The World Pulled Over Your Eyes
by Jason GodeskyToday is the largest secular holiday of the year, Earth Day, the 35th celebration of the holiday since its inception in 1970. Founded under the auspices of Senator Gaylord Nelson, Earth Day became popular thanks to grassroots support and the budding environmentalism of the 1960s and 1970s. Today, Earth Day will doubtlessly pass with little remark, and possibly some self-congratulation from the Bush regime concerning its “Clear Skies” initiative. Environmentalists have become victims of their own success. To all appearances, the environment is now fine. It has ceased to be an issue, and we have become complacent in our assurance that the earth is doing just fine. If Earth Day means anything now, it’s only to note our historic victories and celebrate the environmentalist triump. Appearances are decieving.
I live in Pittsburgh, “the Smoky City.” There was a time when the skies were black with soot, lit by the red fires of molten iron. Leaving a white blanket out to dry would stain it black with coal. It was a truly nightmarish scene. Pittsburgh doesn’t look like that anymore; the sky is blue, there are white clouds in the sky, and the sun is bright. To all appearances, Pittsburgh’s efforts to clean itself up were a smashing success.
Of course, recently moving here, Giuli noticed the low air quality more than I did, having lived with it most of my life. In fact, Pittsburgh’s air quality is among the worst in the United States. It isn’t even the city; the entire region, much of which is heavily rural, shares this affliction. Much of it rolls in from pollution in Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Virginia, Kentucky and the entire Ohio River Valley.
On Wednesday night, the Daily Show interviewed Dennis Miller, who dismissed concerns about global warming by noting that over the past century, the global temperature has only risen 1.8 degrees. Shouldn’t we rather be amazed at how stable the temperature is? Miller’s knowledge of ecology is obviously lacking. Global temeprature varies very little. The difference between our current climate and an ice age is only five degrees.
The current extinction rate is thousands of times beyond the normal background rate, qualifying this as the eighth mass extinction in the history of the planet. We’re facing cataclysmic losses of biodiversity, cataclysmic climate change, and other environmental unpleasantness such as poor air quality, poor water quality, atmospheric degradation, and all the rest.
It affects our health, as well–or did you think the upsurge in allergies was simply because kids today aren’t up to their grandparents’ par as some sort of genetic backslide and mythological fall from grace?
In the 2004 elections, most United States citizens indicated that the environment was important. This was especially true among the Christian conservatives who won the election for Bush. They also understood that Bush was not a good pick for the environment. However, they also believed that the environment was not currently a problem. They saw more urgent and pressing problems in the threats of gays living with the full rights of a United States citizen. How could this be? How could people who say the environment is so important vote without regard to it, when we are in the midst of such a crisis?
Primarily because environmentalists have become victims of their own success. Pittsburgh’s skies look clean. We hear “1.8 degrees,” but have no frame of reference and think it isn’t a problem. We never see the 200 species that go extinct every day. We see our children wheezing and coughing, but chalk it up to allergies and think nothing more of it. We see freakish snowstorms and dismiss global warming, as if our earth were a perfect sphere that we’d expect to warm evenly and not unevenly, with pockets of searing heat and others of bone-cutting winter.
Then, once a year, “Earth Day” comes, and we see to some vaguely symbolic act, plant a sapling or something else, and think nothing more of it. Earth Day becomes a tool to make us complacent, to make us think that the environmentalist struggle is largely won. It tells us that there is no crisis before us, that we should simply accept how wonderful our modern life is and never give a second thought to those pessimistic doomsayers with their liberal, tree-hugging agenda.
In the end, Earth Day has become a ploy to thwart environmentalists, and lull us all back to sleep.
I show most of my articles to Giuli before I post them; for this one, she thought I should point out that these effects are unintentional, and contrary to the intent of Earth Day. I retorted that if there is a common theme uniting everything on this site, it’s probably unintended consequences.
It also occurs to me that, all the times I have pointed out unintended consequences of our ideological opponents, no such disclaimer is needed. Yet here, it’s “our own” undermining our shared priorities–unwittingly, naturally, but all the more effectively for that.
Intent is generally not a concern of mine; the effects are the effects, regardless of what we intended. Those affects are what we need to understand; whether they’re the opposite of the original intent or not won’t change that.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 22 April 2005 @ 7:16 AM
Earth day is better than nothing. You could almost argue its existance is inevitable, given the extent to which we effectively ignore the environment the other days of the year. Like any stupid secular holiday.
I am not an environmentalist as such, and frankly I have the strong feeling that environmental movements have had tactical successes but few strategic ones.
Environmentalists are actors in a tragedy.
Significant damage will be done to our world as industry sucks the last crumbs of energy out of the coasts and the mountains - a preface to collapse.
THe orgy of damage will increase towards the end, as desperation replaces democracy.
Then, something interesting will happen: The amount of energy available to destroy our planet will rapidly decline.
Hopefully, this saves our bacon from runaway global warming.
Comment by Jon S. — 23 April 2005 @ 10:27 PM
While flipping through the channels saturday afternoon I decided to settle on that old classic, the Weather Channel. What a great concept! Well 25 minutes later I was still waiting to find out what the weather would do. What I did learn provides another great example of our general refusal to accept that our resources are finite and that we seem drawn, in some explanation similar to the Baldwin Effect, to consume resources and thrive. The show featured some form of tree beatle that ravaged the entire southern peninsula of Alaska that had been covered in a certain species of tree that doubled as an excellent source of food for the little beatle. The residents described the events with horror. Funny thing is…the beatle population was effectivley limited after their food source died through over consumption until the point of resource exhaustion. What had brought about the change in the first place was a shift in climate in the region that allowed the beatles to move from tree to tree without freezing to death. Basically an extension of their ability to move around in their environment due to global warming or another possible explanation.
Are humans any different? Apparently not. What if we can’t see past the technological abilities that we have developed? What if we are unit actors defined by our resource dependency? We are living in a world with a finite amount of reources. We also seem to be able to construct explanations for just about anything we observe. (eg. magic, act of god, creationism, etc.) Why can’t we see the initial increase and subsequent large amount of death in the little beatle population in Alaska or the potentially acccurate description of resource depletion and population decrease in places like Easter Island. While Dennis Miller is no expert his comments do offer evidence of are refusal to change our current paradigm of reality. The little beatle benefited from miniscule tempature changes. This sparked big changes in a region of our world. We should all recognize that the premise of earth day is great. But, just like Malthus, the messenger who hands out a cold harsh message about our resource usage will be called a enemy of humantiy. If beatles eat trees until they are consumed to extinction what makes us think we won’t consume our seaweed or whatever other resources we have at our disposal to exhaustion.
Comment by Dan Walker — 26 April 2005 @ 2:09 PM
By the way. This is my first post. Im a huge fan of this forum and the thought provking comments.
Comment by Dan Walker — 26 April 2005 @ 2:20 PM
Hiya Dan, welcome aboard!
… we have fans? AWESOME!!!
Comment by Jason Godesky — 27 April 2005 @ 9:17 AM
More fans than you know.
Comment by perianwyr — 9 February 2006 @ 10:31 PM