Month: October 2007

DOF somewhat tongue-in-cheek mentions Blog Action Day,

What would happen if every blog published posts discussing the same issue, on the same day? 

One issue. One day. Thousands of voices.

I’m not sure that having a single day a year for a single topic is all that big of an activism thing, but there you go.

This year’s (today’s) topic is:  the environment.

(Use both sides of the paper if necessary.)

I actually have a lot I’d like to write about the environment — from alarmism to politics to popular culture to what the heck the “environment” is and how humans fit into it — but my thoughts haven’t quite gelled enough to do so.  So I’ll throw out a few quotations (hat tip, DOF). I’ll also follow through on a notion I’ve had several times in the past several months to create a specific “Environment” category here (most Environment stuff has previously been found under “Science”), of which this post is the first.

In nature there are neither rewards nor punishments — there are consequences.

— Robert Green Ingersoll (1833-1899) American lawyer and orator,  “Some Reasons Why”

Whether we like it or not, the natural and the human environment are inseparable. It would be a great mistake to try to completely erase human traces from any part of the landscape. We need to protect the natural world, but we also need to protect reminders of the human past so that we can learn from them.

— Bonnie Stepenoff (b. 1949) American writer, “Landscapes Remember”

Scan any newspaper for stories about, say, the environment, and you will quickly discover that many journalists are predisposed to consider environmental activists the “good guys” and oil company presidents and loggers the “bad guys.” Or watch all the junk science television news specials about pesticides, food additives, breast implants, nuclear power, and global warming. Reporters are reputed to be natural-born skeptics, but they almost never challenge the alarmists on these important issues.

— Marianne M. Jennings, American educator, ethicist,  Imprimis (Hillsdale College) (July 1999)

CALVIN (walking through snowy field): You know, Hobbes, it seems the only time most people go outside is to walk their cars. We have houses, electricity, plumbing, heat …. Maybe we’re so sheltered and comfortable that we’ve lost touch with the natural world and forgotten our place in it. Maybe we’ve lost our awe of nature. That’s why I want to ask you, as a tiger, a wild animal close to nature, what do you think we’re put on Earth to do. What’s our purpose in life? Why are we here?

HOBBES: We’re here to devour each other alive.

CALVIN (in the house): Turn on the lights! Turn up the heat!

— Bill Watterson (b. 1958) American cartoonist, Calvin & Hobbes (6 Jan 1991)

Hmmm.  Not terribly inspiring.  Let’s see if I can throw out some quick thoughts.

1. Our environment is our home.  As the saying goes, “don’t shit where you live.” To the extent that we are becoming a global community, there is a growing awareness that there is no back corner that doesn’t affect us, environmentally.  “No man is an island” — and no island is an island.
2. The biggest problem we as humans face is that “out of sight, out of mind.”  If we don’t see it, it’s not real to us.  People in general aren’t worried about polar bears and Tibetan glaciers as much as they are about their drought-driven water restrictions and the price of vegetables.
3. There are way too many people who are willing to exploit that short-sightedness — which is short-sighted themselves.  Yes, I’m speaking mostly here of businessfolk who are more interested in this quarter’s earnings — or where the stock will be when they exercise their options in a few years — and less about whether their company, or nation, or world will survive the next century or three.  Oh, and the politicians who are focused on what contributions they need from whom to get elected next time around, not on whether people a century from now will remember their names as visionaries and statesmen.
4. Garnering the attention of the short-sighted requires a degree of apocalyptic hyperbole — bang them over the head to get their attention.  Unfortunately, that’s just the sort of tactic that turns off some people who are observent and who are tired of apocalyptic hyperbole in their lives from all directions.
5. Nevertheless, public opinion is like a supertanker — very slow to turn, but it is turnable, and at some tipping point the politicians do have to follow, and the businessfolk with them.  Looking at the changes in awareness and concern in the US about air and water pollution in the last 50 years shows that clearly.  I suspect the global warming thang will follow the same course — indeed, the last decade shows that it is.

So — I guess now I’m good (from an activist standpoint) for another year.