It was Earth Day and the sun had risen into a cloudless sky. I climbed a hill near my house, following a familiar cart road. For years, a mature pine forest grew at the top of the hill, quite near a simple summer cottage in a small clearing.
That was before huge machinery clawed into the hill, ripped a staging area for logging operations that left only small circles of trees and brush everywhere. And in destroying the forest eliminated any possibility that humans could safely walk there.
Raspberry bushes sprouted on the enormous mound of earth scraped away to make turning space for huge trucks. The first stage of succession sent up lanky shoots among branches and stumps at the top of the hill. I stood, face to the sun, recalling the soft pine needle cushion on the forest floor. My daughter and I walked along a path now destroyed.
All that remained of those pines was an artificially flat clearing covered in weathered wood chips. I closed my eyes, inhaled the morning air, and let hopeful birdsong surround me. There was, for a short moment, peace in this place.
Because there is so little wilderness left in central New England, itโs hard to find places that donโt bear marks of human activity. But even wild places bordering on developed areas have their value. I turned to leave this place, feeling better for having been there, even for a few minutes. I know from the tracks and sounds Iโve observed that it hosts wild turkeys, deer, owls, coyotes, foxes, fisher catsย and many birds. Iโve picked wild raspberries and waited for wildflowers that will someday emerge from the wreck left behind after logging.
But I wondered, is it enough to be grateful for wild placesย and to pay lip service to efforts to save them? As a citizen in a country that has 5% of the worldโs population but uses 25% of its resources, what does Earth Day really mean to me? Is it a feel-good exercise? Am I carrying cloth bags to the grocery store to distract myself from the needless consumption behind every plastic container I drop into my grocery cart? How far would I go to try to rescue a planet in trouble, and would my efforts even matter?
Catherine Owen Koning, professor of environmental sciencesย at Franklin Pierce University in New Hampshire was contacted by a reporter prior to the schoolโs Earth Day observance. โIf every day is Earth day, is this observance still relevant?โ the reporter asked. This question came as a record carbon dioxide load has been dumped into the atmosphere, glacial melting has raised sea level, and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has allowed previously established air and water quality standards to erode.
There is no outcry. The largest consumer nation in the world has a numbing addiction to things. We buy cheap plastic junk that says โSave the Earthโ while a mass of discarded plastic the size of Alaska floats in the Pacific Ocean. Preachers talk of salvation in the great beyond while the congregation seeks happiness among the store aisles, but, through a calculated effort that began in the 1930s, that happiness always depends on buying something else.
In The Myth of Progress: Toward a Sustainable Future, Antioch University New England Graduate professor emeritus Tom Wessels asserts that we have reached the limits of economic growth in the United States. He likens economies to ecosystems that, he says, are regulated by the Second Law of Thermodynamics. This law defines the growth of natural organisms such as animals and plants. Once mature, these organisms stop growing and enter a state of dynamic equilibrium. They eventually become entropic, that is, they put out more energy than they take in, and die. Likewise, a consumer economy based on constant expansion and dependent on the widespread use of Earthโs resources cannot sustain itself. It has to stop growing.
The climate crisis is a bellwether of the trouble to come if we do not rethink some of our deepest cultural assumptions. One is the notion that science will cure all our ills. Following the Enlightenment, the western world began to believe that rational thinking and discovery could subdue the unknown (and sometimes unpredictable) forces of nature.
Add to that the American notion of individualism carried to hyperbole in the mid-twentieth century, when the buzz was, โI have to get my needs met.โ Those needs had been defined by corporations since the 1930s when Charles Kettering, director of research for General Motors, came up with a plan that completely reversed the culture of frugality.
Through improved manufacturing techniques Americans would be able to manufacture all they needed in less than a forty-hour workweek. While others advocated giving the worker more leisure, Kettering came up with โthe gospel of consumption.โ Through advertising and other tactics, the American consumer could be kept eternally dissatisfied, always wanting more. This would drive production, keep workers at their jobs longerย and line the pockets of corporate executives.
Although Kettering had critics, his ideas prevailed. Americans are insatiable. Ours is a culture that has gone into debt to keep buying, even as consumers feel less satisfaction and more psychological dysfunction. We are just beginning to see what our demand for goods has done to the planet.
In an all-out effort to understand what we have done to ourselves and our environment, it is time to see ourselves as the world sees us, materially rich but spiritually needy because our pursuit of things leaves us no time for a quiet, rich inner life. The corporate hammerlock on our personal sensibilities makes us more competitive as food and transportation become increasingly expensive. Because the economy of unsatisfied wants has reached its entropic stage, our only hope for the future is enlightened leadership that can turn us in a new direction before we run off a cliff.
Twenty-first century Earth Days are about returning to a culture of frugality, now called sustainability. They remind us that all the conservation land in the world wonโt save us if we are on a treadmill of unfulfilled desire. When the economy of expansion goes into equilibrium, we will have more time to acknowledge each other, even as we find ourselves less able to afford an endless stream of possessions.
We will need each other more, as scarce resources force us to relearn self-reliance. Just as the first Earth Day was a community event, future Earth Days must be about cooperation. The post-petroleum economy we are about to design will have to be radically different and more other-directed if it is to succeed in a time of limited resources.
Earth Days, and the people behind them, working tirelessly every day, remind us where our health and sanity lie. We save ourselves when we tread lightly on the earth. There is a special kind of wealth in the wild places thatโs worth more than money.
(Chris Hague is a retired Weare librarian.)