The Carbon Conundrum

I packed the last of my things with an adventurous enthusiasm.

In my last phone call before leaving, my friend Jim told me to

find three empty seats on the plane from Miami, to lie down and

sleep on the long flight South. With seventeen hours of flying ahead of

me, I though it good advice.

What I anticipated would be a reasonably carefree excursion would

begin with a traveler’s worst nightmare - Gluttony.  As my seat row was

finally called, I made my way through the line at the gate.

Standing not ten feet ahead of me in line was an extremely

huge girl. As I watched her from behind, I said to myself,

"Please God, don’t let her sit next to me."

As insensitive as it sounded at the time, even to me, I just

didn’t want to start the worst part of my trip, trapped in my

seat, pressed against the sultry flesh of a squishy human being.

Sure enough, by the time I found my way aboard the plane, she’d

already pulled up the seat divider between our two seats and

oozed a good half-way into my prepaid space. Be "Zen," I thought

to myself, as I climbed over toward my seat.

What an obstacle I thought, should there actually be an

emergency. We’re all going to die because the emergency exits

over the wings were plugged up by a passenger. She couldn’t fit

down the aisle without having to straddle and waddle at unusual

side angles as she walked.

For the first time in my life I was inspired to bitch to the

airline and insist that she pay for the part of my seat that she

was occupying. When I looked over at her, I could tell

immediately that she felt horrible, was completely

self-conscious, and that if I said anything at all, not only

would I be cruel and insensitive, but she’d probably start crying

or something and make the whole thing that much worse.

I ordered a Wild Turkey instead, turned the air toward my face,

and endured the flight out of Austin.

As I sat in the Miami Airport waiting for the last long leg

south, the terminal was filled with Bolivian businessmen and

travelers, laden with bags and boxes and trinkets of all kinds.

Three empty seats to lie down on and sleep, Jim had said. That

would be a tall order. When the cabin door closed, I would be the

last and the only gringo to move, destined to remain in my

assigned seat for the next ten hours.

It was an all night flight from Miami to La Paz. At sunrise the

next morning, I would land at the world’s highest airport and on

the longest commercial runway. Despite the hours, I could find no comfort in

sleeping. I leaned quietly against the cabin window, staring out

occasionally at the complete darkness. Not even a moon would

bless the sky on the long and lonely flight. We flew across the

Gulf of Mexico, the Caribbean, across the coastline of Columbia,

then into the descending Amazon Basin of Peru and Brazil and not

once did I see a light on the ground.

After flying for hours in the darkness, and just as I began to

drift to sleep, I was startled by a bright light shining from

beneath the plane onto the ceiling above the cabin. The entire

cabin glowed with the warm and familiar light as if from a city

below. With hours still to go to La Paz, I figured we were over

some eastern Peruvian City. When I looked down out of the window,

I was surprised to once again find no sign of civilization, or at

least as I knew it.

The light was shining from a vast forest fire, blazing in the jungle.

Wealthy ranchers in want of barren grazing land were burning

thousands of acres of forest. For miles I could make out huge

fires that lit up the sky. I was nearly six miles up in the air

and the sky was as bright as daylight from the fires below.

My God, I though. They really are burning the forests. I was

looking down upon a sign, a sign of Armageddon, and the

Revelations were playing out before my very eyes.

On November 7, we will all know who has been chosen to lead our

nation as well as the world toward our human destiny. Throughout

the presidential race and in the continuing debate, we have

muddled through myriad opinions about abortion, about the role

and consequences of religious fundamentalism in government, about

responsibility or the lack thereof, morals, ethics, political

reform, the influence of big business in government, healthcare,

partisan and bipartisan politics.

We have heard varied opinions about the state of and plan for

education, social security, our national security and defense

readiness, the booming economy, the budget windfall, and a number

of other important issues that will affect all of us in the years

to come. What we have not heard from the leaders of the western

world is how "we" will lead and manage the consequences of

overpopulation and pollution, the second exacerbated by the

first, the two universal issues that will affect all of mankind

forever.

Each of these issues is important. A moral and ethical society

that is employed and productive, reasonably educated, that has

purpose and direction, which, supported by a sound economy

creates stability, or an inherent lack of serious conflict. If

the United States is economically stable, so too, is the rest of

the world in general. People everywhere can live their lives

without much worry or fear that they won’t eat, have a place to

live or be able to raise and support their families.

This is, in part our government’s role, to keep things stable and

its people happy. However, with every new human being - and we

add them by the millions - we place a greater demand upon the

natural order and harmony of our ever-shrinking planet.

Population control and environmental responsibility and

management are issues that are not just important, they are

critically important.

The success of our democracy and free market economy is

completely dependent upon the availability and exploitation of

cheap fossil fuels, the Earth’s natural resources and economic

growth. To remain dominant as a world leader and economic

powerhouse, we must seek out new markets throughout the world and

take every advantage of the world’s economic opportunities. In

doing so, so to do we distribute our culture and values.

There is little escaping exposure to American culture and quality

of life anywhere in the world today. Our standard for and

exportation of a "quality of life" is based upon our naïve

understanding of our own quality of life, the most opulent,

resource and opportunity laden society ever.

As we expand into places yet untouched by development, we create

therein opportunity for other populations. With their newfound

wealth, there is always a corresponding increase in the quality

of life, facilitating better education, healthcare, housing and

living conditions of all kinds. An increase in the quality of

life increases both the spans of life and population in general.

As larger and larger populations are sustained, there is a

corresponding increase in the demand for goods, services and

natural resources.

Increases in the demand for all of these things, sustaining an

ever-increasing human population, keeps people employed and the

economy robust and most serious conflicts limited to religious

ideological dogma. The tragedy of this thinking and shortsighted

practice, unabridged by responsible leadership and universally

applied resource management, is the assurance of our own

destruction.

There is little denial and mounting scientific evidence that our

planet is out of balance. Not caused by the natural ebb and flow

of "cycles" in weather, water and ice, or of the sun, but caused

solely by the influence of man and his ever increasing disposal

of green house gasses into the atmosphere, global warming is no

longer a debate. Everything about our economy is dependent upon

the exploitation of the land, trees, oil, minerals, and natural

gas.

The cast off of almost everything we do is Carbon Dioxide.

Billions of tons of carbon, otherwise trapped in the forests, and

underground reservoirs of coal, oil and gas, we expel as the

byproduct of our engineering and industrial efficiency. Radiating

less of the sun’s heat to the cold of space, Carbon Dioxide and a

few other well-known hydrocarbons warm our world. This is not to

mention the contribution of toxic and other dangerous chemicals

and substances to the land, sea and air, endangering life or

depleting the Earth’s protective ozone layer
.

We have already witnessed dramatic changes in the Earth’s

atmospheric and ocean temperatures, and as a result, changes in

moderate and reasonably predictable weather patterns. Glaciers

all over the world are receding at unprecedented rates. We now

know that in the years to come, our current behavior will alter

both the life and the stability of our planet in ever more

significant, dramatic and perhaps permanent ways.

Despite the emerging truth, it is not that surprising to find

that few Americans consider the management of population or of

the environment as critically important, pressing issues. Most

citizens are concerned more about their economic welfare, their

security, and that their retirement savings grow exponentially

over the years. Most citizens - and most American leaders - look

for short-term gratification and solutions with little regard for

the long-term consequences. And to make matters worse, in America,

our ideas are motivated not by information or by intellectual contemplation. Our government is motivated almost entirely by money and the desperate pursuit of more of it. No one is there to pay for the ideas that the world is finite, population has a limit and that global warming and pollution may have devastating consequences to all life on Earth.

All people, particularly the young, are aware and can sense that

we are living on borrowed time. The future of our planet looms in

question. A time will come when we must all face the consequences

of our conduct.

The preservation of the world environment and the balance of

nature are issues that cannot be ignored. It is however a matter

of such proportion that it cannot be managed by mere individuals

alone. Governments and responsible government leaders are the only remaining

forces with the power and influence to change the conscience of

the people and endeavor what must be done for the good of all mankind.

Even if we have no choice but to cling to the

relentless pursuit of wealth for our future, concocting economic

and tax incentive measures for citizens and corporations to

reforest their land, to recycle, to develop and utilize

environmentally conscious processes, transportation, and energies, or for

families to bear fewer children is no more difficult than any other legislative
government action. What makes them different is that these are issues that must

transcend politics, religion and selfish gluttony. The choice is completely ours.

The Book of Revelations predicts the demise of man. In the end,

the cause will not have been his sins or the wrath of God. Man will

cause his own undoing, wrought from both ignorance and greed. The

tragedy that will live throughout time in the heavens will have

been that, by the grace of God born into the Garden of Eden, Man

was given the mind and the body to save the World, but he didn’t.