Wonderland or Not

I wrote this last year after Katrina hit.

I was una­ble to do jus­tice — in wri­ting — to the human tra­gedy, so many others were doing it bet­ter than I, but being the daugh­ter of an archi­tect and engi­neer who tra­vels the globe buil­ding brid­ges and buil­dings for those who want to deve­lop in envi­ron­men­tally safe and friendly ways — a man who has refu­sed large sums of money to do it other­wise — I ins­tead wrote a post slan­ted toward the environment.

I’m pos­ting it today because of the date.

In the wake of Katrina many things are beco­ming per­fectly obvious; it is obvious that we are going to have to pay atten­tion to the more salient issues of disas­ter pre­pa­ra­tion, home­land secu­rity, and the cron­yism that per­pe­tra­ted this debacle post Katrina.

My ques­tion is: Will we now start paying atten­tion to some of the issues which in the end may allow us to con­ti­nue on through eter­nity, or are we going to let our apathy and lack of atten­tion to nur­tu­ring of the envi­ron­ment which sus­tains us, des­troy us?

Call me an eco­logy freak, or call me sen­si­ble with hopes for a future for the pla­net; it is time to make a choice.

In this live for today hell with tomo­rrow life most of us live where having the big house, going to or sen­ding kids to the right schools, an occa­sio­nal desig­ner purse, a nice pair of Ita­lian shoes and a BMW tend to satisfy,  a world in which we view life as good if we have obtai­ned as much for our­sel­ves as pos­si­ble in regard to the mate­rial, Katrina has made something pain­fully obvious.

Katrina has made us aware that even here in Ame­rica there are others not as for­tu­nate. Never mind Africa — here at home we have poor peo­ple. That in and of itself should be a slap in the face to the igno­rant majo­rity, but let us go further and look at the disas­ter as a whole and it’s impli­ca­tions for the sur­vi­val of our civi­li­za­tion as we know it.Katrina has hope­fully hel­ped make the need to expe­dite this scru­tiny per­fectly clear.

The eco­lo­gi­cal impli­ca­tions are clear in that we know that there were plans which had been shel­ved to shore of the levees ( due to the cost), as well as plans which would have diver­ted water from Lake Pon­trachain. We know that the water in the Gulf has war­med by seve­ral degrees over the last cen­tury and that this is directly cau­sed by glo­bal war­ming. We know that in the end our ina­bi­lity to pay atten­tion to our own house, because we are too busy at someone else’s house has in some ways made this disas­ter all the worse.

We can choose to bring our­sel­ves back to a time where we are at one with our envi­ron­ment and willing to sac­ri­fice in order to ensure a future for our country as well as our planet.

As Jared Dia­mond, noted pro­fes­sor of geo­graphy at U Cal, Los Ange­les and Puli­tzer Prize win­ner for, Guns, Germs, and Steel , shows us quite simply in his book,

Collapse: How Socie­ties Choose to Fail or Suc­ceed , that we are going to need to make a deci­sion here.

We need to look at what hap­pens when we squan­der our natu­ral resour­ces, ignore the sig­nals our envi­ron­ment gives us when we cut down too many trees, we need to look at why some civi­li­za­tions such as the Mayas, the Poly­ne­sians of Eas­ter Island, and the Vikings in Green­land disap­pea­red off the face of the earth while other civi­li­za­tions prospered.

Sur­vi­val lies in the fact of eco­lo­gi­cal care, withs­tan­ding pres­sure from ene­mies slo­wing popu­la­tion growth and taking care when choo­sing trade part­ners. Dia­mond often extra­po­la­tes, but there is cla­rity in one thing, and in the face of the tra­gedy that was Katrina and her after­math his point is only made more solid.We need to do something now.

My hope is that from this tra­gedy we will not only learn that we need to wake up and choose our govern­ment more care­fully ‚and then keep an eye on it; I hope this will wake the need in us to acti­vely par­ti­ci­pate in our govern­ment, and  it’s policy making.

I also hope that if we will start loo­king at this earth we are on and what we can do to make sure that our civi­li­za­tion does not disap­pear due to shear apathy.

We have a choice: Shall we choose to believe the pun­dits such as Mih­kel M. Mathie­sen in Glo­bal War­ming in a Poli­ti­cally Correct Cli­mate: How Truth Became Con­tro­ver­sial , or do we believe the peo­ple not fun­ded by Exxon like John Hough­ton Glo­bal War­ming : The Com­plete Brie­fing.

I think the way is pretty clear. Don’t you?