Contemplating the Inevitable?

We have set ourselves up for a rude awakening. As the old saying goes, the chickens are coming home to roost. We can only hope and pray that we will be ready for them when they get here. There has been an overwhelming lack of interest in and commitment to our collective future and by thinking only about the next quarter, as so many businesses do, we have sacrificed many of the opportunities that have come our way over at least the last twenty years. Sadly, thirty or fifty years ago, we were already throwing our hands up at many of the ills that have grown into, what seem to be, insurmountable problems.

President Obama, speaking about the recovery of the Gulf Coast, hinted at one of our county's most difficult problems to face. Each year we inject billions of tons of soil into the Gulf of Mexico. Current agricultural policy has rewarded those who strip away the very tilth of our nation's soil, those who drag implements through marginal land, and those who keep expanding their operations to the point of not knowing a single acre well. The lion's share of our tax dollars that go into agriculture are to a relative handful of operators, each with many thousands, sometimes hundreds of thousands of acres. The Mississippi River carries soil and it's contaminants to the Gulf faster than it can be created or protected from deadly chemical treatments.

There are now precious few rivers in our country that harbor healthy fish populations and the record that we have in cleaning them up is extremely poor. Wildlife biologists have spoken for generations about indicator species. Like the canary in the coal mine, many species speak to us about environmental quality. As we learn more and more about our surroundings, we continue to find evidence about how out of balance nature has become. Our water and soil resources are not alone in this respect. As we can see around us, our efforts to clean up environmental degradation are usually done in a one step forward two steps back fashion.

Air pollution is a perfect example. As a nation, we used to drive a relatively small number of cars. As our children began to show signs of lead poisoning, from the emissions from automobiles and lead in paint, we "cleaned up our act". However, we drive more mile every year, and the emissions of other hazardous chemicals increases over time. My own children have been found to have high lead levels and because of that I had to learn about herbs that can help rid the body of this dangerous metal. My own health was affected by toxic compounds in the environment during my bike ride around the Great Lakes. Luckily, I had the loving care of a wise woman who knew that there were steps that I could take to expel them and heal the damage that they were causing. Not everyone will be so lucky. It seems that every time we find a solution to a single problem, we are confronted with a cascade of other problems that dwarf the first one. Cleaning up water for example has increased groundwater or air pollution, because the materials that we take out of the water through sewage treatment end up being incinerated and/or landfilled.

Many of our problems today come from being totally ignorant about our lifestyle and the effects that it has on the quality of the environment.

Shopping at big box stores is the perfect example. I have seen dozens of local businesses vacate the city, my city, the one I grew up in. I know of hundreds of folks who used to have secure livelihoods whose employers could not compete with the Targets and Wal-marts of today. The environmental cost has been that most of the best land in my city has disappeared under black top and the "new" mega-stores' sprawling roofs. I would estimate that the commercial real estate, now left vacant, is at least three times the size of the new "development". The blight that these empty establishments have created are a depressing reminder of friends lost and the many pillars of our community that have lost jobs to the mega-retailers. Heck, when I was a child, there were a dozen groceries within walking distance. Now there are many more places to get beer, soda and cigarettes, but only one that has carrots, potatoes and onions. That one surviving store is at the limit of walking distance, probably beyond the limit for most folks who live in my older neighborhood.

Even education has taken a hit. It was back in the eighties that I learned that the average college textbook is written at an eighth grade reading level. I sincerely hope that it has not gone down further since then. You don't have to go any further than Jay Leno's "Man On The Street" interviews to see that we, as a nation, are becoming ignorant at an alarming rate. I asked to see my daughter's textbooks when she started her Junior year in High School. Her Social Studies book had two sentences on union history. Two sentences? "Although unions helped establish such benefits as the weekend and the forty hour week, many of their victories came as the result of violent protest. Many union activists were anarchists and criminals whose motivation and methods were questionable." Really? No wonder so many are working so hard for so little. Education cannot be accomplished through more testing, it cannot be guaranteed by buying technological equipment. What we need is a complete overhaul of our educational system that allows competition to flourish.

I don't know how we can pull ourselves out of the tail spin that we find ourselves in. I'm not even sure that we will try until our ass is in a sling, or we hit the wall catastrophically. Most of us try to patch things up as best we can and muddle about in our usual way, ignoring the consequences. There are bright spots on the horizon. Luckily, many have seen the writing on the wall and will not abide further destructive tendencies. The growth in organic agriculture, permaculture and local food movements has been exponential. Granted, it is still a tiny fraction of one percent of our food production, but the growth is real. With the election of our current President, the public made a strong call for change. The problem that we face now is that many Americans don't realize that any worth while change requires long-term commitment and dedication. Our vote is just a temporary measure of public attitudes. Sustained effort will be required if we are to overcome the pressing issues that confront us now.