Poor Stewardship

In the last post, I said I was having trouble writing about the Gulf, and why. But there’s more to it than the emotional retching I feel every time I see video of the Gulf of Mexico.

We — my generation — are the children of Earth Day. I was nearly 12 when the first one launched. It was a huge thing, this idea that even at 12, I could make a difference. It was empowering. I remember seeing photos of Lake Erie pollution, picking up litter along the road where I lived, walking or riding my bike instead of driving when all my friends drove at 16 and feeling as though I made a difference, even if it was a small one.

Those were formative lessons. I have always driven fuel-efficient cars. I walk when I can and now I walk just about everywhere unless I absolutely have to drive. Recycling has been a habit since before there were special bins for the garbage people to pick up recyclable material, and we re-use as much as we can. If I have one vice, it is my tech habit, but even there I do my best to re-use old equipment or give it a new home where it can be used rather than end up in landfills.

It meant this:

We came to realize the human dimensions of antiseptic statistics.

We came to realize that the more than 1400 pounds of air pollution per person which rides the wind and rain across this continent is a hazard to health and life and the human spirit.

We came to realize that more than 50 trillion gallons of hot water, millions of tons of organic and chemical pollutants, enormous amounts of fertilizers, pesticides, and most of all, sewage every year are spoiling rivers once celebrated in our art and literature and history. The Hudson and the Potomac, the Missouri and the Monongehela, the Snake and the Androscoggin – all rivers rich in history – are today rivers rich in industrial and municipal wastes.

We came to realize that the more than 7 million automobiles, 20 million tons of paper, 48 billion cans and 26 billion bottles a year which litter our landscape means that almost nowhere on this continent can man escape the impact he has had on nature.

We came to realize too that we were not alone in our disregard for the delicate balance of life. (EPA history site)

It was noble, this effort. Noble in the sense that even doing a little could add up to a lot, that if every person took just a little bit of responsibility, we could make things better for our children and theirs.

It was stewardship. Somewhere along the way, we lost that mission. Here we were, the first generation to come of age along with emerging awareness of the environment and damage done, the generation who learned to drive in the middle of a gasoline shortage, the generation who learned early and often that we could not rely upon fossil fuels forever, and yet…

We bought SUVs.

We dug ourselves into debt for big houses and heated pools.

We let hubris trump community.

We let wars begin over oil fields and used spilled blood to sign contracts awarding multibillion dollar drilling rights to villains and profiteers.

We gave ourselves permission to risk our coastlines, even after seeing how devastated Santa Barbara was in 1969.

I look at the devastated Gulf of Mexico, the wetlands forever poisoned by our greed and I just don’t even know how to tell my children we lost sight of our responsibility to be stewards of their future.

Worse, I’m not sure there’s a way back.

We have been poor stewards. All of us.

Dillingham, Alaska, The Willow Tree Bar by Gary Snyder

Drills chatter full of mud and compressed air all across the globe, low-ceilinged bars, we hear the same new songs

All the new songs. In the working bars of the world. After you done drive Cat. After the truck went home. Caribou slip, front legs folded first under the warm oil pipeline set four feet off the ground

On the wood floor, glass in hand, laugh and cuss with somebody else’s wife Texans, Hawaiians, Eskimos, Filipinos, Workers, always on the edge of a brawl

In the bars of the world. Hearing those same new songs in Abadan, Naples, Galveston, Darwin, Fairbanks, White or brown, Drinking it down,

the pain of the work of wrecking the world.

Tagged as: beaches, environment, heritage, legacy, oil spill, Politics