Our Herd in a World of Hurt

“Sustainability” is a term thrown around so much lately it has lost its meaning and now has about the same impact as baaa-ing from a flock out in the pasture.  Baaa, baaa, yada, yada....  Not unlike, “going green” and “all-natural” and all the other well-intentioned slogans for inspiring stewardship, this bumper sticker label has been commercially co-opted and leaves one searching for yet another term that will actually make a difference.  (It would be good for us to keep some important words from running around in the marketplace where they’ll get gobbled up and pooped out into a sales pitch.)

Our species has not done anything truly sustainable since we first decided to make permanent settlements for ourselves over five thousand years ago.  Since then we’ve had “investments” to protect and support.  These called for bigger families to outnumber other clans and to defend some piece of land, and to tend the herds and work the fields.  In turn, all that called for more land to support the bigger families and off we go, down the wrong road.  We are now a long way down that road and I’m am really sorry to say it seems its a dimly-lit, one-way, narrowing alley.

It’s pretty common for us to think of domesticating animals and raising crops as the start of Progress.  But play it out for yourself, the likely ultimate price of progress appears to be self-extinction or -excarnation - which, had we known....   We didn’t, or couldn’t, know - or didn’t want to know we we’re doing anything wrong for the longest time.  The evidence didn’t support any concern.  Dammit.  

Could anything we might have intentionally done at anytime have made a difference?  At what point along the steady march from village to town to city to metropolitan area to mega-sprawl could we have stopped and said, “This just ain’t right.”  There have been voices, but not loud enough to be heard over the din of the marching band blaring the fight song for Civilization, Scientific Progress, Innovation!

One recent voice, Wendell Barry, has said in regard to resource stewardship, anything we do today called “use”, future generations will call “theft”.  Thus it has been for millennia - it’s just that now, we have nearly seven billion thieves and the cost is so much more obvious.  What’s not obvious is how we will overcome the costs that are now already apparent.

So far this year, that is now still in its hurricane season, is the all-time priciest for climactic catastrophe recovery costs.  Hurricanes, droughts, floods, wildfires, tornados, heavy rains, straight line winds. If we exclude earthquakes, we will still set a record for disaster relief expense. I would love to say this is an aberration and next year will be back to normal - I really would love to be able to say that with some degree of confidence.

I do not study the weather firsthand with any dedication, but I definitely pay attention to the patterns for the weather systems that come through our area, and they are shifting in a fluky way.  It seems a new jet stream path has caused wind directions, temperature ranges and rain amounts to be less predictable.  We’ve had three street flooding episodes this year, which is one more than the total of the previous 16 years (since we’ve lived here).

From this cheery vantage point, there are a few fruitful directions in which we can take our thoughts (not many, just a few).  And, these will be subjects of near-future posts and with those, we may find some ideas in which to find hope.