For too long we – all humans of today, plus all other living things – have been victims of monstrous misconceptions, roaming like vicious dragons over the lands of this green earth, scorching it and terrifying everyone.  These are the misconceptions bred by the compulsion to make money at all costs.  The placement of the profit imperative at the top of the priority pyramid has led otherwise sensible people to reach into the underworld and pull poisons from hell and pour them into our seas, skies, and soils, where they have burned in rapid and slow fashion to the ruin of more than anyone could calculate.

But as in the stories, of Hercules, Sigurd, Rustam, Indra, Marduk, Gilgamesh, and so many others, we also know that the reign of the monsters can end, if someone will stand up to them, and use the right tools.  For the purpose of simplicity that tool is often a sword, but it can be a mirror (Perseus),  a bird  bringing knowledge of a chink in the dragon’s armor (the Hobbit), or an oxygen-destruction device (Godzilla).  Today, we – all citizens – have been given a tool – the Green  New Deal – and it will work if we decide to use it.

The virtue of this tool is that it is infinitely flexible.  At this point it is fashioned as a Congressional Resolution, and its features are recognitions and aspirations.  For the tool to work, to be sharp enough to slay the dragon of our addiction to money generated by poisonous fuels and the illusions of comfort and convenience it produces, we only have to perceive that such a program is needed – and support its goals.  Hope has arrived in the form of a sensible posture towards our present and future prospects, and it can be manifested by acceptance.  The dragons of greed, pollution, cynicism, selfishness, blindness and rank irresponsibility can be defeated and their day cast aside for the light of reason, which can perform the action of a hero if we give to it our mindful attention and assent.

That such a resolution is before Congress, with 69 proponents in the House and 12 in the Senate, is a sign of the maturation of the environmental movement.  Modern environmental consciousness began as something to worry about, and then we got tired of worrying about it, so fretful that it would cost too much to address that a mindless destruction of environmental protections gained political support, an emotional catastrophe of mythical dimension, an abandonment of the project of developing social responsibility, a reversal of the positive trend towards sensible civilization.  But while the teardown was building strength, first under Nixon, then under Reagan, then under the second Bush, and now under he who is not here named, in case after case it was being proven that environmental investments are actually good for us. 

One big win, hardly gaining any public attention, was the billions of pounds of toxics use eliminated from commerce by the pollution prevention movement, saving companies billions of dollars at the same time.  The next big win was the energy efficiency movement, and then we had the success of solar, and wind, and now energy storage.  We stopped major forms of pollution and didn’t hurt ourselves or the economy.  Yes, some suffered from the loss of dirty jobs.  But that didn’t have to happen – had we invested in helping people through the transition, that story could have turned out differently.  The point is that there has been far too little attention to the fact that it makes sense to transform to clean and safe technologies and practices.  It makes business sense, it makes moral sense, it stands to reason, it stands up to challenge.  The Green New Deal Resolution[1] uses that truth like a sword.

It proceeds from the recognition that investing in making our planet safe and not poisoning the bodies of every living thing can also create millions of good jobs while improving infrastructure, buildings, agriculture – everything we do.  It is not wishful thinking, mythical exaggeration or ludicrous hope that recognizes this.  Investing in the great transformation of our built systems so that they exist sensibly within the biosphere only makes sense, and it is a dark mystical delusion that motivates opposition to the dawning of this new day.  In many of the myths, dragons are not just breathers of fire, but have powers of mind control.  You don’t want to let them look in your eyes or you will become transfixed.  That is what has happened to modern civilization.  It has been fixed to the spot that the dragon wants us to stay in.  But this is a hero-story that every citizen can enjoy.  All we have to do is open our eyes and hearts to the fact that we don’t need to continue poisoning ourselves, and the sword of truth will bring a new day.   


[1] See the complete resolution as introduced in the House Feb. 7 by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: file:///C:/Users/rick/Documents/Courses/The%20Green%20New%20Deal%20resolution.pdf or see Ed Markey's summary: https://www.markey.senate.gov/news/press-releases/senator-markey-and-rep-ocasio-cortez-introduce-green-new-deal-resolution.

On October 14, 2018 the television show Sixty Minutes aired the interview of Leslie Stahl with President Trump, in which he refused her request to pledge that he would not interfere with the investigation of his activities.  The nation saw the reduction of what could have been a national conversation to a contest between the two of them: the President said “why should I pledge to you?”, as if the question was not asked on behalf of the entire country.

An environmental citizen today has to be concerned not just with such things as dirty water, hot oceans, and cruelly treated animals, but with the First Amendment.  A healthy democracy is necessary for government to do its job addressing the problems we all face.  Ignoring the fact that journalists represent the people tears connective tissue: the commitment to the whole that an American President is chosen to manifest.  It is in the sense of a people made from everyone who happens to be here that we enjoy our freedoms.  No citizen who wishes to be free of environmental disaster can afford to neglect the emotional energy that drives this cleavage with the American past, with our traditional source of pride, our Constitution.  No would-be healer of divisions can ignore the opportunity to revive the spirit of civic duty that this moment presents, if many can be helped to recognize its meaning.

​At the same time as this event, CSPAN was broadcasting without comment the Global Climate Action Summit held this summer in San Francisco.  The lucky viewer who found the broadcast of this event saw something different.  Not only was the forum packed with good news about how a climate-healthy economy could be quickly developed, but it demonstrated a culture of reason and a shared sense of constructive purpose.  The viewer witnessed social fabric – national and international – being created through the acceptance and development of responsibility.  Former NY Mayor Michael Bloomberg, now the UN Secretary General’s Special Envoy for Climate Action, explained that cities and others have taken America’s Pledge, (https://www.americaspledgeonclimate.com/), and are remaining faithful to the purpose of the Paris Accord.  In a time of radical deregulation (See http://www.trunity.com/ec-blog/the-great-undoing), and the Administration’s withdrawal from Paris, America is still reducing greenhouse gas reductions.  When protesters briefly took over the Moscone Center and prevented Bloomberg from speaking, shouting that the air is not for sale, he waited politely, and then agreed with them, and joked that in America you can have environmentalists protesting an environmental conference.    

Sustainability Policy and Events, Activity

It is a cliché to say that we are at a turning point in history, for every moment is a turning point.  Several aspects, however, mark this moment in history as unique and crucially important.  There is much deserved focus on turning points for democracy, on the breaking of bonds with each other that we must preserve in order to evolve sensible, sustainable civilization.[i]  A related turning point, the Administration’s weakening of the Endangered Species Act (ESA), is a breaking of the bonds we share with the rest of life.  This requires more attention than it has received.  The time for repudiation is now.

Changes proposed in early August include no longer listing species and designating critical habitat “without reference to possible economic or other impacts”.[ii]  This sounds innocuous but if it goes into effect it will constitute a violation of the duty to understand in clear terms what forms of life need.  Looking at things through the lens of money distorts our view.  The consideration of monetary impacts may help us know how best to address the problem, but should never affect the decision of whether we need to.

The full story of our most famous ESA case, when the Supreme Court stopped the final touches on the nearly-completed Tellico Dam (TVA v Hill, 437 U.S. 153 (1978)) to save a small fish, illustrates the distorting effect of money and the idea of money.  As The Snail Darter and the Dam (2013, by Zygmunt Plater, the law professor who won the case) makes clear, the dam was a bad idea, damaging private lives and having no overall public benefit.  Mansion luxury homes replaced farms that had been held for generations, traditional Cherokee lands, and the last free-running river in Tennessee, whose recreational value alone should have prevented the project.  An unexamined presumption in the public mind - that something that had cost so much must have had economic justification – abetted what Plater terms “a Congressional Pork Barrel” push for the development.   
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When Congress then created a “God Committee” with the usurped divine power to allow species to become extinct because of costs, it was a turning point in the history of arrogance.  It was cause for hope when the committee unanimously refused to approve the dam and condemn the fish, but then Congress overrode this decision in an appropriations bill, an example of democracy degraded so that nature could be degraded.  Such policy determinations do not belong in appropriations bills.  The proposals to weaken the ESA are the same slow dance of death.  Citizens wishing to get off this terrible ride and form a leg of humanity striding towards life should note the comment period will be open until September 24th. Go to https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2018/07/25/2018-15810/endangered-and-threatened-wildlife-and-plants-revision-of-the-regulations-for-listing-species-and#addresses

Sustainability Policy and Events, Activity

According to a 2015 report featured by the Ecological Society of America, old growth forests store 30% more carbon than younger forests (“Carbon storage in old‐growth forests of the Mid‐Atlantic: toward better understanding the eastern forest carbon sink”, McGarvey, Thompson, Epstein, Shugart).  It certainly makes sense that the older and bigger the tree, the more carbon it is storing in the form of wood.  Common sense tells you this.  And the older the forest, the better it works at this critical job.  Now imagine those forests cut down and replaced with a plantation of saplings, each storing orders of magnitude less carbon, while the world desperately needs carbon pulled out of the atmosphere.
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The various strategies we usually hear about for addressing our warming globe involve switching from fossil fuels to solar and wind.  But the carbon already present will stay for hundreds of years.  We need to remove it as well.  Fossil fuel supporters have long promoted carbon capture and storage, but it has remained prohibitively unprofitable.  Carbon utilization technologies, such as fixation by algae or conversion to industrial chemicals, are a new focus, exemplified by the FUEL Act now before Congress, supported by the Carbon Utilization Research Council, which is made up primarily of coal interests.  A March, 2015 review in the Journal of CO2 Utilization concluded that global warming can be reduced by these technologies but substantial problems of cost-effectiveness and the fact that many cause other environmental impacts must be overcome. (“Carbon capture, storage and utilisation technologies: A critical analysis and comparison of their life cycle environmental impacts”, Cuéllar-Franca, Azapagicas).  However, as Dr. William Moomaw of Tufts’ Fletcher School points out, we already have an extremely effective device for carbon sequestration: the tree.  

Purpose and Context, Activity

The Declaration of Independence articulates the reasons for separating from the rule of the King of England out of a “decent respect for the opinions of mankind”.  The Declaration at the emergence of the first stable modern democratic republic expressed the essence of democracy itself, which holds the possibility of social organization that protects the world itself.  Respect for the existence and opinions of others makes possible the formation of a working community of necessarily diverse interests, and it is in respect for living things other than ourselves that the saving of the natural world begins.

The proclamation of the basic concept of respect implies a collective social responsibility that also preserves individual freedom.  In contrast, fractious partisan struggles, the “zero-sum” or “winner-take-all” political game in which one side seeks to prevail over the other, threaten our chances – tenuous at best - for peace, prosperity, the shared freedom we need to discover what we each can be, and for many, survival.