Recognizing a Problem

I am inspired by Jean Freemen's comment to "Lifetime Social Justice 6/9/08  regarding when do people recognize that a problem exists? That is a question that has confounded most thinkers through the ages. My own 90 years has taught me that we don’t respond to any predicted catastrophe until it is on top of us. Take the floods that are drowning the cities all along the Mississippi. They were supposed to be brought under control by the “Army Corps of Engineers.” For a long time that title made people feel comforted that this group of very smart engineers who can conquer and bring old mother nature to her knees. That has been the dream of human beings since the beginning of written history. After all, that would mean humans win this great undeclared war.

Jean Freeman rightly asks “shouldn’t we be talking once again about population issues?” That’s not an issue that directly effects us daily. By contrast, the increase in the price of gasoline or home heating oil smacks us directly in the pocketbook and we are ready to bring our politicians to their knees in demanding “solutions,” like eliminating the tax on gasoline and diesel fuel for the summer. Is that a solution? Of course not. It’s not even a band aid. It does not address the problem that is called “the US addiction to oil.” We simply refuse to recognize the finite nature of fossil fuels. To do so would force us to make fundamental changes in the way we live.

In a number of casual conversations with locals about the oil crisis, I was told “not to worry. The scientists and techies will come up with a solution.” I have thought about that answer and it amounts to nothing more than classic “denial.” Somebody somewhere out there is going to figure it out and everything will be just honky dory. Dream on, dream on. But that dreaming keeps us from ever looking into the abyss. So we go happily on until food prices go out of this world and somebody makes the observation that we have so many people on this planet and it can’t feed us all. I call it, “The Planet Hits Back.”

There are a whole number of areas where The Planet Hits Back phenomena is taking place. The food shortage brings up the population explosion, but it also raises the issue of water, an essential for all living things. In my youth it was a common element. I remember cold water springs all over the countryside. We used to just stop and have a nice cool drink. First water became polluted. Then the natural springs slowly dried up as the aquifers supplying the springs became overused and drained. The reaction back then was the same, “We just have to drill deeper wells. There’s plenty of water down there.” Now we have learned how to desalinate ocean water. And since the oceans are big enough, “what’s to worry about?” It takes a lot of energy to desalinate water. That’s what to worry about.

 I do believe that future wars may well be fought over who gets the water. Here in the US we continue to expand housing in the Arizona Nevada desert. The issue of water not only for crop irrigation but for all those golf courses and swimming pools will emerge as flash points. Developers in the Southwest want to tap the Great Lakes for all that fresh water just sitting there being used to move ships around. “The Planet Hits Back.”

With global warming comes changing weather patterns. Floods where there used to be droughts and droughts where there used to be floods. Tornadoes where there never were any and forest fires in places that never heard of them. The Arctic and Greenland ice melting, raising the worldwide ocean levels. The first hit are poor people living in low lying areas where nobody should have lived in the first place.

 Okay, so here’s an example of forward looking people. The Dutch, who have had considerable experience with the ocean water as a threat to survival, have decided that people living in low lying coastal flood zones will be moved to permit natural flooding to take place. Wow, what can the rest of us learn from that? Well, in fairness to the Chinese, they have been trying to hold down their population with the one child limit to a family. That has not worked too well as they mostly want boys. There will be a severe imbalance between the sexes in years to come. It’s a great example of unintended consequences. (Chinese boys can come visit the US where there will be a great number of Chinese girls from all the adoptions that have taken place these past many years.)

I really wish I had something more encouraging to say to Jean Freemen in her wish for a more rational world. In many ways we humans remain slaves to our evolutionary inheritance. As individuals we really do think that if we outwit everyone else “me and mine can survive no matter what.” It is only when our thinking becomes a group phenomena, as it has in Holland at least around the rising ocean problem, that we can address these problems with some level of rationality. We all hope for leaders who might effect the kind of changes needed to face up to our rapidly changing world. We don’t see much of them, largely because we are not receptive to news that requires serious change in our collective behaviors.

 My friend Hugh Jones, who wrote the guest blog “Peak Oil,” has never in his life planted a seed. He now has a “victory garden” from which we ate a delicious salad last Thursday. If the price of eggs keeps going up, we will seriously consider a couple of hens for our own egg supply. This may be the trick. As things seem to be sliding down hill, try to develop your survival strategy together with your neighbors, like group car rides to the supermarket or solar panels on your roof to cut your dependence on oil.

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Thank you Kate. N.H.W.Y.