Now or never

When I was asked to write the new sustainability column for this newspaper, my first reaction was, “Why me?” I am not an organic farmer, a climate-change specialist or a vegan macrobiotic who won’t wear leather shoes. I’m kind of, well, normal. I am, at best, a lazy recycler. I shop at WalMart on occasion. Only some of the food in my pantry is organic, and I water my plants with MiracleGro. But I had another, equally strong reaction—a sense of excitement and enthusiasm. Finally, I could do something, however modest, to help preserve the natural world in which we all live, a world that is increasingly at risk in so many ways.

My love of nature has grown deeper since I moved to the country from suburbia, and the good people of the Upper Delaware River valley have broadened my understanding of how important it is that we become, to use the current catchphrase, “stewards of our environment,” our environment that sustains us. The written word can foster widespread change one reader at a time, and it is clear that now is the time to change many of our unconscious habits that have a detrimental impact on the natural world.

I am not talking about “Saving the Planet.” Planet Earth will survive all manner of catastrophe, except the inevitable collision with the sun a few million years from now. Even if we continue to spew CO2 into the atmosphere, dump hazardous waste in our water, take off the tops of mountains to get at the coal and dispose the resulting debris into adjacent river valleys, the planet will continue to spin in the galaxy.

Even after all manner of spectacularly glorious creatures, including human beings, disappear, others will surely evolve. Mammals, after all, evolved after an asteroid destroyed the dinosaurs, who had inhabited Earth for hundreds of millions of years. The idea that we are destroying the planet or that we can save it is arrogant. In geological time, the planet will blow us off as if we never existed, because Earth’s mission, if it can be said to have one, is to create and perpetuate life in innumerable forms. But our environment is suffering. And without a healthy environment, the human race cannot survive.

A recent report published by Worldwatch Institute, a U.S.-based environmental research organization, singled out humans as the cause of what many scientists believe is the biggest mass extinction of animals in 65 million years, when that asteroid destroyed the ecological systems that supported the reign of the dinosaurs, and Earth’s life forms changed forever.

In the last two centuries, over 100 bird species have disappeared. Another 1,200—12 percent of the planet’s total—face extinction this century, according to BirdLife International, a worldwide conservation organization.

Research published in the scientific journal Nature in 2003 indicates that only 10 percent of all large fish—both open ocean species including tuna, swordfish, marlin and the large groundfish such as cod, halibut, skates and flounder—are left in the sea. Big-fish stocks have decreased by 90 percent since 1950.

I mourn for what is lost, yet I waver between deep despair and cautious optimism. The despair comes because I expect our leaders to be legislating massive global initiatives that would spearhead sustainable practices—and it’s not happening. I feel optimistic when I realize that there is indeed a shift in consciousness occurring at the grassroots level, from people like you and me. In recent months, consumers have made their preferences heard and “green” has become the new advertising slogan. And because they’re in business to make money, American corporations are responding. When the behemoth WalMart features organic foods and beauty products and produce, there is clearly a change in the air. In addition, municipal politicians are responding to the crisis by signing the U.S. Mayors Climate Protection Agreement, pledging to reduce global warming pollution and instituting green policies for their cities.

One thing is clear, though. We are running out of time.

Please contact marcianehemiah@riverreporter.com to share ideas about sustainability or to be featured in the column.

(This column will appear in this space once every four weeks.)

- Marcia Nehemiah