From the Editors
The environmental
movement seems to be having an identity crisis. Among other things,
there has been confusion over which
comes >rst, protecting people or nature. If
you have any doubts about the opportunities that have been missed as a result of
this condition, read Rebecca Solnit’s “One
Nation Under Elvis: An Environmentalism
for Us All” (page 54). But before much
progress could be made on the identity
crisis, a new disorder has begun plaguing
this frustratingly ine=ective movement to
protect nothing short of the planet.
Just to make sure you’re paying attention: we’re talking about e=orts to protect
the only planet in the universe known to
host conditions conducive to life. And it’s a
minority movement. This means there are
fewer people concerned about preserving
the environment (read: the planet) than
there are people willing to mindlessly
wreck it, to undo the very conditions that
make it hospitable: clean water, clean air,
fertile soils, a stable atmosphere—oops,
wait. Ix-nay on that ast-one lay. We’ve
already passed the tipping point there.
But back to the matter at hand: the new
psychosis. The diagnosis is bipolar disorder. The prognosis—well, that depends.
An unprecedented number of people now
believe that the threats to the environ-
PHOTOGRAPH l JASON HOUSTON
ment posed by modern society are serious, and that they deserve our immediate
attention and ingenuity. Many of these
people drive Toyota Priuses (or hybrid
Highlanders), shop at their local food co-op
(and bring their own bags), read magazines
like this one. And due to ample evidence
that the corporate hegemony we live
under doesn’t seem to care whether we
live or die, more and more people are
questioning whether we should really
trust the legislators and lobbyists at the
helm of this runaway train. A political sea
change is surely on the rise. Or at least
there’s momentum—the kind of momentum that could lead a person to think that
this might just be the moment environmentalists have been waiting for: the
golden opportunity to take the movement
mainstream, perhaps even obviate the
need for a movement at all.
And then, some days, it’s hard to get
out of bed in the morning—the warming
planet, the mass extinctions, the insatiable
human appetite for resources that are,
after all, >nite. Even if we haven’t yet
passed the tipping point beyond which climate change will be virtually unstoppable,
if present trends prevail we soon will.
Then there are those nasty feedback
loops, which are predicted to exponentially hasten the process as the planet
warms. Pestilence and plague, anyone?
Add to that the many toxic bodies of water,
the pesticide-drenched plains, the stagnating Superfund sites still awaiting cleanup.
This is one campsite we de>nitely are not
leaving better than we found it.
So Pollyanna or Cassandra—which are
you? Or, rather, which are you today? After
all, the condition involves swinging back
and forth between the two. Either end of the
spectrum can be crippling, so it’s best to
avoid dwelling at the poles. An immobilized
movement (beyond being an oxymoron)
will never change anything, let alone the
minds of a signi>cant number of people.
And we’ve got to convince them that a habitable planet is worth more than whatever
pro>ts might be derived from squeezing a
few more resources out of an already overtaxed ecosystem—that of all the investments out there, a stable atmosphere will
without a doubt bring the biggest return.
The whole thing seems so absurd, like a
science >ction story, and yet this is the
moment in which we >nd ourselves. We
can’t let denial stand in our way. This is not
a time, either, for giddy optimism. We have
to >nd a way of coping with our condition,
to keep crusading for the Earth despite
it all. Then, once we get the whole bipolar
thing under control, we can go back to
working on the identity crisis. a
