Losing Our Balance

Arthur Godfrey had a popular radio talk show back in the late fifties. Occasionally he would chat with environmentalists who warned listeners of over-fishing and a buildup of toxins in the world’s oceans. The scientists were quickly labeled as lunatics and summarily dismissed. After all, how could something so vast as an ocean become polluted? In those days everyone knew that the solution to pollution was dilution. Help yourself, poor all the crap you want into the sea. It can take it.
News that the Amazonian rain forest was being destroyed ruffled our collective consciousness but, hey, that was a continent away. We continued to deny all the scientific data, even from the most astute and lauded scientists.
But then slowly warning signs emerged and a conception crept in that perhaps America should have listened and learned something valuable from those lunatics. Species began disappearing. A protected species act was eventually passed in Congress. But all that was forgotten as political assassinations, race riots, and an unpopular war dominated the nightly news. Energy prices spiked in the early 1970s setting off a futile search for alternative energy supplies. Inflation, along with the national debt, rose dramatically. America was a nation that had severe monetary troubles. To allay people‘s fears that the sky was falling, President Nixon took the country off the gold standard and allowed the dollar to float. America, in effect, had no backing for its currency - only the government’s promise to repay any debts incurred.
In order to make it look like American’s were still wealthy, that we had nothing to worry about, President Reagan tripled spending, increasing the national debt. Corporations, along with technology, emerged to the forefront of the American political landscape. The Supreme Court went so far as to proclaim corporations had all the rights as everyone else in the land because they have attained the position of “personhood.” The technology sector promised us a wonderful, carefree future, declaring that a new world order was emerging, one that would replace the old way of doing business. Basic accounting principles were rewritten as a frenetic search for new wealth emerged. The dictum that all wealth comes from the earth was replaced by a vision that wealth can be created out of something so simple as thin air, all we had to do was "believe." The dot com implosion ended that whimsical philosophy.
Throughout all the cultural changes and challenges, one thing remained. Reality. It insisted that for all America had gained there was a price to pay. The pollution of the fifties continued to increase until dire warnings emerged that greenhouse gases were becoming so capacious in the atmosphere that they could eventually kill us. If things didn't change, mankind might choke on its own consumption of worldly goods.
Americans initially became upset at that realization, until they woke up to the fact that they were the ones most responsible for this increase in the buildup of atmospheric carbon. Americans comprise only five percent of the world’s population but consume twenty-five percent of the earth’s resources. A gluttonous share of the world’s affluence.
What was the government’s reaction? War! That would solve all America’s problems by forgetting our old troubles and simply create a new perspective. But it didn’t work this time. It only made things worse. We tried to compromise the political and environmental situations by recently promising to join the world community in making the world less polluted. But now it’s beyond compromise. We have passed the point of mitigation where cutting back on carbon emissions will heal the planet’s atmosphere. The world’s temperature will rise about 3 ½ degrees no matter what we do. The earth will undergo a vast change that will see oceans rise, drought increase, resources, including our precious water supply, become scarcer. Adaptation is our only recourse. Other nations are heeding the call. In America, our infrastructure needs to be shored up or replaced. Current farming practices that now rape the land of its vitality by squeezing every ounce of nutrition out of the soil will need to be discontinued. The air we breathe, that contributes to lung cancer and other diseases, must be scrubbed clean. Water can't continue to be used as merely a Wall Street commodity. Waste must be discontinued.
Unfortunately, the assets needed for the job no longer exist in our coffers. As I stated before, all wealth comes from the earth and America has used all up it’s natural resources. The cupboard is bare, folks. We have foolishly spent our wealth and saved almost nothing. The world won’t look to America for answers in the future. We have squandered our vision for that future on crooked politicians, criminal-minded corporations, an apathetic public that rewards ballplayers above teachers, and a hypocritical mindset that punishes rather than encourages people that are different than the perceived norm, forgetting that nature thrives on diversity.
So what’s the bottom line? Do we have any options left? Sure we do! But they don’t include the current system of government. We need to create an environment where the local people rule their locality. Where farmer’s markets thrive, eco-villages are constructed, and solar becomes the model form of energy. Where a transparent government is common. Where human beings and their needs are far more important than the corporation. Where our families mean more than the stuff we own. Where education is paramount and kindness is an epidemic. It’s not too late to save the planet or our culture. Do whatever you are able to do and please don’t wait. Recycle goods and refuse to feed the current system. Things will change. The earth and it’s inhabitants are just too valuable a resource to waste.