Sustainability Policy and Events, Activity
The Duke, from a collection entitled the Dance of Death by Hans Holbein the Younger, (1538). City University of NY project by Jennifer Romero, http://libguides.brooklyn.cuny.edu/ancientmedicine_goyette/student_projects (CCA).
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.
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
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.
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
The science-only at first approach has been applied to “criteria” air pollutants but not to other air pollutants, and our strongest progress has been with criteria pollutants. We do take account of the costs of criteria air pollutants, after we have understood their impact on health through the process of setting National Ambient Air Quality Standards. While there are reasons to take account of them afterwards, there is no legitimate reason for taking account of the costs of listing species or designating habitats when assessing the need to list or what the habitat ought to be. These are strictly scientific questions. There are other significant problems with the proposed changes, including how climate change impacts are to be considered (less likely, if the changes are made final).
If you must ask if civil society has a duty to nature you should ask if you live in an infinitely regenerative world or if we live in a finite world full of us that we can harm. We have the answer. At the website of the Center for Biological Diversity, which has used biological data to win a stunning 93% of cases on behalf of endangered species[iii], we find that
Although extinction is a natural phenomenon, it occurs at a natural “background” rate of about one to five species per year. Scientists estimate we're now losing species at 1,000 to 10,000 times the background rate, with literally dozens going extinct every day. [iv]
This is an endangerment of all species. To continue developing the effectiveness of the ESA is a duty we cannot ignore without harming everything, including ourselves.
Our environmental laws are finely-developed tools - extensions of the public will - that take and foster action that helps all of us. When we dismantle them we diminish our real wealth – nature, our health, and our ability to act in accordance with an understanding of the world as it is. Dismantling environmental laws is like severing a hand. As poet Robinson Jeffers wrote in 1936:
A severed hand
Is an ugly thing…
the greatest beauty is
Organic wholeness, the wholeness of life and things, the divine beauty
of the universe. Love that, not man
Apart from that…
We have a common interest in the ecosystems around us retaining the capacity for life. This is a matter for democracy as well as nature. It is delusional to act as if our fate is not connected to that of the many species around us, or to each other. Those who cite humanity’s ingenuity and imagine that corporations will construct adequate substitutes for nature accept a myth of technology that Lewis Mumford explained was not dissimilar to ancient sun worship, and just as irrational (The Pentagon of Power, the Myth of the Machine, 1970). Refusing to face truth condemns our children to reduced chances for happiness, and makes the humanity that can prevent extinctions extinct.
It is a test of the common soul whether we will turn towards the truth and do what’s needed, or retreat in thrall to an illusion. As plague stalked the countryside, Edgar Allen Poe's Prince Prospero called his courtiers to his “amply provisioned” fortress. Behind the walls of his retreat the prince “had provided all the appliances of pleasure,” and the “external world could take care of itself. “ The rollback of responsibility for the environment and human rights by the administration may be the apotheosis of the solely self-interested competitive mode rather than a conscious withdrawal in fear of plague. But when it is “folly to grieve, or to think”, the unconscious rules, and the bad ending can become as visible as a horror movie. As Poe informed us, a figure appeared at the grand costume ball: “tall and gaunt, and shrouded from head to foot in the habiliments of the grave.” Though they had welded the bolts to the doors of their retreat, Death still came. As Health Physicist David Bradley wrote after observing the terrible exposures of servicemen from the first peace-time nuclear blasts in the Pacific, (another moment of arrogant assumption) there’s No Place to Hide (1946).
We should not wait for a blood-spattered Masque to appear on television before deciding we don’t want to go to that foolish party. Fighting the weakening of the Act, taking the time to comment on what is right, is a refusal of the invitation. It will help keep others at home, within nature. The original ESA affirmed that we are human and do not have the divine wisdom to say it’s ok if this or that animal or plant disappears and never gives birth to another of its kind. In pretending we have godlike privileges to dispense life and death we forsake the real gift of nature, our capacity for real human wisdom. When Congress found in 1973 that “various species of fish, wildlife, and plants in the United States have been rendered extinct as a consequence of economic growth and development untempered by adequate concern and conservation” (emphasis added), it demonstrated that we have the potential to see and do the right thing. Congress at that time declared that
these species of fish, wildlife, and plants are of esthetic, ecological, educational, historical, recreational, and scientific value to the Nation and its people
and pledged the honor of the US as a member of the international community, to do what it could to conserve species and the ecosystems in which they live. We can return to the attempt to temper ourselves. Congress once made the choice not to pretend that we do not have to care, and it can act in a sensible manner once again, if we tell it to. By preserving ecological habitats for endangered species, we preserve ourselves.
We can turn back the rejection of responsibility. We can choose the light of recognition of our place within life. Jeffers finished his plea for the reader to apprehend the beauty and wholeness of nature, to see that as “The Answer”, by stating
or else you will share man's pitiful confusions,
or drown in despair when his days darken.[v]
[i] The attention is warranted, for example, by: use of investigative and enforcement agencies for political purposes, attacks on the press, defunding of public programs, replacement of the posture of international cooperation with confrontation, exacerbations of civic differences, a winner-take-all spoils system. At this turn, the dominant forsake responsibility for the public, break bonds of trust, weaken the public sense of truth and justify selfish gain.
{ii} https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2018/07/25/2018-15810/endangered-and-threatened-wildlife-and-plants-revision-of-the-regulations-for-listing-species-and
[iii] https://www.biologicaldiversity.org/about/story/. See also Ed Humes’ EcoBarons, (2009).
[iv] https://www.biologicaldiversity.org/programs/biodiversity/elements_of_biodiversity/extinction_crisis/
[v] NEA’s Selected Poetry website (https://www.arts.gov/national-initiatives/nea-big-read/the-selected-poetry-of-robinson-jeffers) describes him: “Standing apart from the world, he passed dispassionate judgment on his race and civilization, and he found them wanting. Pointing out some grievous contradictions at the core of Western industrial society earned Jeffers a reputation as a bitter misanthrope (he sometimes was) but this verdict hardly invalidates the essential accuracy of his message (emphasis added). He saw the pollution of the environment, the destruction of other species, the squandering of natural resources, the recurrent urge to war, and the violent squalor of cities as the inevitable result of a species out of harmony with its own world.”
If you must ask if civil society has a duty to nature you should ask if you live in an infinitely regenerative world or if we live in a finite world full of us that we can harm. We have the answer. At the website of the Center for Biological Diversity, which has used biological data to win a stunning 93% of cases on behalf of endangered species[iii], we find that
Although extinction is a natural phenomenon, it occurs at a natural “background” rate of about one to five species per year. Scientists estimate we're now losing species at 1,000 to 10,000 times the background rate, with literally dozens going extinct every day. [iv]
This is an endangerment of all species. To continue developing the effectiveness of the ESA is a duty we cannot ignore without harming everything, including ourselves.
Our environmental laws are finely-developed tools - extensions of the public will - that take and foster action that helps all of us. When we dismantle them we diminish our real wealth – nature, our health, and our ability to act in accordance with an understanding of the world as it is. Dismantling environmental laws is like severing a hand. As poet Robinson Jeffers wrote in 1936:
A severed hand
Is an ugly thing…
the greatest beauty is
Organic wholeness, the wholeness of life and things, the divine beauty
of the universe. Love that, not man
Apart from that…
We have a common interest in the ecosystems around us retaining the capacity for life. This is a matter for democracy as well as nature. It is delusional to act as if our fate is not connected to that of the many species around us, or to each other. Those who cite humanity’s ingenuity and imagine that corporations will construct adequate substitutes for nature accept a myth of technology that Lewis Mumford explained was not dissimilar to ancient sun worship, and just as irrational (The Pentagon of Power, the Myth of the Machine, 1970). Refusing to face truth condemns our children to reduced chances for happiness, and makes the humanity that can prevent extinctions extinct.
It is a test of the common soul whether we will turn towards the truth and do what’s needed, or retreat in thrall to an illusion. As plague stalked the countryside, Edgar Allen Poe's Prince Prospero called his courtiers to his “amply provisioned” fortress. Behind the walls of his retreat the prince “had provided all the appliances of pleasure,” and the “external world could take care of itself. “ The rollback of responsibility for the environment and human rights by the administration may be the apotheosis of the solely self-interested competitive mode rather than a conscious withdrawal in fear of plague. But when it is “folly to grieve, or to think”, the unconscious rules, and the bad ending can become as visible as a horror movie. As Poe informed us, a figure appeared at the grand costume ball: “tall and gaunt, and shrouded from head to foot in the habiliments of the grave.” Though they had welded the bolts to the doors of their retreat, Death still came. As Health Physicist David Bradley wrote after observing the terrible exposures of servicemen from the first peace-time nuclear blasts in the Pacific, (another moment of arrogant assumption) there’s No Place to Hide (1946).
We should not wait for a blood-spattered Masque to appear on television before deciding we don’t want to go to that foolish party. Fighting the weakening of the Act, taking the time to comment on what is right, is a refusal of the invitation. It will help keep others at home, within nature. The original ESA affirmed that we are human and do not have the divine wisdom to say it’s ok if this or that animal or plant disappears and never gives birth to another of its kind. In pretending we have godlike privileges to dispense life and death we forsake the real gift of nature, our capacity for real human wisdom. When Congress found in 1973 that “various species of fish, wildlife, and plants in the United States have been rendered extinct as a consequence of economic growth and development untempered by adequate concern and conservation” (emphasis added), it demonstrated that we have the potential to see and do the right thing. Congress at that time declared that
these species of fish, wildlife, and plants are of esthetic, ecological, educational, historical, recreational, and scientific value to the Nation and its people
and pledged the honor of the US as a member of the international community, to do what it could to conserve species and the ecosystems in which they live. We can return to the attempt to temper ourselves. Congress once made the choice not to pretend that we do not have to care, and it can act in a sensible manner once again, if we tell it to. By preserving ecological habitats for endangered species, we preserve ourselves.
We can turn back the rejection of responsibility. We can choose the light of recognition of our place within life. Jeffers finished his plea for the reader to apprehend the beauty and wholeness of nature, to see that as “The Answer”, by stating
or else you will share man's pitiful confusions,
or drown in despair when his days darken.[v]
[i] The attention is warranted, for example, by: use of investigative and enforcement agencies for political purposes, attacks on the press, defunding of public programs, replacement of the posture of international cooperation with confrontation, exacerbations of civic differences, a winner-take-all spoils system. At this turn, the dominant forsake responsibility for the public, break bonds of trust, weaken the public sense of truth and justify selfish gain.
{ii} https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2018/07/25/2018-15810/endangered-and-threatened-wildlife-and-plants-revision-of-the-regulations-for-listing-species-and
[iii] https://www.biologicaldiversity.org/about/story/. See also Ed Humes’ EcoBarons, (2009).
[iv] https://www.biologicaldiversity.org/programs/biodiversity/elements_of_biodiversity/extinction_crisis/
[v] NEA’s Selected Poetry website (https://www.arts.gov/national-initiatives/nea-big-read/the-selected-poetry-of-robinson-jeffers) describes him: “Standing apart from the world, he passed dispassionate judgment on his race and civilization, and he found them wanting. Pointing out some grievous contradictions at the core of Western industrial society earned Jeffers a reputation as a bitter misanthrope (he sometimes was) but this verdict hardly invalidates the essential accuracy of his message (emphasis added). He saw the pollution of the environment, the destruction of other species, the squandering of natural resources, the recurrent urge to war, and the violent squalor of cities as the inevitable result of a species out of harmony with its own world.”
Activity: Read the Federal Register cited in this article, and about the ESA, and submit comments to affirm responsibility for other life forms.
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