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
