I cannot recall a more eventful month than this July: We discovered the first Earth-like planet outside our solar system, capped a nine-and-a-half year space journey with the first shots back from Pluto, and saw the first report of a landmass "missing" its sun. I got the same feelings of wonderment at these occurrences as I get from standing on the rim at Grand Canyon, listening with rapt attention to a ranger explaining its 2 billion year history written in the rocks: What a vast universe and how privileged we are to be part of it!
So why is the current conversation in our country dominated by a demagogic preoccupation with man-made differences that overlook our common humanity and our common vulnerability to cosmic forces? As the scientists at NASA followed scientific laws that enabled them to navigate through a million miles of space each day, in the same way the laws of nature are pointing to an unerring outcome as a response to our continuing pollution of the Earth.
We commonly use the phrase "It's not rocket science!" to denote that something is glaringly obvious. But maybe it will require us to see the congruence between rocket science and natural law if we are to wake up to the perils of our time and respond as a species.
For decades scientists have been telling us that our climate is changing at an accelerated rate that will increasingly be marked by more unusual, intense and frequent weather events, and though we are seeing that manifesting all around us in increased frequency and severity of droughts, fires, and unnatural occurrences such as the "missing" sun in Newfoundland, we persist in acting as though we can continue business as usual with some other potential outcome.
It IS rocket science, people, and as long as we remain on this course we will see the collapse of an environment that can support human life as surely as that probe reached Pluto.
Zora Neale Hurston's description in her book Seraph on the Suwanee is an apt summation of our current conduct:
"...unthankful and unknowing like a hog under a [an] acorn tree. Eating and grunting with your eyes, and never even looking up to see where the acorns are coming from."
Admittedly, that's a very unflattering description. But how else could our national discourse be dominated by those who exploit our so-called "differences" while overlooking the biggest threat to humanity? How else could we have elected a Congress whose leadership pokes fun at climate change even while they are known to be accepting tons of cash from polluting interests that contribute to the problem? How else could millions of influential citizens remain silent while our fellow citizens whose only crime is not being white are exploited and shot down like animals in our streets? We seem to be asleep at the wheel.
I often wonder what the people in New Orleans would have done if they'd known years before that the Katrina-related hell was coming? Might they have expended some of their political and financial capital to force the US Army Corps of Engineers to fix the fatal engineering flaws they knew existed in their flood protection system? Might they have used their energy to organize their communities and build a movement strong enough to get results and avert the catastrophic effect on their lives? That's the critical place we're at now with climate change, where we either all work together to avert it or we will all suffer the cataclysmic consequences.
I'm convinced that the solution to many of our problems resides in our National Park System which represents the touchstone of reality in an age of "spin." From an eternal standpoint the parks show us what was here billions of years before us, how our planet has evolved, and they remind us that we dance on this stage only briefly. Ecologically, they contain large expanses of greenery that buffer us against climate change. Socially, they show us how ridiculous we are, now proposing such things as internment of Muslims. Manzanar and Minidoka National Historic Sites where Americans of Japanese ancestry were interned in WWII illustrate why internment is an indelible blot on our national record, and never should be repeated.
Even more recently, they show us how scurrilous race prejudice is when it can raise its ugly head even in a place as magnificent as Yosemite National Park, where four African American PhDs were treated so shabbily that the entire Park Service family must surely feel embarrassed at the conduct of their peers.
There are very easy ways for us to raise our head up and stop acting like hogs. The first is to demand that the people we elect to office tell us what their plans are to protect our natural resources and address climate change. The second is to demand that Congress reauthorizes the Land and Water Conservation Fund, which takes a pittance of the revenue made from exploiting our collective natural resources to reinvest in parks. Though the LWCF has existed for 50 years, successive Congresses have failed to give the American people even that pittance, and this year the Fund expires Sept. 30. Unless it is reauthorized, we will have no way of getting even those few dollars to acquire green space in our communities, while the onslaught of fracking, ditching, drilling and diking continues to diminish our publicly-owned lands.
It's time for every American to say, in the timeless words of Edward Everett Hale,
"I am only one, but I am one. I cannot do everything, but I can do something. And I will not let what I cannot do interfere with what I can do."
If every one of us does something proactive, we can contextualize our current conversation through publicizing the history in our national parks; we can hold our leaders accountable to act responsibly and moderate the effects of climate change, and we can imbue our brief time on this planet with humanity by valuing our fellowmen and women as ourselves.
It only took one Albert Einstein to change our understanding of the world. Will you be one? #beone #nationalparks