Climate nihilism

This entry is part of my journal from Semester in the West. For all SITW journal entries, click here. For all SITW posts, including blog posts I wrote while on the program, click here. To learn more about the program, click here.

camp: with Bill deBuys, Northern New Mexico

I am the last generation to be born and raised on cheap energy with the promise of a better life.

I am the first generation slated to be poorer and die sooner than my parents.

I drive past clear cuts, open pits of coal, landfills, smokestacks belching black clouds into the air. I am seduced by the vision of industry, impressed by the sheer magnitude of the changes we have made on this land. I don’t want a world without city-sized industrial fortresses or Superfund sites, because then I would have nothing left to fight.

I know we’re past the point of saving the planet. I hope we’re past the point of saving ourselves. I’ve always wanted to watch the apocalypse.

I like the idea of fighting a losing battle. Winning is black and white, its narrative a simple recollection of events. The story of losing requires nuance, character, tragedy. I’ve always found the Trojans a more compelling people, Hector a better hero than Achilles. Valor and heroism are determined not by how many victories you win, but by how your defeat finally occurs.

I find the world a more beautiful place with such clear imperfections. I like the causes, but no the effects. I find smokestacks terrifyingly beautiful, but not dissolving coral reefs. I see moral contradiction written on every landscape.

I know industrial capitalism is killing the planet. I don’t want industrial capitalism to go away because I want to see this awful comedy play out until the bitter, bloody end.

I’m tired of being sad and too numb to be angry. Some days, all I want is a house with a garden and lot of books so I can come home to someone I love and put all the frustration and passion and uncertainty I have into loving them, before we make dinner together and ignore the fire raging all around us.

The Navajo Nation

This entry is part of my journal from Semester in the West. For all SITW journal entries, click here. For all SITW posts, including blog posts I wrote while on the program, click here. To learn more about the program, click here.

camp: near Santa Fe, New Mexico

I wish we’d gotten to talk to more Navajos while we were on the reservation. Natural resources and social justice seem so applicable, as they are with any resource rich and cash poor area. Extraction and exploitation go hand in hand in the history book (excepting the newly revised Texas Curriculum Board ones) and I wish we’d heard more about current issues and negotiations over water and minerals. There was definitely a compelling undercurrent on the bulletin boards I saw, and I know I’ve read thing about uranium mining on Navajo lands in the Nation. I don’t know a lot about our tribes or reservations, but what I’ve read seems like a very bleak picture. It’s not just Native Americans, I suppose—it’s almost all impoverished communities with high unemployment sitting on valuable resources. And poverty is greatest in resource-rich areas—what does that say about the ruthlessness of capitalism? But to speak of sustainability seems like a paradox. Conserve the oil or uranium and prevent a public health emergency and the creation of two new Superfund sites? That’s ecologically sustainable, but you’ll starve to death. Rich people destroy the plant far better and faster than anyone, but up to a certain level, you can’t afford to card. You can’t afford to think long-term. So you let the corporations in, they take what they can, and you postpone starvation for a few decades. Not really economically sustainable, but also not economic suicide. Someone needs to give these communities a better option, or better yet, put them in a position to make changes for themselves.

Which seems like what Billy and the Shonto Community Development Corporation are doing. Trying to get through the bureaucracy to serve the community, trying to give people power. But to get rid of the coal plant, you need to create 600 jobs. Solar systems installation and monitoring are great, but there aren’t 600 jobs there. I hope the plant closes and a new one isn’t built. I hope we can find a better way to employ Navajos, a better way to feed Los Angeles, a better way to get power to Tucson. But as much as I hope, I don’t really believe.

Walking through a coal plant

This entry is part of my journal from Semester in the West. For all SITW journal entries, click here. For all SITW posts, including blog posts I wrote while on the program, click here. To learn more about the program, click here.

camp: Page, Arizona

context: This was written the day after we visited Navajo Generating Station, which is the sixth largest coal plant in the country. I ended up writing my final epiphany for the program about NGS. You can read it here and see a video of me reading it here.

The things we do and the scale we do them on completely defy comprehension. Speaking about the environmental ethics of a coal plant seems like talking about Hitler’s vegetarianism. This is ground zero for climate change; this is where the battle will be fought and slowly lost. Does your ppm SO₂ reading matter when the future of civilization it at stake?

But it does. I know it does. Less acidic skies and rain and forests matter. Community health matters. How many children get asthma matters. Those 545 full-time jobs matter for the Navajo. But it would still be cheaper to pay them their salaries to not pollute. $52 million a year in payroll benefits seems like a small price tag for one-quarter of Arizona’s emissions.

But reality. Civilization. Seven billion and counting. Las Vegas needs water. Phoenix needs water. Tucson needs water. And you need power to pump it there. More people should live in Page, still more should live in Western Washington or Vermont or never have been born at all. When does the planet and our collective health start to matter? How far are we willing to go in our quest to postpone our day of reckoning? The Second Coming seems easy by comparison. Jesus left us a whole manual on how to live on earth. No one told us how to feed seven billion people or raised cities in the middle of deserts.