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Show EARTH DAY! ..As a Disturbance Event in the Flow of History By Art Goodtimes Goodtimes gave this keynote speech for Earth Day 2000 in Grand Jct., Colorado I've been reading a wonderful book of late, written by my good friend Michael P. As a child of the ‘50s, I remember a little incident, a slight disturbance in the I Love Cohen, who, until very recently, taught at University of Southern Utah in Cedar City. It's called the Garden of Bristlecones: Tales of Change in the ares Basin and it's published by the University of Nevada Press in Reno (1998). One of the tales Michael tells is the use of tree ring research on bristlecone pines to Lucy complacency of that era, that has always stuck with me. In a way it was maybe my first Earth Day. We had dressed up to go to church one Sunday, and as we all headed towards the family's ‘53 Mercury coupe,I stopped behind the care tailpipe for a moment. “Don't stand there,” my mom said. “The exhaust is poisonous.” Poisonous? If the exhaust is poisonous, I thought to myself, where does the pie go? Into the air we breathe? Isn't that bad for us? And I began to wonder—what kind of society was I living in? And, you know, that's a question I'm still asking. As we enter the second Christian millennium, thanks to the disruptive influence of Earth Day, we are maybe finally becoming a little more aware that our air has been damaged, that our seas are polluted, and that our plant and animal friends are verify carbon dating techniques back in the ‘60s and ‘70s. This scientific work led to great breakthroughs in calibrating the dates for various natural events of the last hundred thousand years. In fact, it was out of this tree ring research that frost rings were correlated with volcanic eruptions and the resultant global climate changes that created the frost rings themselves. By the mid-'80s, this, in turn, helped in the formulation of disturbance theory, showcased in books like Pickett and White's The Ecology of Natural Disturbance and Patch Dynamics. and I began to wonder---what kind of society was I living in? And, you know, that's a question Brimsst arts etiyen These authors noted that previously ecologists had focused on successional development of equilibrium communities. And it's true, for years we've talked about climax forests and steady state natural systems: That's been the benchmark we've used to measure healthy ecosystems. But while we focused on saving old growth stands and climax groves in speaking of forest health, the tree ring records spoke of an evolutionary pattern of natural disturbances, a dynamic system of climax and disturbed trees co-mingling in a patchwork quilt of old and new groves. Just as much as natural forest systems tend to grow towards a balanced or climax vegetative state, we are learning that disturbances also shape the way forests develop and how natural systems interact. Fires, floods, volcanics, earthquakes, droughts-—all these disturbances contribute to the dynamic growth and development of forests and natural ecosystems. In fact, they not only contribute, they are crucial elements in the shaping of a healthy forest environment. Well, as a conservationist, I believe we must use the paradigm of ecology to help inform and understand human social behavior. Looked at this way, the first Earth Day in this country was a very great disturbance event. It may have gone virtually unnoticed at first by the majority of our citizens, but the very concept of a setting aside a day to honor the earth and celebrate its importance in our lives — our thinking and marked a watershed change in our attitudes towards the natural wo People mets to realize that the extractive industries which had marked the opening of the West were really the colonial activities of a growing Predatory Corporate Globalism, led by transnational raiders and beholden only to the bottom line—-how much money could be made as quickly as possible. disappearing at alarming rates. And it's not just Earth First! radicals and Earth Day activists who are preaching the environmental gospel these days. It was the CEO of a Georgia carpet company who thumped the ecology pulpit for the National Association of Counties annual conference in Portland two years ago. Yes, his company recycles old carpet and tries to increase efficiencies of production. That goes without saying in the competitive marketplace of the ‘90s. But as an entrepreneurial business man, Ray Anderson had a profound analysis of our current global society. The earth, he explained, is in the midst of another great mass extinction, as the planet has experienced periodically in its 5 billion year history. Only this mass extinction is human-caused-—not the result of an asteroid or geological process. Around the world about 5000 biotic species disappear each year. And what was once unbelievable is now true, said Anderson. We ourselves as a species are threatened. It's a funeral march to the grave, he warned the crowd of conservative local officials, unless we begin to turn things around, begin to place ecological wisdom at the forefront of all our social decisions. No, these weren't the words of some Green Party candidate for higher office. This was a successful but thoughtful capitalist business man. You see, once a person gets the picture, that person can't stand by. Denial is seductive, but once one understands what's at stake, conscience demands action. Having read Paul Hawken’ The Ecology of Commerce, Anderson experienced a invelition like a spear in his chest, the kind of epiphany that Paul talks about in the New Testament. The Industrial Revolution was based on a series of mistakes, Anderson realized. Mistakes like imagining that the earth had an infinite supply of resources. It doesn't. Mistakes like assuming that the earth was a limitless sink for commercial waste products. minerals---each of these elements so crucial to our global economy were limited, finite gifts and subject to depletion and potential exhaustion. No longer would we as a nation have the hubris to proclaim as the nuclear boosters did in the ‘50s that we had discovered energy too cheap to meter. It isn't. Mistakes like believing that technology is omnipotent and the invisible hand of the market is wise. Neither of these are true. If the earth were the size of a basketball, said Anderson, the atmosphere would be thin as a sheet of paper. And if the 4.5 billion year history of the earth were charted on a time No longer would conspicuous consumption and built-in obsolescence be the ruling principles of consumer marketing as they were in the middle of this century. Industrial Revolution would appear in the last three-one thousandths of an inch. People began to realize that earth's resources were finite. Water, air, forest products, line one mile long, humans would inhabit just the last three-quarters of an inch and the |