The Myth of the Spotted Owl or Let's Make Some Money

In 1986 a group of environmental activists commissioned the US Fish and Wildlife commission to save the spotted owl, a dark brown owl with white spots that had made it’s home in the lush old growth forests of the Pacific Northwest. Unfortunately, saving the owl could mean putting thousands of people out of work, who’s livelihoods depended on the logging industry. The two sides were diametrically opposed and, to make matters worse, each measured success by an entirely different rubric, with species and ecosystems on the one hand, and jobs and profits on the other. Compromise was impossible because one side couldn’t stand the thought of a beautiful species lost forever and the other couldn’t stand to see men loose their livelihoods over something as insignificant as a few birds.

In many ways, the opposite sides in our current environmental debate continue to see the conflict in these stark black and white terms. Depending on where you get your news the two sides might be described as:

A group of bleeding heart liberals, most of whom have never worked a day in their lives and have no idea whatsoever of the value of a dollar or the kind of labor necessary to put the clothes on their backs and gas to go in their VW Buses.

and

The soulless elite, too obsessed with lining their already bloated bank accounts to see the ravages they are inflicting upon the earth.

There are people like this in the world, to be sure, but most of us live somewhere in the middle. Most environmentalists, believe it or not, have jobs, families and credit card bills. Most of them like making money and wouldn’t argue with making a little bit more. Few businessmen enjoy looking out at a smoggy horizon, and few are looking forward to a planet ravaged by climate change. Most of us care about our environment and our bank account and most of us believethat we have to choose between them.

That is a lie.

Are there areas where environmental concerns come into direct conflict with economic ones? Absolutely. But there are also many ways that the proper environemental choice is the best economic choice.

Here’s an example. For the last 32 years the American big three auto makers have fought tooth and nail against the CAFE standards which would force them to produce more fuel efficient automobiles. They argued that these cars would be too expensive to produce, cut into corporate profits (which would effect millions of stock holders) and result in the loss of tens of thousands of American jobs. The car lobby has been extremely successful in reducing (or getting around CAFE standards). At the same time, European and Asian car companies were focusing on making more fuel efficient cars. The result? The big three are in big trouble. General motors, one of the worlds largest companies, has been loosing billions and thousands of American auto workers have lost their jobs. Imagine what would have happened if The Big Three had gotten behind higher fuel standards 30 years ago, rather than fighting them.

And what about the cars we bought? One of the way the auto manufacturers got around the CAFE standards was to classify SUV’s (the biggest auto boom of the 90’s) as trucks which didn’t have to meet the same stringent fuel efficiency requirement. Millions of SUV’s were sold. I bought one myself. We all know that gas guzzling SUV’s are bad for the environment but how are they on the pocketbook? That answer has become far more obvious as gas prices have risen towards four dollars a gallon.

Hurting the environment has made us poorer.

We are, today, absolutely dependent up on fossil fuels the, price of which, as limited resources, will continue to grow. As the cost of oil, coal and natural gas increases we will grow poorer unless we can find a way to change. Sustainable energy sources, solar wind, biomass etc. are currently more expensive than fossil fuels. However, as technology advances, those power sources will only grow cheaper and those who invest in them will grow richer.

It is true that a coal power plant is far cheaper to build than a solar or wind plant of similar size. However, once the plants are built the coal plant must buy coal to produce electricity while the fuel for the sustainable plants is free. It is the difference between renting an apartment and buying a house. In the long run, one produces wealth while the other only costs money. Sustainable power is money in your pocket.

Will a move to sustainable energy cost some jobs in the fossil fuel industry? It will. However, far more jobs will be created elsewhere. The sustainable energy industry have exploded in the last few years creating thousands of jobs. Imagine how many people we could put to work in this country by requiring that all future expansion in energy usage come from sustainable energy?

We all know how destructive a culture of consumption is to our environment. From Landfills filled with discarded electronics and plastic bottles to factory’s spewing smoke into our atmosphere, from strip mining to the destruction of our rainforests, our planet, no matter how vast, has a limited number of resources and can only absorb so much abuse. However, consumption is the engine that drives our economy. If we stop buying, we are told, our economy will collapse.

However, the reality is, that, for most of us, our culture of consumption does not create wealth. It destroys it. The axiom, “The more you buy the less you have,” is more true today than ever, particularly when much of what we purchase is almost instantly obsolete. This is the difference between consumption and investment. Consumption gives momentary pleasure. A meal that you consume is gone in a few minutes. A stylish outfit ceases to have value as soon as it is out of fashion. A cutting edge cellphone or camera will be obsolete in a few years..

The more you buy the less you have.

I’m not saying that all consumption is bad. On a basic level we must consume to survive but a culture of consumption is a road to poverty not wealth. The path to wealth is to make sure that what we invest our money in has real real value, not just in the pleasure of the moment, but for the future. And remember, many of the great joys in life, conversation, sports, nature, family, friends, can be had with a minimal cost to the environment or your pocket book.

Even the big corporations, the traditional enemies of the environmentalists, are beginning to make environmentally friendly decisions. Wall-mart, the symbol of American consumerism, has announced an initiative to reduce energy usage in its existing stores by 20% and in new stores by 35%. Google, who’s server farms consume as much electricity as a small city, is developing a system which they hope will produce 100% of their energy sustainably in the next five years. And even the venerable General Motors, who’s gas guzzling Humvee is the bane of most environmentalists, is pouring tremendous resources into their new plug in hybrid, The Chevy Volt, which they hope will stanch the corporate bleeding and bring them back into the black.

Are they doing this out of a sense of planetary consciousness or merely as a public relations move to placate the growing concern over the environment? For now, I don’t think the motives matter and if big corporations learn they can make more money being environmentally friendly, so much the better.

The truth is that the pursuit of sustainability doesn’t mean that all the corporations and people of the world will make less money it merely means less money for the same people. The building companies who fear innovation will no longer be able to compete in a world where energy, livability and sustainability are as important as an attractive facade. Manufacturers who continue to follow the paradigm of unlimited resources will find themselves out thought and out competed by new companies with new ideas. And the oil companies, who have made record profits as the price of oil has skyrocketed, will see their profits and political influence decline when they can no longer hold an oil-dependent world ransom.

The fight to save the spotted owl might have been a worthy cause but it left behind it an America, and perhaps a world, which perceived a stark division between the environmentalist and economist, the nature lover and the money lover. What we have failed to see, perhaps, is that the most powerful transformative force on earth, the human race, is not removed from the natural world but is rather a part of it and that a healthy economy is directly dependent upon a healthy ecology.

The forces of the economy, like those of nature, are not interested in our good intentions. They are only interested in what works. Destroying the only planet we have, like counting money in a burning house, is a fool’s business plan.

My hope, is that perhaps someday in the future, it will not be a coincidence that the color of money, in this country is green.

The Blind Man

The Blind Man

The baby was born into a world of wonder, a world sparkling and new, tantalizing all the senses with a myriad of delights. Every color was a miracle. Every sound a symphony. Every experience a revelation. He wanted more than just to touch the world he wanted to smell it, to taste it. The baby drank in the universe and knew, without words to express it, that he could never drink his fill.

A few years later, the boy, now almost a man, sat across the family table and ate the food of his parent’s labors while he dreamt rapturously of the future he would have. Beside him, his father droned on about his tedious day, his tired feet and his hopeless, monotonous job, but all the boy could hear was the sound of his future glories. Wealth, power, fame and sex. These technicolor triumphs were so real to him that he failed to taste the food his mother cooked or notice how his little sister had grown or look into the eyes of his father who would not be with him for very much longer.

The night was young and bright and full of possibilities as the young man sat at the crowded bar drinking with his friends. “It could happen tonight, “ he thought, although he did not take the time to wonder what exactly “it” was. Something would happen. That much he knew. Something. He was owed some bit of magic, some alchemy to transform his unexceptional life into the extraordinary existence which must be waiting for him.

And as he sat, his body, through a magical alchemy all its own, transformed the poisons he was drinking into simpler compounds he could use. Breath, released with his laughter, floated out into the world, to be changed by plants and inhaled again, a thousand times, a million, in a never ending cycle of transformation. With each breath, the young man touched every living thing on earth, but his mind was too clouded by drink and dreams to see. It was long past last call, the lights were coming on and as he settled the bar tab on a credit card, whose bill he could not pay, he knew that it would not be tonight. Tonight he was just another drunk at a bar.

It had been a hard day at work and the man came home to his empty apartment with no expectations greater than a cold beer and TV. He sat eating plastic food from a plastic container and watched a plastic person rattling off the news with a plastic smile. “This was his life”, he thought, with growing disbelief, as gray as his father’s and just as hopeless. He did not pause to wonder where his meal had come from. He did not taste the land where it was grown or the animals that had died so that he might eat. He did not even sense the human hand that had chosen the ingredients or designed its packaging. And although the man knew, deep down, that he hated his drab, lifeless apartment and the vapid, repetitive squawking of the TV, he did not turn it off and go outside into the clean, unpredictable night. This was where he lived after all. This was his life.

The old man lay in his bed and looked back at his life. Not the life he had, but the life he had missed. He saw every road not taken, every experience denied. He saw the loves he never found and the person he never really was. He looked up at the cracked ceiling and knew, with a certainty born of a long, lonely life, that he was nothing. That his life had meant nothing and his death, now far closer than he could face, would also mean... nothing. He did not marvel at the medicines that were keeping him alive and the minds that had created them. He didn’t even see the the nurse who worked tirelessly at his side or the other patients sharing their deaths. While inside the man, on every inch of skin, coursing through every vein and inhabiting every organ, billions of tiny life forms lived in harmony with his dying body. Without them, he would die in seconds. Without him, they could not exist. But the wonder of that, and the million other wonders, that filled every moment of his life were lost on the old man, whose eyes were only open to a past that never was, and a world rendered into a lifeless monotone by the palate of his perception.

“Ashes to Ashes. Dust to Dust.” The words of the priest fall into the empty air like autumn leaves in a lonely forest. The old man, whose body he was putting in the ground, had not been religious but the priest felt that something should be said before they cover the coffin with earth. He had not believed in God or heaven. Only hell was real to the old man because it was of his own creation. For the old man, death was an end, nothing more. But the miracle of life, that neither ends nor begins, does not require his belief or even his permission and as his body is lowered into the living, breathing earth, he returns to what he never truly left and joins that from which he was never truly separated. The wonder, the beauty, the mystery of his life goes on long past his ability to see it.