Environmentalism flawed...
(originally posted 10 October 2006)
I am not apt to give proclamations. I usually rant uselessly and accomplish little more than entertainment. It has always been that way in life for me; it seems to be how I am coded, hard-wired, programmed...insert synonym here...
Yet that does not keep me from spewing forth invective upon topics with which I feel particularly antagonistic. And I have just had a spark of enlightenment that explains the gut disdain for the environmental movement as I have personally experienced throughout my life. I think the problem with the environmental movement is that it comes off too radical; it does not allow the general populace to understand just what it is that attracts the individual to the movement. While the environment in and of itself is a laudable cause, it carries more weight when a broader spectrum of the public understands just what it is that must be done and WHY... and there is the problem. The facts are there. Many prominent persons have presented them in their own unique way. But they have spewed facts forth in a general stream that hit only the people in its direct path. To turn the nozzle of enlightenment to full-blast mist (fire-hose style) and drench the world with a better understanding of the terra firma underneath our feet we must make people feel like the earth is an extension of them.
It is easy for anybody to grasp the concept that their house, automobile, and other possessions are an outward, detached representation of the possessor. If you come to my house and look in the utility room, you will find bicycles and camping gear crammed in around the washing machine. This, my selection of compact discs, cassettes (yes, I still own and LOVE my cassettes...IPOD BE DAMNED!), movies, books, all are a symbol of my personality, my inner being. But how does one possess the earth? Certainly, one can own a tract of land. But the entire environmental movement is predicated on the notion that the land should not be owned by anyone; that the government should preserve specific areas of land for posterity as a depiction of American identity. Not every American lives in a city; nor does every American in a city want to vacation in another city. My personal experience with the wilderness, the environment, came when my parents moved us to Jackson Hole.
And it is getting to places like the Grand Tetons or Yellowstone, Crater Lake and the Grand Canyon, Yosemite and Glacier-Waterton, which help bring one in communion with the earth. But the movement reaches further than that. Though my love of environment was forged in the mountains of northwest Wyoming, I have lived elsewhere and currently do live elsewhere, and I am able to seek out the beauty in the natural world wherever I happen to live. In Illinois, I had the pleasure of riding a section of the Mississippi River bicycle trail, the Great River Road, between Hanover and Rock Island. On my two days off of work from Spikes Bar and Grill, I took my shiny blue and silver Raleigh Grand Prix out with a small backpack mounted on top of a lightweight rack and set out. The bike weighed less than other tour bikes I have taken out in the past. This time, I was hell-bent on speed, the taste of gliding along a river-forest trail away from automobiles and often other people. I was alone with my thoughts, free to experience the breeze through the July leaves, the sun beating down (and toasting my skin with a not-so-healthy third-degree ROASTING) through the trees, glowing off the river and setting as I completed the hundred miles into the Quad Cities. Riding the riverwalk through the concrete jungle, I finally found a cheap motel at nightfall and crashed, tired and grimy from the trail. Returning home the next day, the sense of having been able to just go and find solace away from human development was gratifying and reassuring.
And the most vivid memory I have of that trip was not the burn in my legs, the meals I ate, or the FOUR (4) flat tires I changed in that two-hundred miles...rather, it was the one time I got completely lost from my map and ended up in the middle of nowhere. I still have no idea what wrong turn I took or where I was for certain, but, blazed under a blazing sun, I found myself pedaling through sand and pebbles, certainly heading westward and getting more and more close to the Mississippi. Then the road headed north. I was pedaling just fast enough to keep on top of the sand, paranoid about a fifth flat. I had no more spare tubes, and I didn't want to sit under the cloudless skies while I acquainted myself once again with my drivetrain and tires and rims. I had spent too much time staring intently at my back wheel and not enough time proportionally riding in the wild. So I was understandably edgy. Yet, the whole time, I laughingly continued. I could have got off the bike and walked the sleek racing machine gingerly back to tarmac, but I was having too much fun at the same time.
I made it out of the ride okay. I ended up with Lyme disease after all was said and done. I had to take off five days of work recuperating from the damn illness. Yet that time pedaling smooth sleek road tires over pebbly sand was the best moment of the trip. Away from everything, in the middle of nowhere...
And that is what the environment signifies. Only personal experience is going to persuade anyone to preserve these areas. And, while it is noble to preserve the land simply because it is there and unspoiled, by no means is it going to happen if people are not convinced that it is an important issue when voting for their elected representatives. Because the country is designed where 536 elected officials control the federal government of a nation of three-hundred-million people, it is imperative that the voting public know what really matters to them when entering their local polling station.
And that is how the environmental movement will succeed, if it ever can or will. It is a matter of bringing about the sensation of serenity and taking people OUT into these preserved lands. Whether it is the Black Hills, the arches and canyons of southeast Utah, or the Appalachian Trail, the merit of preserving land for posterity is only relevant if people are persuaded to visit these locales for themselves. It is not necessary to visit everywhere; rather, it is necessary only to have that one epiphany. What I was blessed to have developed at a young age, many have never been able to experience except in Discovery Channel shows and National Geographic. The environmental movement will only succeed when it extends beyond a fringe group of radicals to a wider collective of hunters, backpackers, car campers, farmers, and anyone who has had that burst of consciousness about the importance of keeping the earth the way it has always been and cultivating it in a natural and healthy, sustainable manner. This does not mean clear-cutting or strip-mining; this means finding better ways of utilizing what is available to us already, recycling the millions of dead automobiles lying in junkyards and scrap heaps across the country, and working with agriculturists to develop new, sustainable fuel and material sources.
But, as I have said, eco-terrorism is not going to ever culminate with the Washington greedheads caving in to the pressure of a handful of tree-sitters or even development-bombers. Remember, terrorism has now been attached to the environmental movement...nothing good can come of this new and perplexing development. Is this what Thoreau envisioned? Is this what the Muries and the Audobons and the Sierra Club fought for: to allow their struggle to develop in this deplorable manner?
I would think and, indeed, hope not. It would be shameful to allow the earth to be carved up because the environmental movement went too radical and was slaughtered in a sickening military standoff in the last forests. But it is possible. And if people keep voting the way they do, it could be inevitable...but the movement is doing little to make people see it in that paradigm. I propose that everyone write down one of their most memorable experiences in nature. You can send it to me, but that is not the important part. Everyone must stir up some memory of the environment and its special place in their lives...because that is truly the only way the struggle can be successfully won...