Earth Day 54: The Road Less Heated

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It has been my tradition for the past 15 years to write essays for Earth Day, some of which became the content of my second book, Kings of a Lonely Kingdom. On this 54th anniversary of the original event, I wanted to dedicate this essay to a somewhat stupefying topic: public discourse. It has dawned on me that even my tempered environmental activism has initiated a conflict or two. I genuinely believe in healthy debate, as did our Founding Fathers when our Constitution was conceived, but what we are witnessing today is anything but healthy.  Are we really fighting the “good fight?” Is it even genuine?

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Environmentalism, an ostensibly beneficial concept, is stirring up controversy. Standing up for a sustainable planet isn’t exactly unique or even all that recent. I just recently reread Aldo Leopold’s essays from A Sand County Almanac, and he laid it out quite well. If we don’t place value on nature and its wealth of benefits, then we will likely not preserve it. Well, 75 years later, he was certainly prophetic. The race to reduce warming to two degrees Celsius is one we cannot afford to lose. Scientific assessments of a warmer planet with carbon dioxide emissions exceeding 500 parts per million (ppm) are not pleasant. But we must be honest and straightforward with this information, to sugarcoat it or deny it is unhelpful and dangerous. 

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I was standing in line at a neighborhood convenience store last summer. My friend behind the register who knows that I wrote a couple of books on the environment, asked me if I had been writing anything of late. I responded that I was on a bit of a break. After I was asked by another patron about the subject of my books, I indicated that the topics were nature, environment, and climate change. From behind me, a man said, “climate change is a made-up topic.” A “debate” ensued. Not much of a constructive exchange, mind you.  We agreed to disagree. First, what was the purpose of his comment? Secondly, why would the topic incite someone?  Environmental conservation does not belong in a political camp, but it firmly is. I am an environment voter, guess which camp? That, by itself, is absurd. Want to know what else is absurd? The gentleman behind me in line who chirped at me was buying a case of bottled water. Yes, it just happened to be a record high for that day in Massachusetts.

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For the past two years I have been testifying in front of my city government about the lack of environmental stewardship by National Grid, our energy provider.  We are abutters to a massive high voltage pipeline project that requires burying the cables below our street for miles between substations. When I inquired about their plan for reducing emissions or transitioning from fossil fuels, I hit a brick wall. We aren’t close to reaching 50% renewable energy usage globally, and we Americans are cumulatively the most responsible for global emissions. We have a burden to bear. In our city, National Grid didn’t see it that way. They refused to acknowledge their role in this heavy-duty construction project. After I suggested that at a minimum they offset their carbon footprint, their lawyer dismissed it as some kind of charity-based proposition. Even tagging me and others as naïve. And while I know National Grid’s motives are financial not personal, it feels the same. They are quite aware of the dangers of elevated GHG emissions so the fact that they are still deeply invested in fossil fuels is another form of misleading the public. Injecting dubious climate science debate is another. The void in honest environmental journalism highlights where the money is coming from, and it is a lopsided matchup. Science is not shaped by opinion but guided by the principles of trust and integrity. Climate change listens to no chatter, and we must also.

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Of course we are seeing the beginnings of ecosystem decline. And when ecosystems decline, we permanently upset the balance of nature. As the dominant species we have a great level of responsibility to all others, and we have not championed that responsibility, as I wrote about extensively in my second book. We cannot be divided about climate change; it isn’t fair to those that depend upon us. There may have been a detour in the road for poet Robert Frost, but when it comes to preserving our environment, only one direction leads us to where we need to go. Let’s quit squabbling and follow it together.