We dreamed we were living in a fabulous mansion but we wake up
in a greasy gutter. The ecological and economic catastrophe in
the Gulf of Mexico makes our most infamous oil spill, the Exxon
Valdez, look minuscule by comparison. This time we have fouled
our nest on an epic scale.
The busted BP pipeline is a watershed event like 9/11, Hurricane
Katrina and the collapse of the Ponzi economy. It is not as
dramatic as exploding towers, as poignant as those survivors
huddled on rooftops awaiting rescue, or as personal for most of
us as the loss of a job or home or even a 401K. The devastation
to Earth's life-support system, the killing of a whole ocean
ecosystem across the Gulf, will resonate slowly -- this disaster
will be a marathon, not a dash. But make no mistake, we will
mark these days as the time we started to learn about ecocide,
as a turning point in our realization that our industrial,
carbon-dependent way of life is ruinous and cannot last. How
many more of these wrenching experiences must we endure before
we finally get it and change?
Lesson one: We do not stand above and beyond the boundaries of a
finite natural realm that runs through our veins as surely as
rivers run down canyons to the sea. The "environment" is not
something out there -- we breathe it, we drink it, we eat it. We
embody it. Kill it and you sentence your children and
grandchildren to the toil and suffering of living and dying on a
scorched, contaminated planet of slums.
Lesson two: The term unsustainable tells you the end of the
story. What cannot be sustained fails, collapses in on itself.
The real apocalypse, not the one imagined by religious zealots
but the one happening all around us right now, will be a global
phenomenon that plays out locally, especially for those in the
direct path of monster storms, ecocidal accidents, war, famine,
pandemics, droughts, and all the other nasty surprises yet to
come as we keep crossing one environmental threshold after
another. Collapse ain't pretty. It is sickening.
The catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico will generate passionate
debate. We will critique BP's profit-saving shortcuts and poor
safety record, the Bush-era regulators who were literally in bed
with oil corporations, and we'll debate any number of other
issues, laws, policies and practices related to the catastrophe.
But at the heart of the matter is something much deeper. If we
want to stop our culture's self-destructive habits and learn
sustainable behaviors, if we want to survive our mistakes and
thrive tomorrow, then we must shed our hubris and learn to be
humble and wise.
The age of hubris, a time when all things are knowable, all
problems can be fixed, and all limits surpassed is crashing all
around us. We granted ourselves an exemption from the limits of
a natural realm where there is only so much fertile soil, so
much fresh water, so many fish in the ocean. The atmosphere can
only absorb so much CO2 and stay benign. You can shred just so
much biodiversity and expect nature to be resilient and recover
from the wounds we recklessly inflict.