Unraveling

At a recent end-of-the-summer gathering, I asked a fourteen-year-old friend to tell me her vision of the Earth’s future. She answered without hesitation. “We’re doomed,” she said.

That’s a pretty grim response from someone with her whole life ahead of her, but she echoes the tone of many conversations I’ve been having with people of all ages. We’re worried about the future. We’re depressed. We’re anxious. We’re angry. And many of us are in despair.

In her book, “World As Lover, World As Self: Courage for Global Justice and Ecological Renewal,” environmental activist and philosopher Joanna Macy wrote: “Loss of certainty that there will be a future is the pivotal psychological reality of our time.”

This loss of certainty is particularly acute here in the river valley. Conversations at social gatherings center on gas drilling, and people express anxiety and disbelief that such a thing could happen in the place they love and feel connected with. Many people have made the difficult decision to leave. Our once peaceful community is coming undone.

A couple of years ago it was easy to be complacent about environmental degradation. Someone else’s stream was being destroyed by mountaintop removal. Someone else’s river was filled with PCBs. Someone else’s home suffered the ravages of fossil fuel extraction. Now it’s our river, our drinking water, our air, our peace and peace of mind that is threatened.

Those of us who oppose gas drilling are accused of NIMBY-ism. I say, “That’s right.” I say, “Not in my backyard.” When I look at the devastation we have wrought throughout the world, I say, “Not in anyone’s backyard.” I say, what would have happened if the brainpower that developed the techniques of horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing had worked instead to develop sustainable energy choices? What if the public relations industry had told us that protecting our air and water was imperative? What if it were as easy to buy and install solar panels as it is to fill up our gas tanks? What if GM hadn’t started manufacturing Hummers after it crushed its fleet of electric cars in the early 1990s?

Back in the 17th century, Francis Bacon asserted that nature should serve man, and René Descartes declared that animals don’t feel pain because they have no souls. We have wrought centuries of destruction by acting from the belief in our dominion over the natural world. We have ignored a fundamentally more accurate understanding: that plant and animal life, oceans, atmosphere and soil are a self-regulating system that plays an active role in preserving the conditions that guarantee the survival of life on Earth.

But here we are, continuing to insist on our perceived dominance over nature even when we can clearly see that as natural systems unravel, our own destruction becomes more and more imminent. Those of us watching that unraveling do so with trepidation, fear, a sense of loss and great heavy sadness.

For too long we have denied that our material wealth has come on the backs of great communities of people and the natural world. We are in a prison whose brick and mortar is a collective failure to nurture our connection to Earth and its majesty, along with a failure to acknowledge the fragile connection among all living systems. Now the repercussions have reached our own community.

I have no easy solutions to the environmental degradation and the consequent psychological distress. Except to say that as I deal with my own responses to uncertainty, I try to acknowledge and share my grief, my fear and my anger, and to listen as my friends and neighbors share theirs.