Orion Magazine - January/February 2012

EdI ToR-IN-chIEf: H. Emerson Blake Ed I To R: Jennifer Sahn PIc TuRE EdIToR: Jason Houston MANAgINg EdIToR: Andrew D. Blechman SENIoR EdIToR: George K. Russell ASSocIATE EdIToR: Hannah Fries EdIToRIAl ASSISTANT: Kristen Hewitt EdIToRIAl ASSISTANT: Scott Gast

coNTRIBu TINg EdIToRS: Wendell Berry, Mark Dowie, David James Duncan, Barbara Kingsolver, William L. Fox, Barry Lopez, Erik Reece, Scott Russell Sanders, Rebecca Solnit, Sandra Steingraber, Ginger Strand, Terry Tempest Williams

d ESIg N: Hans Teensma and Pamela Glaven, Impress, Northampton, MA

MANAgINg dIREc ToR: Madeline B. Cantwell dIREc ToR of dIgITAl MEdIA: Scott Walker dEvEloPMENT offIcER: Christopher Nye ou TREAch cooRdINAToR: Erik Ho=ner coMMuNIcATIoNS ASSocIATE: Emily Glaser offIcE MANAgER: Karen Gagne c IRcul ATIo N: Greylock Media, Inc.

Adv ISo RS: Wendell Berry, Camille Dungy, John Elder, Jane Goodall, Jane Hirshfield, Linda Hogan, Pramila Jayapal, Van Jones, Winona LaDuke, Barry Lopez, Rubén Martínez, Peter Matthiessen, Bill McKibben, W. S. Merwin, Gary Paul Nabhan, David W. Orr, Michael Pollan, Scott Russell Sanders, Gary Snyder, Sandra Steingraber, Mary Evelyn Tucker, Luis Alberto Urrea, Terry Tempest Williams, Edward O. Wilson

PuBlIShER: M.G.H. Gilliam

BoARd of dIREc ToRS: Peter P. Blanchard III,
Robin Morris Collin, Alison Hawthorne
Deming (Chairperson), Marc Fasteau,
M.G.H. Gilliam (President), Wendy Tarlow
Kaplan, Robin Wall Kimmerer, Anne
MacDonald, Kathleen Dean Moore,
Christopher Nye, Jonathan Prince, Scott Slovic,
Mitchell Thomashow, Julia Harte Widdowson
ExEcu TIvE dIREc ToR / TREASuRER:
H. Emerson Blake

In his latest column (“Imagine,” September/October 2011), Derrick Jensen asks us to imagine our lives without electricity. But there are few people in the world with access to energy who would willingly do without. Imagine, for example, life before electricity: more often than not, it was brutal, short, and full of drudgery. Life in the dark is not a good thing. Access to energy should be considered a human right — we need energy, and we need it to be clean.

TOM HAGOOD

Birmingham, Alabama

As Sandra Steingraber shows in “ Household Tips from Warrior Mom!” ( September/October 2011), our culture encourages us to individualize threats and seek shelter in small, nuclear families. Sure, we are responsible for ourselves and our children, but some things we can only do together, as communities, as a nation. We have to unite to keep our homes and neighborhoods clean, safe, and healthy. Warrior moms and environmentalists need to repeat the message—many moms and reporters really do think families will be safe if they don’t buy the wrong stu=.

RACHEL FINDLEY

Berkeley, California

Thanks to Sandra Steingraber for her latest column. In my activism against toxic chemicals, I often get fed up with people who think simple awareness is the answer. We cannot shop our way out of this mess—laws and regulations are needed to stop the ubiquitous use of dangerous chemicals. It’s past time.

NANCY MICHELLI

Hercules, California

Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nord-
haus (“Evolve,” September/October 2011)
are thinly veiled shills for a corporatist
agenda. Assuming a tone of superiority,
they use dehumanization, misrepresenta-
tion, and gross projection to make their
points. Why, for example, does the heroic
hydrologist for the Venetian floodgates
have a name while the head of World
Wildlife Fund Italy is a faceless whiner?
Materialists at heart, Shellenberger and
Nordhaus sco= at “ecotheologians” as guilt-
ridden fantasizers paralyzed by apocalyptic
fear. But their “new secular theology” is
no more than capitalist Christianity with
God replaced by omnipotent technology.
The writers tip their hands with their so-
lutions —nuclear power, genetic engineer-
ing, and laboratory meat production. These
technologies require massive public invest-
ments that will bring huge profits to eco-
nomic elites like Bechtel, GE, Monsanto,
and Cargill. The risks and unintended
consequences—some of which are cer-
tain and deadly — will be borne by a public
with increasingly little say. Blindly charg-
ing forward behind the gods of technology,
as Shellenberger and Nordhaus advocate,
is like following the lead lemming who
shouts, “Never mind the cli= We’ll figure
something out once we get airborne!”

Shellenberger and Nordhaus’s essay sets a low standard for Orion. To assert, as they do, that all our technology is natural — and, by extension, good — is laughable. Of course every bit of our technology comes from the earth: from where else would it come? By this line of reasoning, we can say that a metastasized tumor is natural. But is it good?

Shellenberger and Nordhaus adhere blindly to a faith in progress, fueled by narcissistic, anthropocentric hubris. Of course humans shape the planet we live on—but our technology is raging like a wildfire, consuming everything in its path. Nordhaus and Shellenberger would have us believe that the best action we can possibly take is to pile on more fuel.