A word to the wise

Robert Redford, the famous movie actor was an acquaintance of my father. It came about when my father was the superintendent of Deer Creek State Park, a few miles from Redford’s Sundance Ski Resort, and my Dad really liked him for making his ski resort remain a low-impact operation. I met Mr. Redford on several occasions during Ski Patrol testing and training exercises that I conducted at his ski area, and I was impressed with his dedication to conservation practices and his knowledge regarding environmental issues affecting our region.

My favorite photo of Mr. Redford portraying Jeremiah Johnson (a real Mountain Man) from the film of the same name. In the background is Redford’s Sundance Ski Area. Johnson was also called ‘Liver-eating Johnson’ locally in Utah because he ate the livers of his would-be Indian assassins to create fear in the others.

Mr. Redford has long been a champion of environmental causes that urge humans to live in harmony with nature, and he has put his money where his mouth is. And, the causes he supports largely revolve around solving urgent and pressing issues with Man vs. Nature.

But most environmental organizations, with a few exceptions like the semi-terrorist group ‘Earth First’ fall short of the true scope of the task facing humanity: the transformation of our technical and industrial society to painlessly mesh with the planet’s web of life. By this I mean careful consideration of resource use, limiting the encroachment of society on the eco-niches of other species, and devising sustainable living practices for the long term. The first thing we need to do is to educate everyone to the fact that Mother Nature never intended the human race to exceed the natural bounds of our habitat.

We, as humans, have no special rights to the planet. We are simply one species of many, with our own unique survival skills and adaptations. But, unlike other species, we have the brain power and knowledge to understand our position in the web of life, and our potential for destroying it through uncontrolled growth of our population, and excessive consumption of natural resources. I’ve blogged about this before, but it bears repeating:

The clock is ticking, and the time to make these wrenching changes to global societies is NOW. We cannot afford to shrug off the problem for future generations to deal with. It will require painful readjustments to our global value systems and beliefs, and many personal sacrifices. We no longer have the luxury of promulgating quaint regional social structures and political systems, or religious beliefs and practices that have a negative impact on the world’s ecosystems and our precious web of life.

Here is a thought experiment you might find interesting: There is a lot of talk (including mine) that proposes saving humanity by leaving the planet in spaceships. Well, it won’t change a thing until we change our ways. A ‘Spaceship’ colony can only carry so many crew and passengers. The hydroponic gardens of food plants, the labs that grow artificial meat, and the plumbing systems for water, waste disposal, and so forth max out if this shipboard population expands at all. In addition, even though it starts out as a sterile environment, the E.Coli in our gut WILL EVOLVE over time. Here is the danger: http://www.webmd.com/a-to-z-guides/e-coli-infection-topic-overview

So, the refugees from Planet Earth must live in a very controlled and unforgiving environment. Everyone on board must pull their weight and perform their duties if all are to survive. The word, ‘Freedom’ will have to be redefined. Scofflaws and excess humans will have to be ejected into space, and the crew members may still go ‘extinct’ from disease. What I am getting at is we already live on the ‘best’ spaceship we can possibly have, and we had better bite the bullet and make the hard changes needed to establish homeostasis. It will be easier to learn how to do this here on earth, instead of hoping we can do it inside a metal cylinder or an asteroid. This is ‘change’ we can all believe in. But, we need to learn what to do quickly. It starts with you and me. In the final analysis, it is what we do as individuals that matters the most.