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Global Warning - Jul 17, 2005 - Printable Version
- The Hummer of Countries
by Robin Buckallew
When great minds gather to debate and hopefully solve a particularly important and knotty problem, there is one thing that needs to be done before all others: the problem that is being solved must be correctly identified. For months, the most respected minds in the environmental community have been tussling amongst themselves, writing articles, holding seminars, philosophizing and analyzing, all in the interests of one important question: how come the environmental movement died, and what is needed to make it start growing and thriving again? Overlooking the fact that the question is ridiculous (if it is dead, and they assume it is, how is it going to begin growing again?), let's consider one other possibility: it's the wrong question. This is the only hypothesis I have been able to generate that fully explains the phenomenon that is so evident: the oh-so-wise philosophers just keep coming up with all the wrong answers. Recently, in the Faulking Truth message board, one of our readers asked the right question, the question that has been on my mind for some time now. This article is my attempt to begin finding an answer to that question. Peter N., one of our readers, asked me why is America so out of touch with the rest of the world when it comes to the environment? This, my faithful friends, is the right question. These days, it is very difficult for me to go into a bookstore and look through their magazine section without finding several magazines, spanning the spectrum from left to right, from frivolous to serious, that have graced their covers with the question Is Environmentalism Dead? Some of them skip the question, and go straight for the kill, proclaiming The Death of Environmentalism. To quote one of the greatest American humorists of all time, I would like to say, reports of our death are highly exaggerated. Not to mention arrogant, presumptuous, and incredibly America-centric. You see, these articles deal only with one phenomenon - the fact that Americans are tuned out and turned off on the environmental message. They have moved on, bought Hummers, and decided to let the giant panda go extinct. While most Americans in polls proclaim themselves proponents of clean air, clean water and natural spaces, they aren't doing anything about it. The environmental movement blames itself. Everybody else blames them, too. So we come up with answers to why, and it is clear from reading most of the nonsense that passes for deep thinking on this question that everybody is answering the question based solely on their own biases, their own worldviews, and their own preferences. If a person comes from the scientific community, they feel that the question is too much New Age and mysticism surrounds it, and that the hard fact is not getting heard. If the person prefers New Age and mysticism, they claim the problem is too much hard science gets in the way of putting across the beauty and spirit of the whole thing. Populists claim the problem is too much top-down organization, regulators claim the problem is too much bottom-up organization. Everybody wants to remake the entire thing in their own image. Technical answers. Organic answers. Legal answers. Spiritual answers. Religious answers. We have all sorts of answers. We just don't have the right question.
Peter, I have been giving a great deal of thought to your question. In fact, I have been struggling with just this question for some time. Why are we so out of touch with the rest of the world? In fact, we could add, why are we so out of touch with the rest of the world that we can't even realize we are out of touch? I'm not sure we have even realized that there is a rest of the world. All of the eulogies, all of the dirges, all of the death notices have been singularly centered on the alleged failure of the American environmental movement, without ever taking into account the fact that much is being done worldwide by people with fewer resources, fewer opportunities, and fewer freedoms than we have here. The other leaders of the G8 countries spent a lot of time and a lot of energy trying to persuade our president that we should be part of the solution to global warming. Our president didn't listen. The nightly news carries very little coverage of the environment, yet most people if asked will insist that they are being bombarded everywhere with the "bad news". In many other countries, environmental news is commonplace, and the average citizen is well informed about issues and policies. They are not afraid to talk politics in public, or practice an environmentally friendly lifestyle openly without risk of ridicule. Why are we so out of touch? The answer, I'm afraid, is immensely complex. It relates to our history, our geography, our culture, even to some extent our language. It relates to our religion, our education and our economy. It goes to the very core of "the American dream", at least as it has been redefined in post-World War II America.
America is a country geographically isolated from most of the rest of the world. In fact, few Americans are even very consciously aware of the two large countries that share our continent. Americans are very poorly traveled, and are not particularly knowledgeable about the rest of the world, often only vaguely aware of geography or history. The only countries that border ours are basically friendly and peaceful with us, and we don't live in fear of an air strike from our immediate neighbors. While there is little doubt that most citizens of 21st century America could identify Iraq (even if they can't locate it on a map), and are aware of England, France, Germany and Spain, how many of them could tell you anything about Rwanda? Darfur? Zaire? Recently, the Nobel Prize was given to an environmental leader from Kenya - how many Americans are aware of what continent Kenya is on? In fact, it is sad how many Americans, asked to name a country that begins with an A, will give the answer Africa. To some extent, we are out of touch with the rest of the world because we don't know where it is. It's "out there" someplace. In the same general vicinity as the moon, perhaps. Mysterious and distant, it doesn't touch our everyday lives. It doesn't appear on our TV, unless it is an exotic vacation destination, or unless we are dropping bombs on it. This is an interesting reversal of the vast majority of human history - you see, until very recent times, America was isolated in anonymity. No one in the civilized world was aware there was a very large land mass over here (in fact, 2 very large land masses, both now named America). Now, we've swung the pendulum - everybody "out there" is aware of America, but we are not all that aware of them.
Another key point that explains why we are so out of touch is our history - or at least, the mythology that passes for history to most of us. History as it is taught in our schools is a story of American exceptionalism. It is a story of American perseverance, and the virtuous rightness of American policies. From the time that Columbus discovered the New World, the story is one of inevitable and enviable progress, taking a land that is wild and uncivilized and turning it into a productive, civilized, powerful world leader. Manifest Destiny, from sea to shining sea, noble causes and just wars. Most Americans would insist that we have never fought for ignoble reasons, we have always been fair and humane, and that we do not rape, pillage or plunder anywhere. We are generous and helpful. Wherever we have gone, we have brought improvements and better living for all. As is the case for most myths, there are gems of truth contained within this story. America is by no means unique in this - many countries have a national historical mythology, told only from the point of view of the particular group whose purposes it serves. If it does no harm to believe a story like this one, then I say, love your country, eat your vegetables, clean your room and have a very nice day. It is when this mythology causes us to hide our heads in the sand and risk the future of the entire world that we may need to abandon its pleasant falsehoods and sort out that which is honest from that which has been brushed over with the slightest of gold to hide the dross. This is not an easy job, it will take a great deal of perseverance and poring through old documents, and it will meet with a great deal of righteous indignation from many people who aren't ready to abandon the pleasant perfections of the exceptionalist myth.
Perhaps the greatest problem keeping us out of touch with the rest of the world lies in our economy, our base of resources. This is a large country, biologically and climatologically diverse. The natural resources when we arrived here from Europe were seemingly endless. Keep in mind that Europe was at that time a land rapidly coming face to face with limits. The population had grown beyond what could be supported comfortably. Opportunities for further expansion were not vast, until this vast "New World" of two large continents and numerous small islands was thrown open to settlement. The possibilities stretched nearly to infinity, and they felt they were just the people to properly exploit them. These, then, were our ancestors. Unwilling to accept the limits of their homeland, adventurous and bold, ready to carve out a whole new life in a whole new world. Many died, but those who survived kept on pushing westward, kept on expanding. There was so much land, so much space, that if one plot you were farming wore out, you simply moved further, and started farming a new one until you wore that one out, too. There was no need to worry about conserving what you found - there was plenty for everyone. Well, that has changed. But the attitude hasn't. When we look around this continent, most of us can see signs of the destruction of nature, the presence of concrete and shopping malls where only a few years ago were trees and wildflowers, big four-lane highways where a few years ago there were pastures and prairies. But we all know if we go just a little further down the road, there will be fields and pastures, trees and grasses. There is land preserved in parks and protected as wilderness. When we want water, water flows out of our faucets clear and clean. When we want food, there are grocery stores on every corner, with a seemingly endless supply of food choices. There still seems to be plenty for everybody, if they can just come up with the money to buy it. Even the mythology of the land of opportunity feeds into that attitude, that worldview. We are still, in our minds, living in a land without limits. The only thing, we think, that limits us is our ambition, our drive, our energy, and our willingness to work hard. There will always be more, if we just keep working hard enough to keep the productivity high. The promises of our technological advances only feed into that mind set, as we convince ourselves that when we run out, we will simply use science to create more, to genetically engineer what is already there, or to simply move us to another planet where we can continue to live a limitless life. Conservation is not needed if there is no limit to what can be done.
So far, the picture I have painted is one of a country that is young, much like a teenager. We are innocent, giddily unaware of anything much outside our own skins, convinced of our own immortality, and confident of our own abilities and knowledge. There is much truth in this analogy, and America, like most teenagers, chafes at rules, scoffs at attempts to impose external authority, and dares anyone else to rein us in. We are like the spoiled brat who has been given too much freedom and not enough discipline, and have consequently developed an oversized sense of entitlement. Eventually, even spoiled brats grow up. But there is a darker side to the Peter Pan picture that I find much more troubling. There is growing within our self-centeredness and our conceit an aggressiveness that is enlarging rapidly, like a cancer. A feeling of look out for number one that exceeds just looking out for number one. It involves running over number two. Out of our sense of exceptionalism and entitlement has come a deep-seated desire to crush anyone who would disagree. We re-identify all those who are not "us" as "them", and they become "the other". The other is, by definition, "bad", "evil", "dangerous". There have been calls in recent years for America to downsize her consumerist habits. This doesn't sit well with many Americans. A new DVD player has become, to many, constitutionally enshrined as their right to pursuit of happiness (a phrase appearing in the Declaration of Independence, not the Constitution, and therefore not codified in our rules of law). We defiantly flaunt our purchasing power, and then throw away most of what we've just purchased. We consume more than our share of the world's resources, and then vilify those who want us to share. Most of us are ideologically and ethically opposed to sweatshop labor, but don't want fair labor practices to increase prices at the local Wal-Mart or Safeway. Most of us want safe food and clean water, but want this without a price increase. Most of us want cleaner air, but are unwilling to pay higher prices for a gallon of gas, or get out and walk whenever possible. We have become addicted not only to easy, but to cheap. Now, when what once seemed like sensible economic practices turn out to be dangerous in the long run, we become, like most junkies, angry and disoriented because we can't get our fix. Many of us feel frightened and out of place in the world we think we need, but we don't know what is wrong, or how come we feel this way. Look around, we're surrounded by beautiful "things". We have our nice new SUV, we have a big house with a swimming pool, we have a big screen TV and a DVD player. We are where we always wanted to be. But we are not happy. Addicts rarely find their habits make them happy. No one is happy being enslaved by a habit.
Perhaps the most disturbing of all what I think of as our "hummerthink". This first came through to me in a conversation with a friend, a lovely and kind-hearted young lady who had just bought her first SUV. Since she is a card-carrying environmentalist, it became necessary to her to explain herself, and justify the purchase of this gas-guzzling vehicle to carry just her and the two books and small purse she usually had with her. It seems that this nice, kind young woman, should she happen to be in an accident, wants to make sure it is "the other" that gets killed. I have heard this over and over again. The thought never occurs to anyone that in an accident, it is far better if NO ONE gets killed. This is not possible 100% of the time, but there are ways to reduce the likelihood of your death that don't involve making sure "the other" dies. Since that time, I have heard this expressed over and over again - it seems it is no longer enough for you to survive the accident - "the other" has to die. Of course, this same reasoning just drove "the other" out to buy an SUV, also, knowing that you now have one, and are aiming for him. The arms race has begun, only this time it is happening on our own streets, neighbor against neighbor. This attitude came home to me again recently when, in a conversation with my adult son, he referred to the United States as "the Hummer of countries". He was referring to our excessive use of resources, but perhaps the rest of "hummerthink" fits, too.
I know this article doesn't explain all of why we are out of touch. It only touches the surface. I have been reading for many years on this topic, thinking deeply and profoundly about it, and it still leaves me scratching my head in perplexity. All these things add up to a nation out of touch - but there is still a big "why?" We are the descendents of ancestral stock throughout the world, coming from many, many nations that don't necessarily view the world the same way. Many of these countries we hail from have adopted much more sensitive and sensible policies, or are at least opening dialogue. Many of the cultures in the other western nations are not that wildly different from ours, but they can talk about these things more rationally. Solutions are being sought, and found, in other nations that we have ties with and deep familial bonds. Who are we? I like to think we are neither hopeless, nor helpless. We can fight this addiction. We can beat it. We can start a national support group for ourselves and our fellow consumers. We can reject "hummerthink" before it's too late. In order to address the rest of Peter N.'s question, next week, I will begin to talk about policies and politics. You can make a difference in the environment. You can affect the policies that address pollution and consumerism. We don't have to be the Hummer of countries. We can rejoin the rest of the world, and they will welcome us with open arms. You can rest assured of that. The rest of the world doesn't hate us. They long for our company.
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