In this darkest of hours, I am reminded of the words of the great conservation ecologist, Aldo Leopold. “One of the penalties of an ecological education is living alone in a world of wounds.” Leopold fought long and hard for the establishment of a land ethic in this country, an ethic he never lived to see come to fruition. There are a number of us out there in the trenches today, still fighting for the realization of a land ethic, in which wilderness and natural systems are valued for their own sake, and not just for what economic benefit they can bring to man. We are still living, all alone, in a world of wounds.
Every day, news from my contacts worldwide brings new tidings. Sometimes the news is good – but not usually good enough. Small battles won. One of these that has made the headlines recently is the decision by the Russian government to sign on to the Kyoto Protocol, calling for small reductions in carbon dioxide emissions. To date, the world’s number one carbon dioxide emitter has refused to sign this treaty; actually, has chosen to unsign this treaty. Some of you may be in the dark about the issues surrounding carbon dioxide. Let’s just say, in short, carbon dioxide has been implicated in the warming of the earth’s atmosphere, and the global changes in climate that are wreaking havoc on island nations, and causing increasingly severe weather events around the globe (has anyone seen the Florida coast lately?). And, just in case you are uncertain about which global superpower is refusing to be a party to this treaty, just think U.S. Before you start to sputter about the “major controversy” among scientists as to whether global warming is a reality, let me point out to you that by far, the vast majority of the world’s scientists (somewhere in the neighborhood of 98%) have accepted global warming as an impending reality. For those of you who dismiss this as liberal scare tactics, I would like to point out to you that the Pentagon has identified global warming as one of the major threats to national security. The Pentagon (pinko commie liberals?) has called for drastic measures to meet what could become the greatest challenge of the twenty-first century.
Other bad news arrives. New threats to the wilderness. The President has targeted the roadless rule for repeal. It is about to become a fact as the public comment period on the proposed rules changes comes to a close. The roadless rule is a regulation prohibiting drilling, mining, clearcutting, you name it, in a wilderness that is pristine. The presence of a road into the wilderness means automatic removal from the wilderness list. For years, it has been the practice of resource extraction industries to cut a road into an area they were interested in exploiting. Then, of course, there is a road, and the area is no longer pristine. It has been the practice of regulatory agencies to look the other way as they signed the permits. Then, the oil rigs go up practically overnight. The mine shafts are sunk deep into the mountainsides. The bulldozers arrive. The clearcutters begin their work. And one by one, animals and plants disappear. By the way, did I mention these were public lands? That’s right, they were bought by the government with federal tax dollars. They belong to you and to me. But we are usually not consulted before the roads go in, before the rigs go up. And the extractive industries are usually paying a fraction of what they would pay a private owner for use of the land.
Yet another e-mail. Mountaintop removal, this time. Mountaintop removal is a favored way of extracting coal and other minerals from inside mountains. It is cheaper and easier (and less labor intensive) for the mining companies to simply cut the top off the mountain and remove what is inside. Then what happens to the mountain top? Funny you should ask. It seems our president feels it is perfectly appropriate for these companies to dump the material removed into the nearest water body. Many streams and rivers in Appalachia are the proud recipients of this material. This has the effect of rendering these water bodies unfit for use by wildlife. Or by human communities, for that matter. Aldo Leopold once exhorted people to “think like a mountain”. Try it for a minute. Think like a mountain. Hurts, doesn’t it?
Then there is the wolf. Gale Norton, it seems, is not fond of the wolf. So she simply removed it from the endangered species list. Now in the northern Midwest, the wolf is a favorite target of ranchers. It is open season on predators. Of course, anytime you remove predators from a system, you cause an unbalance in the system that leads to an explosion of the prey species, which are usually herbivores. Originally, hunters and sportsmen thought this would be a good idea. There would be a larger selection of game animals for their pleasure. After the wolf was removed from the system, the deer population grew exponentially. They grazed the plant community down to bare earth. Then they began to starve. The hunters soon discovered that what deer they were taking were not worth the effort to take them. The wolf was gradually reintroduced to Yellowstone Park, and the comeback has been a tremendous success story for the endangered species act. But it seems the wolf also likes cattle as a source of food (hamburgers, anyone?). So, Gale Norton has graciously removed this beleaguered animal from the ranks of the protected, in order to allow anyone and everyone to shoot at will. This in spite of the fact that the ranchers have typically been paid by the government for those animals that they lost (funny how many of the calves attacked are expensive show calves, rather than just the ordinary beef cattle).
The assault on the environment is not a new problem. It is not unique to this president. In fact, no president with the exception of Teddy Roosevelt has ever made protection of the environment a particular priority. What is new is the extreme hostility of this administration. The level of vitriol that is leveled at environmental activists, regulators, and advocates. What else is new is the brazenness of the attack, without making any attempts to play nice (except, of course, for the Orwellian language surrounding such atrocities as the Clear Skies Act, the Healthy Forests Initiative, etc). In the week that has passed since election day, the president has made his intentions clear. The assault on the environment will not only continue, it will accelerate. With a clear majority in Congress, it is almost a certainty that drilling will commence in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. It is without a doubt that the standards that govern the air that we breathe and the water than we drink will be rolled back. The EPA will continue to be underfunded, and will perhaps even become totally unfunded. No one knows where the assault will end. The pro-business policies of the current administration are accompanied by an unacceptable amount of collateral damage to the environment. There is only one shade of green that matters to this bunch. So join me. Take an active part in protecting the environment. Preserve what little is left for the future of the planet. Your children are depending on you. Don’t leave them alone in this world of wounds.
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Global Warning Archives:
The Bush Ranch (Robin Buckallew, Apr 12, 2004)
Beef- It's What's For Dinner? (Robin Buckallew, May 11, 2004)
How Extinct Is Too Extinct? (Robin Buckallew, Jun 4, 2004)
Toxic Texas (Robin Buckallew, Jun 16, 2004)
Crying Wolf (Robin Buckallew, Jul 6, 2004)
Al Gore In My Mirror (Robin Buckallew, Jul 22, 2004)
When is Too Much Enough? (Robin Buckallew, Aug 5, 2004)
The Day it Rained Cats... (Robin Buckallew, Aug 15, 2004)
Is There Any Future For The Past? (Robin Buckallew, Aug 29, 2004)
Where is Howard Beale? (Robin Buckallew, Sep 13, 2004)
All Those "Other Living Things" (Robin Buckallew, Oct 3, 2004)
Don't Blame the Grinch (Robin Buckallew, Oct 17, 2004)
My Life as Roadkill (Robin Buckallew, Oct 31, 2004)
A World of Wounds (Robin Buckallew, Nov 8, 2004)
I Want My GNP (Robin Buckallew, Nov 15, 2004)
It's the Environment, Stupid! (Robin Buckallew, Nov 24, 2004)
Who Let the Dogs Out? (Robin Buckallew, Dec 8, 2004)
They Laughed at Galileo, They Laughed at the Wright Brothers...(They Laughed at the Marx Brothers) (Robin Buckallew, Dec 18, 2004)
I'd Like a Bowl of Brazil Nuts, Please (Robin Buckallew, Dec 31, 2004)
Look Who's Talking (Robin Buckallew, Jan 8, 2005)
Flirting With Disaster (Robin Buckallew, Jan 23, 2005)
"The American Way of Life is Not Negotiable" (Robin Buckallew, Feb 5, 2005)
Hurwitz Who? (Robin Buckallew, Feb 16, 2005)
Have You Been SLAPPed Lately? (Robin Buckallew, Mar 1, 2005)
The Uninhabited Land (Robin Buckallew, March 19, 2005)
An Odyssey of Irrelevance (Robin Buckallew, Mar 29, 2005)
The North Shall Rise Again (Robin Buckallew, Apr 11, 2005)
What Size Shoe do You Wear? (Robin Buckallew, May 7, 2005)
An Ugly Wind (Robin Buckallew, May 20, 2005)
Tink is Dead (Robin Buckallew, May 28, 2005)
American Idle (Robin Buckallew, Jun 5, 2005)
Pin the Tail on Dick Cheney (Robin Buckallew, Jun 15, 2005)
Are You Really Going to Eat That? (Robin Buckallew, Jun 26, 2005)
How Does Your Garbage Grow? (Robin Buckallew, Jul 5, 2005)
The Hummer of Countries (Robin Buckallew, Jul 17, 2005)
So You Say You Want a Revolution? We all Want to Change the World (Robin Buckallew, Jul 30, 2005)
My Little Corner of the World (Robin Buckallew, Aug 22, 2005)
Katrina and the Waves (Robin Buckallew, Sep 10, 2005)
Hey, Don't Hit That Snooze Alarm Again! (Robin Buckallew, Sep 30, 2005)
As the World Burns (Robin Buckallew, Oct 18, 2005)
Eat Where You Live (Robin Buckallew, Nov 3, 2005)
Toward a New Pro-Life Ethic (Robin Buckallew, Dec 12, 2005)
The Seven Deadly Sins (Robin Buckallew, Dec 30, 2005)
HELL, I'LL DO IT* (Robin Buckallew, Jan 9, 2006)
Hey You, Keep Yer Butt in de Car! (Robin Buckallew, Jan 15, 2006)
Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf? (Robin Buckallew, Feb 7, 2006)
Go Ahead, Ignore Me (Robin Buckallew, Feb 26, 2006)
What Price Eden? (Robin Buckallew, Mar 5, 2006)
Nothing Seems Right in Cars** (Robin Buckallew, May 14, 2006)
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