Words to live by Fran Alexander

Disregard for environment has serious consequences

Rather than resolutions for a new year, we might be better off to recall some well-chosen words as guides in making sense of this world and our fellow beings.

A friend, who once ran for city council, asked me for a quick lesson about the environment. I told her that understanding one word would serve her well. The word? “Watershed.” It would enlighten her about drainage and flooding issues, water supply and quality, city tree cover, pollution (such as chemicals, fuels, litter, garbage) and city development decisions, to list just a few. Several sources are attributed to the saying, “We all live downstream.” These words well explain watershed protection everywhere because we all drink what comes from somewhere upstream. (Hog farms come to mind.)

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“What goes around comes around,” takes various shapes in various religions. For example, “… whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.” — Galatians 6:7. We are certainly paying the price for our actions and non-actions toward climate change, and it’s coming back to bite us. Barack Obama said, “We are the first generation to feel the impact of climate change and the last generation that can do something about it.”

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If Isaac Newton’s description about gravity could actually be so simply expressed as, “What goes up must come down,” air pollution would be a whole lot easier to explain. People seem to assume burning things magically makes them disappear, when in reality they instead change form and return as particles and gases, which then enter the soil and water. Smog, acid rain and greenhouse gases damage lungs, forests and crops and can even corrode stone and metal. Air pollution is mean stuff when it comes down.

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“There is no ‘away,’” has been the mantra of recycling advocates for over 50 years. Living on a sphere means what’s here is here to stay unless we rocket it into the sun to “Get Rid of It” (the company name of a waste hauler in south Arkansas). Trash is another “what goes around comes around” problem, being added to daily by the frantic pace of plastic production. Single use plastic is a waste of non-renewable resources and is covering the land and oceans with forever, non-degradable pollution. Mother Teresa said, “I only feel angry when I see waste. When I see people throwing away things we could use.” Who’s going to argue with a saint?

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Ecosystems are like clocks. Either all the gears work together or they don’t. We just don’t usually realize ecosystems are failing because sometimes biological unwindings take a while to become apparent. When we humans go messing around with natural systems, whether in forests or wetlands, bogs or prairies, oceans or swamps, we need to, “save all the pieces,” because the smallest pieces, like microorganisms, may be holding all the rest of an ecosystem together. Or, the biggest pieces, like elephants, may have targets on their backs.

“The Serengeti Rules” is both a book and incredible PBS program that explains how life systems work. The book’s description speaks about ecosystem pieces: “One of the most important revelations about the natural world is that everything is regulated — there are rules that regulate the amount of every molecule in our bodies and rules that govern the numbers of every animal and plant in the wild.”

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In 1948, Walt Kelly created an opossum character named Pogo, whose cartoon voice took on real political characters and issues of the day from the vantage of his home in the Okefenokee Swamp. Kelly should be credited with the first environmental rallying motto when Pogo, while looking out over his beloved swamp filled with trash, simply said, “We have met the enemy and he is us.” I wish Kelly were still around to give us nine more simple words to snap folks out of denying that we humans cause most environmental grief.

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Chief Seattle (Seathl or Si’ahl) of the Duwamish and Suquamish tribes was attributed to being the source of these famous words: “The earth does not belong to man, man belongs to the earth. All things are connected like the blood that unites us all. Man does not weave this web of life. He is merely a strand of it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself.”

And finally, we should always remember and repeat to ourselves Shakespeare’s 10 immortal words about choice: “To be or not to be, that is the question.” The decision is ours.