In last month's Thoughts of a Seeker, I wondered if there was hope for this earth and we who live upon it. I received a response from Al Carmichael, whose has several essays in 1998 Seeker issues, and I received his permission to include it here:
Is there hope? I am wondering myself. I am sick to death of the rich building monuments to themselves that block the view for everyone, that restrict access for everyone and that ruin the landscape and the environment. These types are so myopic, all they can see is their little piece of the material dream.I live near a lake. It is no longer visible to the neighborhood. They have torn down the smaller homes in order to build giant houses on the same property. It is the same story everywhere I go. How big can we build it? That is the central question. Have you noticed that nobody builds smaller three and four bedroom homes anymore? Want a small house? Move to the trailer park.
The larger issue seems to be the growing divide between the rich and the poor. It is unchecked and looks to be growing. Even looking at this election, the undercurrent of money behind the words of the politicians and the courts makes me very nervous. Is democracy becoming a vehicle for a modern sort of feudal society? Are we all really slaves to the wealthy?
I probably exaggerate. And--I don't want to blame the rich exclusively. There are at least as many poor and middle class idiots screwing up their share of things. Bottom line--there are many selfish folks who can't seem to get beyond the concept of "me."
Still, everywhere I hear the cry of foul, big money and politicians are not far away. I think about the messages my friends send me about Native Americans and their continuing struggle to hang onto their lands. Lord knows, if we could get rid of those Indians, we could build some mighty fine golf courses there or do some strip mining.
With the way the population is growing, I find it hard to believe that all this selfishness and abuse is going to end. So much for a kinder, gentler nation. My question is how do we reflect back to these rabid builders how we experience their lives and creations? What kind of mirror do we have to hold up so that they understand their own ugliness? We are using up our resources at an alarming rate, paying no attention to the environment or the available farm land. What we should be doing is conserving and scaling down. That is one thing the rich don't get or want to get. It would spoil the party. With Bush as President, environmental issues will consist of "where is the oil?", if anything.
The sad thing is that when it all reaches critical mass, only the rich will be able to afford the fuel, land, and food that will end up scarce. We can't tear up those golf courses and use them for farmland you know!
Your essay hit a nerve. I wish I had some solution. If anything, it will require a series of deep spiritual changes in sweeping fashion. Maybe the best we can do is keep loving, understanding and getting positive messages and ideas out into the world. Those ideas can cut through iron gates and brick walls. Whether they can cut through closed minds may be another matter. Best, Al
"Only the rich will be able to afford the fuel, land, and food that will end up scarce." Yes, indeed. We've wasted nearly 30 years since the United States experienced the oil crisis of 1973. Last summer's quick spike of fuel prices, followed in December by the state of California experiencing an electricity crisis, because deregulation brought whopping wholesale rates to purchase electricity while customer rates were locked in much lower, has only brought cries from the newly-elected administration and their Congressional cronies to get out there and drill and hang the environment.
And there was that news report about the aluminum smelters in Washington state closing down manufacturing and laying off their workers because they could sell the electricity they would otherwise use (and manufacturing virgin aluminum uses an extraordinary amount of electricity) to California utilities at four times the cost of its locked-in purchase rate. A most unethical and unconscionable action...but what else would you expect in these days of profits take all?
What has been most clearly omitted in the news of the California electricity crisis and in the speeches of the in-coming Republican administration are two items: conservation and renewable energy. Now wouldn't you think that political conservatives would understand what energy conservation was about and embrace it? (Odd how words with the same root have taken on such diametrically opposed meanings.) And the idea of fossil fuels being a finite resource always gets ignored. (Still haven't read Thom Hartmann's Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight yet, the nearby library doesn't stock it.)
There is a magazine called E/The Environmental Magazine,and the November/December copy landed on my desk at work with the cover headline of "Doubling America." Reading it could open the blinders just a bit, I think. You can find it in their archives at Balancing Act.
It focuses on the United States' projected population growth and emphasizes that the growth is not due to the birth rate (which is about at replacement rate) but is and will be due to immigrants, both legal and illegal. The topic of U.S. immigration, except for illegal immigrants, of course, has disappeared from all political radar screens and from environmental screens within the last five to ten years. Between political correctness and a hot, labor-hungry economy and the various ethnic wars around the globe, the U.S. has been welcoming far more immigrants than in the past, as have the northern European countries. Where people come from has frequently been a place of war of some nature or extremely poor economically.
Understand that my thoughts on this are not about closing borders. It is about creating equitable economies in the home countries so that, for instance, Mexicans won't desire to cross the Sonoran desert and risk dying of thirst to earn a comparative living wage in the United States. (I say comparative because generally what they are paid isn't a living wage in the U.S.) So that Haitians have decent lives in Haiti and can environmentally reclaim their raped half of an island. So that Chinese laborers are earning more than 33 cents an hour sewing Ralph Lauren clothing which retails for $70+. So that slave labor clothing factories on the North Mariana Islands (a U.S. protectorate and therefore can legally label their goods Made in the USA) are no more. So that women across the globe can pull themselves out of poverty and take control of their reproductivity.
It's about pulling the greed teeth out of corporations, so that the stock market doesn't rise when thousands of employees are laid off in order to increase profits and so that Monsanto cannot lock up the seed stock of the world's food crops nor poison our land with toxic pesticides and herbicides.
I am looking for a steady state economy, because we have about reached the limits of the earth's capability for sustaining SIX BILLION human beings and more at a decent level of living--that is, adequate shelter, nutritious non-toxic food, clean water, and non-material contentment. (Never heard of that? Neither have I, but I would define it as being able to achieve contentment without the purchase of material goods, and I would say that being able to enjoy the beauties of the earth would be one way.)
I am looking for a business ethic that emphasizes a decent profit coupled with good employee care and high environmental standards, rather than one that gouges for obscene profits, treats employees as cogs (except for the top management level), and has no problem with dumping toxic wastes the neighborhood (as in the maquiladoros in Mexico).
I am looking for Americans to stop believing that they are entitled to the most...of everything they want. Because they can't take it all now and expect that the great-grandchildren of the world will have anything in 50 years.
Oh hell, I'm looking for a compassionate and peaceful world, am I not?
Cherie
[You can check out E/Magazine itself is at E/The Environmental Magazine.]
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