End of the semester: this I believe

camp: Johnston Wilderness Campus

Well, it’s the end of the semester and I feel compelled to wrap this up. There’s a lot I didn’t cover, I guess, in terms of day-to-day experiences, but I feel like I got most of the big idea s down. I have a long list of things to research and learn more about, and I doubt I’ll ever get through the reading list that’s been growing in my head all semester. Anyway, it seems appropriate to finish off the semester with a few lists. So, here they are.

things I believe:

Local solutions to problems are time-consuming and sometimes messy, but they’re probably the best way to solve a lot of environmental problems. For example, the utility-scale solar clusterfuck.

Each individual wolf has an intrinsic right to exist, but somehow, I have to be ok with killing them anyway.

Similarly, I don’t like forest management, but I’ve come to accept it as a necessary evil. Or, in the case of Kendall and the aspen, a necessary good.

I like ranchers, or at least Todd Nash, the Boises and Katie’s dad. I don’t mind subsidizing them, but I don’t believe any corporation should be able to graze on public lands.

I think I’m ok with utility-scale solar, and that scares me, because fundamentally, I don’t see how it’s different from a dam. And I thought I was opposed to dams. Though NGS seems like a compelling case for giving them a second look, and what kind of world do we live in that we have to make these choices in the first place?

Questions raised by big solar:

What do I value? What am I willing to sacrifice?

What do we destroy for PV?

How much water, and where?

Will we close coal plants, or just raise demand to meet capacity?

Do we care about the desert tortoise?

How urgent does climate change need to be before we sacrifice idealism?

Is my solution going to be my child’s environmental problem?

Someone needs to blow up Glen Canyon Dam. But really, I’m not sure I care about that anymore either.

Knowing a place—the way Craig does or the way Mary does—is a valuable skill.

Our government will never solve climate change, but people like John Wick and Nils Christofferson might.

I want the last chapter of Dead Pool to come true.

I believe everything I’ve written about NGS and the scale of our problem, but I still hope we might learn jujitsu fast enough to make it count.

I’m torn between two approaches to activism:

1) The responsibility of an activist is not to navigate oppressive systems with as much personal integrity as possible, it is to confront and dismantle those systems.

2) What matters most is how well you walk through the fire.

I know 1 is right, but 2 is so seductively beautiful.

I want to fight. Even if it’s too late. Especially if it’s too late.