The lost cause: environmental issues…
Activists often just protest and offer no solutions to fix the problems they’re protesting about. It’s a sign of the times, I suppose. During the era of the Vietnam War draft, we were willing to go to jail or flee to Canada for our beliefs that the war was unjust—that probably wasn’t a solution either, but it was more effective than simple protest. People of all races put their bodies where their mouths were too, just like in the civil rights movements. Thousands still work quietly behind the scenes trying to solve problems, not simply pointing them out—working towards peace and tolerance of others.
There’s one lost cause you don’t hear much about anymore, even at the level of protest. We continue to wreak havoc on our environment in many ways. We’re not attacking Gaia with drones and special forces. We’re attacking Her on all fronts and the innocent victims will be measured in the millions unless we change our ways, not just the few innocents that the terrorists make march along with them as human shields. A simple protest falls on deaf ears in cases involving the environment much more than any of the protests against the treatment of Manning, Snowden, and the folk hero, Julian Assange, which often get media attention but accomplish very little. Moreover, protestors need to prioritize their causes and work on issues that can bring the greatest good for the greatest number, and not protest for protest’s sake.
Case in point in the environmental arena: A protest against whaling by Greenpeace, for example, does squat. It might look great on YouTube, but it doesn’t affect the people responsible, even as a protest. Picketing Monsanto, BASF, Dow, and other chemical companies would be a more effective environmental protest, but it probably still ranks zero on the effectiveness scale. Consumers launching boycotts might rank a one or a two. But neither protests nor boycotts do the job.
The problem with environmental issues is that they must be attacked on three fronts: protests, boycotts, and promotion of viable alternatives (or even slightly better ones as stop-gaps). It didn’t do any good to protest DDT, for example, until an alternative was available (interesting that one writer led that charge). These alternatives don’t just happen. They’re invented or engineered and are part of the forward march of science and technology. Researchers spend many quiet and intense hours in university and industrial laboratories creating solutions to real problems. Solar energy technology wasn’t invented in a day, for example—these advances take time. If you want to protest, go after the government, particularly the GOP, for cutting funds for research in clean crop control and clean energy.
Gaia is attacked on many fronts and her wounds are many. Here’s a case where I haven’t seen one protester, let alone possible solutions: the sick hive syndrome. I don’t know about you, but as a writer, I observe. I watch people and I watch my environment. Have you noticed fewer honeybees in the gardens this year? I have. I’ve seen bumblebees, but there’s a dearth of honeybees. There’s more to this problem than just a lack of honey. The honeybees are essential pollinators. The sick hive syndrome seems to be a problem produced by one or more parasites, but researchers have found that in sick hives there are residues of agricultural fertilizers and pest controls. The conjecture is that these residues diminish the resistance to the parasites.
Maybe it sounds silly to protest and picket the companies that manufacture chemical fertilizers and pesticides, but for Gaia this is many more times more important than what happens to Manning or Snowden (the former will pay for his violations of national security in a military court and prison; the latter will pay for them by having to live in Russia, with gay-bashing Putin as his macho lord and master!). I’d certainly nominate any renowned activist in environmental issues over Assange for the Nobel Peace Prize because that activist will have selflessly earned it by saving the world, literally. Environmental issues are so huge that all other issues should be on the back burner—for protestors, boycotters, and people looking for solutions to society’s problems.
I recently saw a pic of a Chinese citizen riding a bike and wearing a breathing mask. Is this going to be the plight of all of us? Will dystopian sci-fi descriptions of a world gone mad with people retreating underground to escape the pollution and other environmental disasters? Will famine and pestilence follow because we can no longer grow enough healthy food to feed the teeming millions? Will technology die because the waste products from all our wonderful gizmos no longer just poison Bangladesh and other Third World Countries but also our own? Is Gaia dying a slow death?
These are the important questions. They can’t be solved by activists protesting. The protests can be aimed at promoting R&D, but solutions must be found. Governments and private enterprise must be convinced to fund the R&D necessary to find the solutions to these complex problems and train the people needed to find them, or there will be nobody left to govern and no one to buy capitalism’s products.
I make a plea to today’s activists to re-orient their efforts to environmental issues. If you like, protest, but I’d much rather you study and train yourself to find solutions to the problems. I would have done so if I had been aware of environmental issues as a young person. Today, these issues smack us in the face all the time. Working quietly to make the world a better place is far nobler than screaming slogans in a protest because you’ll actually be accomplishing something instead of satisfying your narcissistic need for attention. I don’t have high hopes we’ll save Gaia, though, but maybe I’ll be proven wrong.
And so it goes….
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