of great leaders like Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt. Totalitarianism and jingoism spawned Adolf Hitler and Josef Stalin.
Not long ago, a colleague new to professional environmentalism asked, “How do we go on, knowing what we know, learning what we’re learning every day?” The answer, I think, is to use our dire knowledge as incentive to build communities of inclusion and reason and compassion. If we build enough of those communities and link them together, we will not only have our best chance at minimizing the effects of what we have wrought on the Earth, we’ll be better able to take care of each other through the difficult decades ahead.
The Leaf and the Niagara
This week I’ve been looking at satellite photos of the Niagara River and wondering about a hypothetical leaf floating on its surface. From the pictures, it seems the leaf would only be a few hundred yards from the renowned falls before it began to pick up speed.
The leaf, of course, is a metaphor for us and the river is the damage we’ve done to our planet. Environmentalists are constantly accused of doom saying. I know, I’ve been in this business 20 years. When I first got into this, I could not have imagined global warming would be as bad today as it is, nor could I have imagined the state of our oceans, nor extreme-drug-resistant tuberculosis. I would not have foreseen endless wars for oil or terrorist attacks or the secret police and security checkpoints that are parcels of everyday life.
It was the newspapers that got me started thinking about the leaf and the Niagara. There are stories about Colony Collapse Disorder, in which honeybees are disappearing from their hives. In one week, there were stories on the phenomenon in the New York Times, my local daily and the alternative weekly “arts” paper. The day after the local daily ran the CCD story, it carried a wire piece about VHS – Viral Hemorrhagic Septicemia – an Ebola-like disease that scientists worry may decimate freshwater fish. It’s showing up in the Great Lakes and in Conesus Lake south of Rochester, New York, where I was a summer camp counselor 30 years ago. The same day, reports from Europe show weather in the past 12 months to be significantly hotter and drier than normal. My parents in central Florida say their skies are hazy with smoke from drought-induced wildfires in Georgia, 200 miles away.
This isn’t doom saying and this isn’t a wake-up call. I hope we’re all awake by now. It’s true, politicians or the media or the public at large probably do not appreciate the full range of consequences we face for our past and current behavior. I doubt even environmentalists get the full picture. We’re the leaf in the current and while we might have noticed our increase in speed, the cataract that lies ahead is like nothing any of us have experienced.
So when the legislatures and the media debate fuel efficiency and carbon taxes and clean, renewable sources of energy, environmentalists have an important role to play in that debate. In my professional circles, you can feel a certain kind of relief. While none of us are glad about global warming or drought or wildfire, the relief environmentalists feel is akin to the relief a family must feel as they watch their house burn but finally hear the sirens of the fire trucks in the distance
Now that serious discussion of global warming and other environmental issues are inside the political comfort zone, it’s up to environmentalists and people like us to take the next step, to look further downstream, because we are going to go over the falls. Avoiding the consequences of what we have done to the planet might have been an option on the first Earth Day in 1970, but it’s not an option now. Considering the difference between 1987 and 2007, it’s clear that in many ways we’ve gone over the falls already.
The next step is about sustainable energy and sustainable agriculture and sustainable fisheries, but there’s a big part of this that’s not about science or appropriate technology. The hard times that are here and the harder times ahead will mean economic disruption and political upheaval and if history is any guide that spells trouble. Both great leaders and despots rise in eras of fear and uncertainty, but they don’t come from nowhere. Democracy, debate and yes, dissension are the parents of great leaders like Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt. Totalitarianism and jingoism spawned Adolf Hitler and Josef Stalin.
Not long ago, a colleague new to professional environmentalism asked, “How do we go on, knowing what we know, learning what we’re learning every day?” The answer, I think, is to use our dire knowledge as incentive to build communities of inclusion and reason and compassion. If we build enough of those communities and link them together, we will not only have our best chance at minimizing the effects of what we have wrought on the Earth, we’ll be better able to take care of each other through the difficult decades ahead.
© Mark Floegel, 2007