Jack Burns Lives!

A recent quote on a listserve to which I belong peaked my interest:

“…the real religion of our times is Technoscience with its faith in infinite Progress: limitless expansion of size, scope and power of the human technolgocial [sic] system (the megamachine). The ‘developed’ world (i.e. the world to the extent that is it has already been incorporated into megamachine) is populated by greedy credulous consumer-fetuses.”

This is certainly true in western societies, especially the United States. Aldo Leopold wrote about it in his 1933 essay “The Conservation Ethic,” as did Edward Abbey.

Leopold correctly believed that socialism, communism, fascism, capitalism and what he called “technocracy” all shared the same end: the distribution of more machine-made commodities to more people. The underlying theory for all was “salvation by machinery.” Land is nothing more than an economic commodity, and we adjust our activities only to produce more goods.

The idea of a “community of life” is absent in this philosophy, and it’s been absent in the United States since the advent of the Industrial Revolution.

The results are easy to see. Heavily burdened ecosystems stretched to their limits, some beyond their limits. Species loss and extinction. Climate change, polluted waters, rivers that no longer reach the sea, an entire biosphere, stretched to the limit by human growth. The megamachine has places an illogical imposition on the planet, but in the end, it is humans will ultimately pay the toll.

And this is where we are today. Realizing the error of our ways, many humans are trying to find a technological fix to problems made possible by technology. Instead of examining our behavior and changing the destructive aspects of our behavior, we’re looking for ways to sustain the behavior, only with different tools.

Peak Oil? No worries. Humans are well on their way toward developing fuel cells and ethanol technologies while ignoring several important facts along the way. Fuel cells cannot deliver nearly the same punch as fossil fuel, and fuel cell technology has a negative EROEI (Energy Returned on Energy Invested). In other words, it takes more energy to make it than the energy produced, and it’s not cost effective.

Corn based ethanol also has a negative EROEI, and there are also major problems with mass biofuel production, including low energy yields, erosion and dependence upon fossil fuel for its production. All of this means biofuels are non-sustainable and are therefore destructive. Perhaps as much if not more than fossil fuel.

A solution?

I believe the only logical alternative is to change our behavior. We have use less fossil fuel and find renewal alternatives that are not seriously damaging to the environment. Cycling and walking are a couple of options.

A lot of people don’t take that very seriously, and quickly dismiss any discussion about cycling and walking as impractical, primarily because they’re too lazy and too comfortable to consider it. Most people in the mainstream environmental movement seem to be looking to technological fixes to keep the machine rolling and are caught up in the newly fashionable “green movement.”

In doing so, they’re doing their part to keep the destructive machine rolling along. Everyone wants a Prius, organic foods shipped in from gawd knows where, so-called “eco” products from catalogs like “Napa Style.”

There’s not a goddamned thing green about any of it. It’s all a bullshit laced fantasy designed to keep goods rolling off the assembly lines and the growth machine growing.

If only a small percentage of the 196,000,000 cellphone addicted, distracted, angry, licensed drivers in the United States would take some simple steps, we could make some real “progress.”

American commuters drive over 1 billion miles per day, burning millions of gallons of fuel. More than we import from burning, tortured Iraq on a daily basis. Total gasoline usage in the United States is over 9 million gallons per day.

If Americans simply reduced that number by ten percent, the results are pretty profound.

A step toward getting there? What if just ten percent of the commuters in this country would cycle or work from home two days per week? How many of those 196 million drivers are commuters that don’t carpool or take mass transport? According to recent statistics, the average commute is somewhere between 16 and 32 miles, both ways. Average fuel economy for American cars is around 21 miles per gallon. So, if you figure the average commute at 24 miles, that means that commuters burn 1.085 gallons for each commute.

Millions of commuters saving two gallons per week each. Those numbers add up very quickly. Think of the benefit to the biosphere. Think of how much quieter it would be. Less money spent. Fewer accidents. Less road rage.  In all, a much more pleasant community.
The bottom line is this: it’s simply impossible to develop an alternative fuel that will allow the U.S. to maintain its present course, not to mention growth. The only possible solution is to admit the party is over, change behaviors and start serious conservation efforts.

That means if you really want to be “green,” you should strongly consider making more changes. Cycle to work. Walk. Move closer to your work, and if you can’t, find new work. Quit making excuses why you can’t.

Technology isn’t going to save us this time. There’s no magic bullet. No vaccination. No super pill to save us.

The party is over. The age of extravagance is past. We’re in the period of the Great Transition and the Future Primitive lies beyond.

In 1981, Earth First! launched itself by unfurling a three-hundred foot plastic “crack” along the front of Glen Canyon Dam. Edward Abbey was the master of ceremonies.

Ken Sleight describes it: “Six Earth First!ers drove to a locked gate on an access road to Glen Canyon Dam. They hefted a 100-pound bundle over the fence, and four men and a woman carried it 400 yards to the center of the dam while some 75 Earth First!ers watched from the Colorado River Bridge. Throwing the bundle over the edge of the dam, 300 feet of black plastic — tapering from 12 feet to two feet in width and held together by 700 feet of rope and 1000 feet of duct tape — cascaded down the face of the dam. It created the wonderful impression of a crack growing in the concrete dam.”

Here’s a video of the event. (12.9Mbps, so give it a minute)

Oh, and I suppose this is copyrighted by someone. Not sure who…please write me if it’s you.

The Lake District, Cumbria

William Wordsworth was born on this day in 1770. Wordsworth was perhaps the best known of the English Romantics and the poet laureate of England that helped usher in the movement with his opium eating friend, Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Thanks to a wonderful senior English teacher, I devoted much of my time in college studying the English Romantics and never tired of their verse. Keats and the lesser known John Clare, both tragic figures, are my favorites.

I don’t believe any writers in any period capture the majesty of the natural world or understand its importance better than the Romantics, which in America, includes Thoreau. Wordsworth, Keats and Clare write about a very deep, spiritual connection with nature, its healing properties and the danger of being disconnected from it.

For Abbey lovers, there’s something for everyone in the Romantic period. Love of nature, even the worship of it, an assault against commercialism and industrialism, support of individual freedom and in some cases, even atheism. The Romantics were perhaps the first monkeywrenchers, using their pens and verse to rail against the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution and its erudite proponents.

Wordsworth, like Coleridge, was a champion of radical ideas for much of his life, although he did eventually became a political conservative. Much has been written about this transformation, and some, including Shelley and Browning, helped disseminate the idea that Wordsworth sold his political principles for money and the favor of his social superiors.

But during much of his early and productive years, he was devoted to destroying what he perceived to be the cause of all the “evil” in the realm, the government. He was supportive of French Republicanism until the reign of Robespierre, which taught him that violence only breeds more violence and solves nothing.

As he would consistently do throughout his life, he once again turned to nature for answers.

“Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know”-John Keats, Ode On A Grecian Urn

The pen was a powerful tool in those days, because people actually read. No tee-vees, no iPods and other gizmos to cloud your consciousness and bake your brain. But today, as a good friend recently commented, “more people today can name the contestants on American Idol than can name their children’s teachers.”

So true and how terribly sad.

Here’s a well known Wordsworth poem, with an oft quote line I’m sure you’ll recognize….
The Tables Turned

Up! up! my friend, and clear your looks,
Why all this toil and trouble?
Up! up! my friend, and quit your books,
Or surely you’ll grow double.

The sun, above the mountain’s head,
A freshening lustre mellow
Through all the long green fields has spread,
His first sweet evening yellow.

Books! ’tis dull and endless strife,
Come, here the woodland linnet,
How sweet his music; on my life
There’s more of wisdom in it.

And hark! how blithe the throstle sings!
And he is no mean preacher;
Come forth into the light of things,
Let Nature be your teacher.

She has a world of ready wealth,
Our minds and hearts to bless–
Spontaneous wisdom breathed by health,
Truth breathed by chearfulness.

One impulse from a vernal wood
May teach you more of man;
Of moral evil and of good,
Than all the sages can.

Sweet is the lore which nature brings;
Our meddling intellect
Mishapes the beauteous forms of things;
–We murder to dissect.

Enough of science and of art;
Close up these barren leaves;
Come forth, and bring with you a heart
That watches and receives.