We Can, We Must, Do Better

It was late March of 2012.  The temperature was 80 degrees.  The sun was shining and the breeze was light. It may have been the average spring day if it were not for the fact that I was walking my dog in northern Illinois.  We should have been tramping through the vestiges of the winter's retreating snows in a brisk 40-degree wind. Since it had been over 80 degrees for more than a week, the grass was green and early-emerging flowers, meant to arrive for Easter, were in full bloom and threatened to expend all their celebratory glory and expire before Easter arrived.  An old man and a young boy were busy feeding fish at a pond's edge and ducks lazily paddled toward them for a share of the booty.

Watching the feeding frenzy, I thought of how naturally people recognize and accept the foreign universe of fish in their water world, or the symbiotic relationship of human and animal universes interconnecting, as with my dog and I. We walked together, two alien universes sharing an experience and communicating on some level of a relationship, just like the boy, the man and the fish were. 

Easily we encourage and welcome an alien presence to flutter at our bird feeders. We recognize and use our experiences with nature for our poems and songs, our recreation, our fantasy and enjoyment as well as to stimulate our human sense of wonder.  We acknowledge that we can learn from our observations of nature.  We can be revolted but mostly we are captivated by our sense of understanding and oneness with many other creatures' behaviors. Why then, is it so difficult for humans to recognize the responsibility of our relationship with nature, or as many like to term it these days "the environment"?

Blithely, we toss our trash, laden with chemicals, into landfills that percolate the poisons into the watery habitats of many creatures.  Carelessly, we farm using methods and chemicals that destroy ecosystems upon which multitudes of life forms depend, including our own. Animals that give their lives for our subsistence, we unnaturally imprison for convenience, causing them to suffer their short-lived lives under our inhuman and thoughtless care, rather than raising them in natural habitats.  We invite the birds to our feeders hung over lawns treated with petro-chemicals that kill them as well our weeds.

Nature's life forms, including humans, exist in environments that are part of and interact with many other environments, often depending on each other to survive. Too often, humans easily dismiss the balance in nature as unimportant, unconscious of how much their own existence is as dependent upon the interaction and balance as any other life form is.  Many religions emphasize the importance of nature to the extent of imposing the responsibility of oversight on the human species. How miserably we are failing. 

We talk about conservation as an answer to the dwindling species populations, like Polar Bears for example. Yet, are the last Polar Bears in a zoo the answer or just a conscience-wash for those who are semiconscious? Imprisoning specimens will not fulfill our oversight responsibility. We have to do better than that. 

2012 A vote for survival.

Edison and Sinclare clearly understood the nature of people who, today, deny global warming and chant "drill baby drill." 

In 1916, Edison stated, "We should make use of the forces of nature and should obtain all our power in this way.  Sunshine is a form of energy, wind and sea currents are manifestations of this energy.  Do we make use of them?  Oh no!  We burn forests and coal, like tenants burning down our front door for heating.  We live like wild settlers."

In the early 1900's Upton Sinclare wrote, “It’s difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on him not understanding it.”

Obviously, careless people have existed since the beginning of time.  It is a marvel that the species has survived, or is survival a fleeting fancy and the reality a harsher truth.  Could it be that we are slowly burning our front door for heat and living like wild settlers still?  Are we so fraught with the worship of power, prestige, and wealth that we live with wild abandonment, pushing the cost of our greed and recklessness onto future generations? Could our ever-growing lust for abundance, even at the expense, globally, of others of our species, be slowly deteriorating the gene pool? Are there enough voices of reason in this human wilderness to prevent extinction?

Sinclare was optimistic that America could change. His optimism inspired his book, "The Jungle."  Realizing how slow the process is and how much his book did cause change in the early days of the meat "industry," could give one hope. However, today many of those conditions he illuminated have resurged.  That resurgence has occurred because modern advertising anesthetizes the public and multiple layers of middlemen have been wedged between suppliers and consumers.

Many of today's issues hide behind the size and complexity of corporate relationships and inbreeding coupled with a media dependent upon advertiser's support.  Sinclare's view, regarding how difficult it is for individuals to do what is morally and ethically right when their salaries depend upon denying a problems existence, remains as true a detriment to today's society as it ever was. Thus, some people deny the science of global warming and others profit from poisoning the land, air and water, in the name of productivity and profit.

Edison's foreshadowing observation is reality in Haiti today. Nearly void of trees, due to poor agricultural regulations, a corrupt government, and because the common fuel is charcoal, Haiti suffers.  Its lush forests are now gone, cleared for fuel and industrial farming by monolithic citrus operations. Re-forestation is a faltering startup project and, because treeless soil cannot stop water runoff, the riverbeds are dry and multitudes starve, thirst and suffer devastation from weather events.  Some even claim that the weight lost along with the trees changed the load on subterranean plates and may have contributed to the massive earthquake January 12, 2010.

Modern Edisons and Sinclares rile against an American government, festooned in corporate donors, relying on a contaminated Electoral College System of elections, and federal agencies infiltrated by wealthy business representatives with a solitary interest in their own wealth, with service to their country an afterthought. Too often, our responsible stewards of earth and resources, even learned scientists, are trivialized as "environmentalists" in an attempt to demonize their concerns.

When political candidates ignore the reality that fossil fuel kills in its capture and use; support agriculture modalities that are inhumane, soil depleting and toxic to the air, land and water; then, many agree, their underlying motivations must be scrutinized.  Does power, prestige or wealth motivate their indefensible positions? 

Today's voters, charged with finding candidates with honorable motivations, do not have an easy task. Super PACS, with unlimited financial resources, and a distracted media conspire against them.  However, voters must work to elect honorable representatives. 

It is wise to remember that before 1950 Haiti produced and consumed more than 80% of its food. As of 2008, Haiti imported more than half of its food while the farmers suffered due to government agriculture policies that allowed monolithic corporations to reign over operations and export product leaving poverty and deforestation in its wake. American corporations, and some candidates, are promoting the elimination of government oversight that has traditionally protected the health and well-being of American citizens.

Today, voters must vote as if their life depends on this 2012 election outcome, because it does. 

The US Government's failure to respond to the climate sirens is not acceptable.

Much of the southern United States is parched. Food prices are rising due to shortages caused by unusual and devastating weather conditions. The sirens are getting louder.


Are the current, unusual weather patterns warnings or flukes? Have humans become  Earth's terminators? Can we continue to satisfy the energy requirements of our desires? Might we leave our descendents a ruined planet?

Worldwide, a myriad of hydroelectric dams were constructed to produce energy but at a great cost to the environment and people. Coincidently, as the planet warms, worldwide droughts are sucking the water out of those dams, reducing production.

The 'Arab Spring" has and will continue to affect oil production in the Middle East. Failed nuclear plants in earthquake and tsunami ravaged Japan once again bring into question the safety of this odd, enriched uranium nuclear reactor design when there are known safer nuclear alternatives such as Liquid Flouride Thorium Reactors (LFTR) . The easy oil is diminishing fast leaving only the difficult and expensive to acquire shale oil deposits. Deposits that require excessive blasting, water and infusion of toxic chemicals that ultimately contaminate drinking water in a process called hydrofracking, a process that negatively affects surrounding populations both environmentally and seismically.

Coal, renamed "Clean Coal" to disguise a venomous product, is falsely advertised as cheap energy. The public chooses not to acknowledge coal's devastation of people's lives and health or the impoverished local economies that killer coal causes. From mineshafts to cities and coal buring energy plants, coal kills and sickens. Coal is not an answer but a terrible corporate swindle of the public. Air borne particulates and poisonous coal ash spills intoxicate communities. Coal lobbyists have successfully thwarted EPA testing and regulation of radiation and other toxic gases released into the atmosphere through mining operations. The public accepts coal's advertising of such myths as safety and job creation because their own desire for cheap energy outweighs their sense of right and wrong.

The climate sirens are getting louder. What will it take to slow the out of control, energy-train wreck that is rushing toward an expiration date in history? Will the US join the world's response and end the irresponsible Climate Change Denial facade perpetrated by American corporate interests. The worldwide Occupy Movement seems to have placed its boot on the corporate neck of the issue and demands the media and leadership hear the message and respond accordingly.

Nothing is won without risk and inaction carries the greatest potential for failure. In the matter of existence, failure is not an option.