Earth Day. At a time when our natural resources are viewed by those in power as so many unclaimed dollar signs, the prospect of a better future can seem pretty bleak. Log it, mine it, drill it, pave it over, and do it all as cheaply and irresponsibly as possible is the rule of the day. But it all comes at such a terrible cost.
The physical impact is evident, but there’s also an incalculable psychological impact. Does anyone else feel oppressed when regenerative fields and woods are sacrificed to ugly housing developments or miles of enormous box warehouses? These things wear on the soul.
Beethoven and Mahler weren’t inspired to write their masterworks while walking around the parking lot of a strip mall on Route 1 or against a backdrop of roaring chainsaws or by taking in lungs-full of diesel exhaust. I only just googled Asher B. Durand’s painting “Kindred Spirits” to discover this classic depiction of man in nature is now owned by a Walmart heiress! Wordsworth’s head would explode.
I know, with deregulation and official, flagrant disregard for the environment, our oceans, the protective atmosphere, our national parks, our farms, the water we drink, and the air we breathe, it almost seems like what’s the point. But that is the point. It’s why it’s all the more important to support whatever environmental/wildlife organizations you can, especially those with a reputation for lawyering up and winning.
In the old days, you used to be able to contact your state representatives and feel as if you might have done some good. I don’t have any faith in that anymore. I can’t even get my neighbors to recycle properly, and it’s not like they stand to gain anything monetarily from their lack of concern. When billions of dollars are at play, I imagine it’s all too easy to ignore the consequences – I’m not going to worry about that right now, as long as I get mine – and view quality of life, imperiled health, and curtailed existence as intangibles.
It’s a very warped perspective, as the evidence is all around us, with scorching summers, natural disasters, and infectious disease and cancer on the rise, species in decline, and ugly “development” everywhere. It’s common for woods to be hacked down and fields to be plowed under, but rare to see trees planted. Even how we care for our very lawns can be so irresponsible. In too many instances, people just don’t think, or they don’t care. But once these things are gone, they’re gone, or if they can come back, it can take generations, and not everything will survive.
Some might say it’s the way of the world, but if an economy can be built by adjusting our manner of thinking and by training a work force to move toward a greener future, I don’t see why there’s so much pushback against it. One way or the other, it’s always the consumer who’s going to get milked in the end, so it’s not like industry is going to lose anything, in terms of profits, by converting.
At the very least, we should do no harm, if it can possibly be avoided, and everything to help, if we can.
Happy Earth Day hardly seems to address the mess that we are in.
THE WORLD IS TOO MUCH WITH US (1802)
William Wordsworth
The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending we lay waste our powers;
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon,
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers,
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not. – Great God! I’d rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn.
IMAGE: Asher B. Durand, “Kindred Spirits” (1849)