U.S. squanders resources

It is a peculiarity of modern politics that many people are known to vote against their own best interests, whether it concerns a social safety net to protect health or whether it is to protect the environment. The most important issue in the world concerns the air we breathe, the water we drink and the food we eat.

These are clearly the most fundamental of all human needs. Yet at a time that such concerns should be paramount the Bush administration is in the unenviable position of having the worst environmental record in the past 100 years. The League of Conservation Voters has designated three of the president’s Cabinet members as among the “dirty dozen,” a designation for those with the worst environmental records as legislators or decision-makers.

Despite this, the recent elections show that more than half of all voters cast their ballots for the Bush-Cheney ticket. For those who are concerned with the catastrophic ecological problems the world is facing, including climate change, toxic air and water and extinction of species, this is distressing. It suggests that many people did not have a clear understanding of the seriousness of the situation.

There seems to be an almost fatalistic belief among many voters that the administration is telling the truth about its Clean Sky Initiative and Healthy Forests Act.

Whether it in-volves international agreements on clean water and air or oil drilling or opening up public wilderness areas to clear-cutting or new roads in public lands, the administration’s track record has been one of uncaring concern for the citizens of America. Maine is downwind of coal-fired power plants in the Midwest, their smoke stacks chuffing mercury and other pollutants into our air and rivers and lakes. As a result we have symptoms that impact directly upon our young. For instance, chronic asthma rates have doubled in the United States over the past five years. Our air, at times, is made toxic with auto emissions from East Coast cities. Our cars have become less fuel-efficient, our factories more polluting, our air less clean, our water weighed down

with heavy metals.

Recently, 2,000 scientists, whose research was requested by the United Nations, recommended that in order to stabilize our climate humanity has to severely restrict its use of oil and coal. The present administration refuses even such meager responses as the Kyoto Accord since they see it as compromising America’s industrial output. At an environmental symposium in Europe, Sir John Houghton, one of the world’s leading experts on global warming, observed that “we are getting almost to the point of irreversible meltdown, and will pass it if we are not careful.”

Where are the priorities of this country? Health of the present generation should be a priority and the health of coming generations should be the primary concern of any administration.

Our interdependence with the world and with nature has become more evident over the years. The United States makes up 5 percent of the world’s population, yet we use 36 percent of the world’s resources. It is an illusion to believe we can continue this pace much longer. We are depleting our resources at an alarming rate and borrowing from the needs of future generations. Instead of allocating scarce resources wisely with an eye to future needs the Bush-Cheney camp has shown a reckless disregard of scientific studies. One study by British scientists that has drawn little media attention concluded that environmental causes are the most likely explanation for the sharp rise in Parkinsons, multiple sclerosis and such nerve-related diseases.

Wars over scarce resources will become perpetual if Americans do not wake up to the realization that we cannot maintain our profligate way of life. We are living in an illusion of unlimited resources which is being foisted on us by those with short-term agendas who have no clear understanding of the environmental implications in their decision-making.

Is it not clear by now that we import much of our food from other countries as well as 90 percent of our fossil fuels, some of which goes toward heating our homes or fertilizing our agricultural lands or supplying our plastics industries? We import much of our beef and our soy beans for our fast food restaurants, thus facilitating destruction of the rain forests which provides a haven to birds migrating from North America and which modify the temperatures of water flowing into the Gulf Stream, which in turn modifies weather patterns in New England.

We are part of a world growing smaller by the decade and cannot continue to live in a denial that we are separate from the consequences of our acts. In actuality we are dynamically interconnected with every part of the web of life flowing in our rivers and oceans and in the wind and rain that moistens our land and the sun that warms our planet. We play with forces far beyond our competence to understand and yet our politicians and corporate leaders do so with false confidence and narrow agendas.

The environment is a sacred trust that we breathe, drink and inhabit. The Jewish philosopher, Maimonides, said that even the smallest creature has an inherent right to exist. Francis of Assisi called the wind and the water his brothers and sisters. Black Elk of the Lakota Sioux insisted that every part of our landscape is holy and sacred. By these measures we are failing in our sacred trust to maintain the land and its resources for future generations. How closely we adhere to their philosophy will be the measure

by which future generations will judge our environmental efforts, not by the empty rhetoric emanating from Washington.

Hugh Curran lives in Surry and teaches courses on ecology and spirituality at the University of Maine Peace Studies Program.