May 2010 Archives

I've got a bad taste of oil in my mouth. Beyond sadness and frustration, it turns my stomach to see some of the very people who in 2008 pushed to waive requirements for operations like Deepwater Horizon to have a "blowout scenario" plan (having earlier championed the loosening of well testing requirements) - on both counts having accused the government of being heavy-handed - now leading the charge against the Obama administration for not doing enough to stem the spill. The dirty, oily little secret, though, is that while at some point a solution will no doubt be found, at the moment there's not a person on earth who knows how to stop this leak.

Of course I'm hoping that in the wake of this tragedy we'll have the good sense to renew stringent testing and emergency plan requirements for all offshore drilling projects. (Not to mention requiring redundancy in protection systems, especially when a relatively new technology is being used in deep water conditions.) But so too, in the stain of this tragedy, am I hoping that a whole new crop of us will commit to making even a tiny effort to reduce our daily use of carbon-based fuels, while at the same time supporting those companies struggling to do the same. Maybe this time we won't cop out to the self-indulgence of cynicism, letting ourselves off the hook by claiming that the choices one person makes don't really matter. This is not about sacrifice. It's about mindfulness. It's about living more consciously in the world. 

Unfortunately, for years to come when I hear someone bitching about the evils of government (and admittedly, that point is often not without merit), what will come to mind first is this sad harvest of the so-called free market - these dying birds, this killing of fish, this unraveling of community. 

Where I live, a mile up on the northeast corner of greater Yellowstone, we've come at last to the time of leafing out. Just seven days ago the aspen woods around my home were bare. But today they're exhaling clouds of tiny leaves, each no bigger than a dime, and with every warm afternoon that passes there are millions more than there were the day before. They're that odd color of green I remember Crayola adding to their crayon boxes sometime back in the 1960's; a crayon that seemed to make no sense at all except during this particular slice of spring, leafing out time, when all of nature was colored by it.

Being it's only May we'll probably see another snow or two in Montana; but in truth, we all know full well we're falling headlong toward summer. As I've said before, for a lot of people living in the northern Rockies thoughts of the warm months also bring concerns about July and August fires. But not this week. Not in this time when the woods first goes from something easily penetrated by sight, to something that can only be imagined. In another five or six days whitetail deer, even moose will be able to disappear from the edges of the open meadow behind my house with just a few steps, quickly disappearing into a quiet, less ruffled world. There to give birth or nap or eat. And all against the precious calm that comes from no one taking notice.

There's a wide, meandering valley in the northeastern corner of Yellowstone National Park, surely one of most beautiful places in all the West. Every year about this time, smack in the middle of May, my mind drifts across the Beartooths to linger there, feasting on thoughts of new beginnings. On tiny wolf pups, weighing barely a pound, just now opening their eyes for the very first time. By the end of this month they'll have stumbled past the edge of their dens into green shoots of grama and needlegrass, and there behold the world for the first time. And what a world it is: elk calves, their spotted bodies perched on long, spindly legs, nursing in tall clumps of sage. Rusty red bison calves, who were up and moving with the herd just hours after birth, breaking into odd little dances, as if discovering just how much fun it is to have legs.

Of course this is still a dangerous world. The wolf pups of Yellowstone have in several years been devastated by canine distemper; and last spring, by a deadly outbreak of parasitic mange. Meanwhile elk calves, despite having been born with barely a trace of scent, stand a fair chance of falling prey to hungry grizzly bears padding up and down the valley, on their blustery hunts for food.

But for all them, and for so many other species besides, this place called Yellowstone is with each passing year an increasingly precious sanctuary. Outside the park's western border, over the past dozen years men with guns have killed thousands of Yellowstone bison, dropping them on the fear they could pass a disease called brucellosis to domestic cattle. And while the average wolf in Yellowstone lives less than four years, struggling not only with disease but with the dangers of taking prey and battles with rival wolf packs, outside the park, in Idaho and Wyoming, they face a growing gaggle of hunters eager to shoot them. Sometimes for sport. But other times, for no real reason at all. As acts of anger, expressions of the kind of rage that gnaws at the hearts of powerless men.

The older I get, the more I appreciate the wisdom of popular nineteenth century author Henry George, who claimed the great preserves of the West, including Yellowstone, were a blessing to every single American. They are "wellsprings of hope," he said, even for those who never think of taking refuge there.

In the wake of the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, I'm reminded of two disquieting forces that have been building in America across some forty years - forces now threatening individuals, communities, and the planet as a whole. The first is the lingering, tenacious fantasy of the unregulated marketplace - an enticing, and at the same infantile vision not only hostile to regulation, but quick to tout the benefits of industry without ever accounting for the social costs of diminished health and damage to critical land systems. Projects like BP's Deepwater Horizon effort in the Gulf, for example, had long been required to submit a "blowout scenario," which included detailed plans for how a company would deal with exactly the kind of event we're now witnessing. But at the industry's urging, in 2008 the Minerals Management Service, within the U.S. Department of Interior, changed the rules to exempt many drilling projects, including this one, saying such plans were too cumbersome for companies to deal with on certain types of exploratory projects.

It's long been fashionable to curse the government for what can seem like heavy handed environmental regulation. And truthfully, some bodies of regulation are in fact unnecessarily cumbersome. But it's worth noting that such flaws are often the result of us not having been proactive - of waiting until catastrophe happens and then scrambling amidst public outrage to come up with effective regulatory policy. We moved quickly to outlaw DDT, for example, but only after biologist Rachel Carson gave us a terrifying first-hand look at the consequences it was having on people and wildlife. Laws regulating air quality were taken seriously only after multiple studies showed millions of children with dangerous levels of lead in their blood. It was the Calumet and Cuyahoga rivers catching fire in the Midwest during the late 1960's, along with a devastating loss of aquatic life in the Great Lakes, that finally jolted legislators into passing the Clean Water Act.

The other dangerous force in play today is one that places total faith in solving energy and environmental problems by means of new technologies, offering barely a nod to the idea of simply using less. The blow-out preventer technology used on the BP's Deepwater Horizon project was the most advanced in the world. Yet it failed. (To be precise, the BOP seems to have worked partially, but was likely damaged by erosion from abrasive materials, such as bits of rock, hurtling through the system at high speeds.) Technology, of course, can be a beautiful thing; almost never, though, when it's rushed into service before its time. Meanwhile the simplest acts of personal choice, from car-pooling one day a week, to drying clothes on a line, even going one day a week without meat, can make profound and immediate differences on the health of our communities and our planet.

Some of the towns along the Gulf Coast may never recover from this spill. Their economic base shredded, friends and neighbors might well be forced to trade the touchstones of home (which for many have included the comfort of generations of family), for jobs in other places. They will go from having made a life, to making only a living. It's certainly right to say that economic development and a healthy environment aren't mutually exclusive. In practice, however, we'll never know the truth of that claim until we're willing to give equal weight to both.