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Has Jesus Come and Gone?
By Daniel Geery (about the author) Page 4 of 6 page(s)
The other reason is that for all the hate mail and all the apprehensions various people have about our form of government, it's still one where there's an opportunity to sound off.
One of the sad things I've observed as I've aged is the twinkling out of the lights of democracy around the world. There seem to be fewer and fewer of them. But democracy is still working here. We still have the Freedom of Information Act, and we have the National Environmental Policy Act; we have the opportunity at every level of the government to make a statement of dissent and make a lot of noise about it. There is still a chance for us to relight the American dream, to get people to believe that this is a good system....
[On the other hand] The United States has an enormous appetite-our 5 percent of the population of the world uses a third or more of all the Earth's resources, and we're looking for a bigger cut all the time. That's quite a drain on the Earth. Our kind of growth is not sustainable; it is already past sustainable. We cannot mop up that much of what's left in the bottom of the barrel without creating a rapid development of the leveling forces that are now epitomized by the rising incidence of terrorism.
Mariah: Whom do you see as your greatest environmental enemies?
Brower: The people who think economic growth, as presently practiced, must continue. These people are not enemies, but their habits are the enemies. I'm sure they are all, individually, good people, but they have been misled into thinking that the present exponential attack on finite resources will continue to work. We've been drawing our resource savings out of the bank and scattering them all over the Earth, building up a fine-looking Gross National Product in the process. It's worked for a while-you can draw your savings out of the bank and spend them. But it doesn't do you much good for the next year.
Mariah: Where do you think the major wilderness battles will be fought during the next decade?
Brower: Let's start with Alaska. Alaska is our last chance to do things right the first time, rather than to do again what we've been doing for the last two centuries to make America less and less habitable.
Alaska really belongs not just to the United States but to the rest of the world as well. Some of the finest unspoiled country in the world still exists there, even after the Alaska pipeline has severed important ecological lines. We will never have this opportunity again.
The next most important concern, I think, is to make sure that the U.S. Forest Service realizes that it is supposed to be serving all the interests of the forest, not just the timber interests. The record the Forest Service has established is an unenviable one-it's abolished a million acres of wilderness a year for the last 40 years. This should be brought to an immediate halt.
Our emphasis in the environmental movement should be to spend all the effort we can in repairing the damage bad forest practice has done. We have millions of acres of unreforested land, growing brush that doesn't do very many people much good-acres that have not been put back into action simply because, in part, there is more macho satisfaction in knocking down a big tree than in planting a seedling. I'm not against using forest products; that's utilizing solar energy in one of its finest forms. But we shouldn't get our solar energy from steep-sloped forests where we destroy the forest soil, the renewability of the timber resource.
Mariah: Wouldn't the cost of replanting on the scale you're talking about cost a lot of money?
Brower: It would cost a great deal, but wouldn't be nearly so expensive as not getting those lands back into production and then running out of forest products. It's the old Amory Lovins' line: "It's going to be tough to do things right, but it's going to be a lot harder not to." It's going to be a lot harder not to treat our forest lands better than the Forest Service is.
Mariah: Again, there's the question of what any one person can do to change Forest Service policies to help save Alaskan lands.
Brower: I suppose it's a cliché to say "Be active," but I don't know how else we can do it, in this small part of the world that's still trying to carry out the democratic principles it's founded on. These principles require that decisions be delegated to the people, and that the power accept this responsibility. That means keeping touch with the leaders who are making the decisions, writing letters to the editors, having meetings at home. It's tiring. It's monotonous.
You keep hearing, write about this, write about that. There's a feeling of futility: "Well, what difference does my letter make?" It makes a great deal of difference. The one person who acts, multiplied by a few other thousands who act, will make all the difference. There is no other way to get in touch with the people who are making the decisions. The citizens who believe and feel strongly about these matters, but stay silent, are just giving away the game to the people who don't have long-range view in mind, but are willing to be vocal.
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