From Seven Billion of Us: Thanks To Barry Commoner
A few weeks ago, the world lost Dr. Barry Commoner, one of the most influential environmentalists of all time. Here’s an article on the man, his mission, and the incredible extent of his impact.
In his book The Closing Circle (published in 1971) Commoner laid down his four laws of ecology:
1. Everything Is Connected to Everything Else. There is one ecosphere for all living organisms and what affects one, affects all.
2. Everything Must Go Somewhere. There is no “waste” in nature and there is no “away” to which things can be thrown.
3. Nature Knows Best. Humankind has fashioned technology to improve upon nature, but such change in a natural system is likely to be detrimental to that system.
4. There Is No Such Thing as a Free Lunch. Exploitation of nature will inevitably involve the conversion of resources from useful to useless forms.
The 21st Century bears witness to the opposition to two great forces. On one hand, we see a level of rapacious greed and exploitation of nature that is ripping through the planet’s remaining resources at a ferocious clip. On the other, we have a generation of very smart and committed young people, many of whom see through this, and will do what they can to take on the mantle that Dr. Commoner and his peers left for them.
Which of the two forces will prove dominant? It’s anyone’s guess at this point.
Having said that, if you want to get a lump in your throat, read a few of the comments on the article linked above. As a friend of mine often reminds me, you and I are but a few of many millions of like-minded people.
It has long been recognized, from ancient cultures forward to the present, that we are part of one connected interdependent whole. Over the last few centuries, societal influences (mostly from industry, finance, advertising and some misguided sects of religion) have acted with direct purpose to blur and sever the ties between nature and humanity, but that separation is illusory, and that illusion is enforced at our collective peril. We will only thrive to the extent that our world is naturally healthy and diverse.
We now cause and contribute to the extinction of species and the sterilization of soils on a massive scale.
Our food industries (themselves a contradiction in terms), with their factory mindset, cosmetic primacy and GMO crops, are moving further down the road of monoculture farming, with increasing sameness and decreasing nutritive value, and with an ever deepening dependence on unhealthful chemical and genetic interference.
Our military is now sowing deformity across the world in the form of tons of “depleted uranium” residues that will continue to poison and genetically warp expanding populations for many generations. A new Iraqi and Afghani mother’s very first question upon the birth of her child is no longer, “Is it a boy or a girl?” but instead is the nightmarish, “…is it normal?” Our brave and honorable service-members are neither immune to nor protected from this gruesome hazard – they bring it home to their families on their clothing and possessions, and in their bodies and their genes.
The rising acidity from CO@ absorption, toxicity from pollution and the resulting depletion of oxygen in our oceans combines to aggravate and accelerate the damage done by rampant overfishing. Even back in the 1990’s we in the US alone were dumping 700,000 tons of toxic and hazardous waste into the oceans every day. Wide swaths of ocean floor and water are now “dead zones” and there are massive floating islands of debris from our consumptive lifestyle.
These are but a small sampling of the many assaults we bring upon ourselves.
We are reaching the limits of our Petri dish, ladies and gentlemen, and the agar is thinning. We will either make the conscious and wise choices to diminish our massive footprints, and make them quickly, or the basic realities of biology and natural laws will shortly impose upon us an protracted era of excruciating slaughter.
People, or better, Landmarks like Dr. Barry Commoner are so rare. We should ask ourselves how persons of such stature appear in our world, where are they educated, how did they get to the perception of reality and have the skills they have and the ability to catch reality with responsibility and how they turn their lives into this upstream fight against all odds and try to change the evident destruction of humanity into something better?
Why can´t everybody see the consequences of our actions, why does everybody turn their heads away of reality, or, why does one always try to leave all this mess to someone else?
What do we have to do to make a real change? Where is all this inspiration, all this ingenuity, wisdom or whatever is needed? How can we inspire others?
It seems such a lost cause, but every time we turn our faces somewhere else there are fewer places to look without reality hitting us in the face, it´s catching up with us!
Our irresponsible conduct has to change, our own future is now on the line, not our children´s future, ours! Sad, sad, sad.