Creek Running North

I here invite the representatives of Lake Powell Resorts & Marinas to Illinois, to borrow a cup of water and a clue.

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ITEM: Table of fifth graders in after-school program, drawing pictures of the Earth from space photos.

Fifth grader: “They told us that the Arctic ice is melting, and the polar bears are dying. Is that true?”

Me: Yes.

Fifth grader: “So what is going to happen?”

Me: ( ) “We don’t know.”

A second grader, not much of a reader and seemingly unplugged, was listening. She quietly and immediately said, with a desolated face, “I don’t think that I want to be here anymore.”
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ITEM: Fifth grader reports that he found Inconvenient Truth on dvd, after he had read the Gore book for kids at our site. 

Fifth grader:  “I wasn’t going to tell my younger cousin about it until he got to be my age. But I slipped, and told him.”
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So, young kids in my sample—even distanced from information by poor, non-reader households and crappy schools—know that the ride has stopped. Their knowledge is so visceral that their stomachs hurt. And they are trying to protect the still younger among them from that pain and uncertainty.

I suppose that some might dismiss the above as anecdotal. Me, I’m not trusting anyone over ten.

damn.

OK, Julia, you’ve got me needing another walk.

And can I just say the person responsible for this:

(some refer to it as the “Grand Canyon - with water")

will, if there is any justice at all, be reincarnated as a rock being pissed on in hell by Floyd Dominy, forever.

Ten to one the Lake Powell guys are cross-invested in escape-to-Mars schemes. Some refer to it as the Earth--with water.

This is when I typically start ranting that if we torture for grins these days, why not in service of education? Cut off water for 36 hours, and see a dawning realization of who is in service of what.

I wonder if anything short will work. Friends in Atlanta have been completely unfazed by the drought.  And, of course, view me as the world’s greatest crank for inquiring.

No matter how dire the West, I still count on Georgia to fire the first shot. 
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23344530
By seeking to redraw the State border (sorry: rectify prior surveying errors), at least Georgia understands the idiocy of water compact litigation. Law serves as proxy for war only if dollars can recompense. This will be akin to people recognizing the futility of estrangement of affection suits. 

Re Dominy, surely tis time to rewrite the Inferno, using only the cast of Nixon and Reagan administrations. (Insofar as any Bushniks weren’t with the Gipper, save them for the opera.)

Yep: I need a walk as well. Crunch, crunch.

I might be beside the point (as usual) but I still think we owe them (the children) to remain *hopeful*… while of course staying vigilant watchdogs of people in power (no matter where they stand on the political spectrum), remaining proactive at challenging status and keep aiming at changing the world.

It’s one thing to bequeath a damaged planet to our kids, it is another not to be able to give them some hope.

My two cents.

V. Dante, that’s just like you to keep injecting the notes of realistic optimism into the conversation.

I can’t be perfect and I can’t control my surrounding environment, but I can control my reactions to error and to unfortunate situations. I largely control my emotional destiny (rational emotions…so 2004). I can refuse to take damaging conditions too seriously and can also refuse to choose to blame and curse myself for my depression.” (adapted from Albert Ellis, Psychologist)

Now this would be realistic optimism...but it isn’t quite me. I am just trying not to fool myself too much, sometime it is very hard.

ps one should read “challenging status *QUO* above in my post.

Viziabe: I absolutely take your point. 

I do firmly believe, however, that we need to define the parameters of the “hope” that we owe to our children. For some, “hope” is code for smokey magics, a miracle: a sedulous silence with fingers crossed. (Sounds much like my parents and birth control.)

“Hope” can be as flaccid as a shrug, and “don’t worry, they.” “They” will develop a replacement for oil; “they” will discover efficient methods to desalinate water. Or maybe “they” will discover that they have been wrong all along.

“Hope” can be an unconscious or intentional delaying tactic. In the worst hands, “hope” can be used by adults to slip one more damaging round of short-term profits past the uninformed young.

So, tell me what you think about this definition: 

1. We believe that you are valuable and have a future, and for those very reasons are owed the facts and risks of our present situation. 

2. We believe that you are owed information now, because you can alter the future at every age. You can evaluate whether your own actions are sustainable, and make your own decisions --like whether to eat meat. You can decide what skills and knowledge might be useful, and start gaining them now. You can form your own plans: where to live, and whether to have your own kids. You can influence your family members; organize your peers; and pressure businesses and public officials. (Had there but been an internet before Nixon won a second term.)

3. We believe that the natural world is the greatest of joys, and that you will feel fulfilled by your efforts to live in balance with its needs and constraints.  We will demonstrate our belief by sharing our joy with you.

4.  Despite the certainty of serious hardships that we cannot predict, we believe that this is a liberating time. Everything that you do is and will be important; every act will count. Knowledge and skills will be valuable, even if you don’t acquire them at a college. The world is real, so you can stop worrying about fake problems: who is richer; why aren’t I famous; whither the holiday Lexus; what do I weigh. 

5. We believe—we know --that we are all in this together. Every person is in the very same boat. All for one, one for all.

I have to hand it to you people, insisting on “hope” and even trying to define it in an inspirational fashion. Rock on.
Me, I can’t get past the tears of misanthropic rage:
damn the damn dam and the damn housedamnboating experience. Those people--most, I fear and believe, people--fucking suck.
I try to hope that their children will be different. In my pessimistic heart of hearts I doubt it.

jmartin,

That works for people of all ages.  If you don’t mind, I’m going to lift it for my blog.

...moving back towards the specific item that triggered your post, Chris, I’ve often been comforted by the notion of weeds growing up in the cracks in the roads of our major cities, of dams (heh.  I typed “damns” first) eroding away, of factory farms slowly reverting to wildlands.  It isn’t so much that I want the celebrate the decline of “civilization” but that I’d like to think that the world - including the part that contains human beings - could see a different sort of civilization one day, one that’s not so insistent on trying to control and simplify everything, but is comfortable with complexity and wildness. 

A gal can hope… with deliberation, rather than wishful thinking.

I’m trying not to make a flippant comment about guys who fill strangely labial cave systems iwth lots of fluids, but that’s not funny; that is fucked up.

the thing about urbanised flora and fauna is that it’s not a case of “Gaea” Vs. “pan narratus” in starch dichotomy - what’s happening is that the urban enviroment is adding new selective pressures into an enviroment, and creating whole new ecosystems all their own which are both of man and beyond us. all of which is, in its own sense, kinda beautiful.

It’s just fucking ridiculous that such dynamism comes at the cost of things which were already quite fucking beautiful anyway. Pan Diablo should be our fucking latin name.

-ing Bastards with the -ing wolves and the -ing business interests who are cocksuckers* is all I got about the first thing, with the wolve and the anti-wolvular business interests.

Agricorps need to be purged with fire basically.

* I keep using “cocksucker” as a general insult atm. It’s annoying for me as well. Don’t start.

Pan diablo should be our fucking latin name.

I am enough of a biopedant to have fixed the conventions for you there, but thank you--I am so totally stealing this.

I’m with Sven.  When I read shit like the press release about the wolves or the cheery info from the marina people my first reaction is a visceral anger.

Rana: You’ve likely already seen the March 1st interview of Lovelock in the Guardian.  http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/2008/mar/01/scienceofclimatechange.climatechange

Lovelock addresses both the question of dread, and weeds-in-the-cracks. (The latter always thrill me as well: emptying cities like Detroit; the depopulated Great Plains; the pair of foxes strolling this winter up shovelled sidewalks in my burb--all the interstitial reclamation.)
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Humanity is in a period exactly like 1938-9, [Lovelock] explains, when “we all knew something terrible was going to happen, but didn’t know what to do about it”. But once the second world war was under way, “everyone got excited, they loved the things they could do, it was one long holiday ... so when I think of the impending crisis now, I think in those terms. A sense of purpose - that’s what people want.”
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“There have been seven disasters since humans came on the earth, very similar to the one that’s just about to happen. I think these events keep separating the wheat from the chaff. And eventually we’ll have a human on the planet that really does understand it and can live with it properly. That’s the source of my optimism.”
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Lovelock also advocates joy in the moment. Does that excuse my new resolve to drink only good wine?

Thanks also Rana, for introducing me to your v. interesting blog. More great heads to explore!

And had to add that R. Mildred’s insult of choice reminded me of the Miles Davis autobiography.

http://www.amazon.com/Miles-Davis/dp/0671725823/ref=ed_oe_p

Although written by Quincy Troupe, the book certainly captured the Davis voice. Never knew that motherfucker could be so frequently and infinitely parsed. Even appeared in picture captions: “Symphony Sid: One motherfucker I never did like.”

There is an interesting coalition building process going on up here in Nor-east Washington and Northern Idaho.  It began three years ago during the rash of fires that burned huge chunks of landscapes dotted here and there by various communities and businesses.  Now most of you know that these forested mountain areas are home to some of the ardent and passionate xTian militia types and very-white supremacists, who have chosen to live off the land in their very secure and private intentional communities.  They aren’t very sociable and don’t get along at all well with authority. They generally tend to shoot at even fire protection and suppression aircraft and vehicles.  They simply don’t want government officials of any form to be “snooping around their parts.”

Thus they were willing to discuss helping create safe zones of animal habitats in which the natural processes of fires and other phenomena could happen freely, while protecting and securing fire protected landscapes around their properties.  They were also willing to reduce and restrict their use of some forest roads, letting them return to more wild states.  Now, just the other night, during the annual NRA meeting/auction/party (a weekend of shooting machine guns brought in $675 among a crowd of folks dressed in formal ball gowns and blood-stained camo), some were willing to sit down and talk about wolves and grizzly habitats and protection.  What these folks do not want is other people wandering around in their forests, for whatever reasons.  They understand that wolves prefer to eat rodents, and that bears eat omnivorously, and they have made their peace with them for the most part.  Therefore they are willing to use their votes to protect the status of the wildlife.  The old saying holds true: politics makes strange bedfellows.

Spyder:

1. Your frightening post demands a full-length article bristling with details, pronto. So, you can research and write this in your spare time, right?

2. At the very least, please provide transcript and photos from the NRA party. I’m imagining the Fall of the House of Usher, the ballgowns blood-stained as well.

3. As there is no more short-term, my view is that this alliance stinks. It lends credibility and assistance to the worst of the large-scale fill the moat and hail the apocalypse crowd.  They embrace the same destructive rejection of group solutions as the Rapture-watchers, with the extra kick of real estate saavy. Why encourage them to believe that land titles will be inviolate when they spit on the rule of law? Why help build defense parameter of their ultimate gated communities, when we will all be on the move? And why oh why support those who own guns to kill other people?

4. Why are the people who most vividly recognize the dangers posed by our species so often the same people who I fear? Yeah, yeah, the same reason that the most sanctimonious holy-rollers are the first to sniff for sexual perversion.

What I see done to nature makes me mad. 

What I see done to animals makes me weep. 

I can’t help it.  I guess I’m a big anthropomorphizer.  Blame children’s books and a lifetime’s worth of pets for a preference for most animals over most people.

The thing that gives me hope is the idea that whatever has kept the earth’s equilibrium over the millennia will keep it even with the horrible stuff currently being done.  Keep it the same?  Pretty clearly not.  So my hope is that the change will be change, not eradication of all that is good. 

In my negative dwelling stage, I convince myself that hope is vain.  Other times, I grip desperately to it.

Jmartin

I like and agree with your definition but for a 5 years old it would need to be rephrase :-) . I would also add something to the effect that resistance is far from being futile.

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What I see done to nature makes me mad. 

What I see done to animals makes me weep.

What I see done to peers makes me ache.

shall we stop calling it progress?
as it is the age of darkness