The Earth is a sphere with no beginning or end, no margins, no dividing lines, one continuous ecosystem. The air moves above the land unimpeded, picking up and dropping out gases and debris and depositing them elsewhere – birds riding on its currents. Water moves upon the land over the whole Earth, all connected. Currents mix and mingle its contents – animal and plant life as well as every imaginable gaseous, liquid and solid material put there by humankind. The water picked up by evaporation is deposited on dry land by condensation to run into the sea again from mountain tops and valleys.

Humankind, striding around in this reality, throws imaginary lines into, over and under this scene, dividing it up into jurisdictions which are subdivided into smaller and smaller units. The jurisdictions have little to do with the continuously interconnected round Earth, having been established by force within this species, the killing of others of its kind, its wars and subsequent rulings of behavior, i.e., what humans can and cannot do to and in its smaller jurisdictions.

Comes now more proposed human intrusion into the air, land and water of a small area at the intersection of three large jurisdictions: Canada, U.S. and the Passamoquoddy nation. For 200 years this area has been under continuous assault by the invaders from Europe. Now, even before the “go-ahead” is given to any of these proposals, we know that 90 percent of the original fisher is gone. The right whales are close to extinction yet still attempt to feed and raise their young in this small area despite being rammed by large ships, entangled in nets and ropes wherever they go along the coast, encountering human wastes, poisons, garbage and sonar. The same is true for all the other wildlife there, other whales, dolphins, seals, birds, all these way down in numbers. The shorebirds in particular close to extinction – no place to land, eat, raise their young in peace, the last remnants protected only by inadequate buffer zones around prime habitat.

Five industrial entities are seeking footholds where the water meets the land around and in the Passamoquoddy Bay of Maine, two seeking to capitalize on the 28-foot tides with turbines placed in the water. Three others want to build unloading, storage and pipeline facilities for 900-foot-long LNG tankers that would follow a torturous path around Head Harbor on Campobello Island, Canada, across the largest whirlpools on this side of the Earth thence up the St. Croix River. The path into the unloading depots would not be the end of the massive intrusion into the natural order. Pipelines to Baileyville from Perry, Robbinston (Mill Cove) and Red Beach across Perry, Pembroke, Charlotte, the Moosehorn National Wildlife Refuge (home of several endangered species) across three endangered salmon rivers would be just the beginning of the destruction of the natural order. The existing pipeline that these entities seek to tie into would have to be expanded to accommodate this increased volume of gas from Baileyville all the way to the Massachusetts border, even if only one of the three were built.

Each entity has been making its case before 10 to 15 national, state and local jurisdictional bodies making a total of 50 plus proceedings that concerned local citizens are trying to keep up with. And that’s just in the United States. Similar things are going on in Canada. We are now in the third year of this exhausting roundelay.

Each jurisdiction is careful not to exceed its mandate, so the testimony and information it will accept is limited, a multiplicity of authorities each with tunnel vision purposely wearing blinders, a patchwork with no one required to look at the whole, the reality of Earth.

If a wise decision is to be made, it must be on the basis of the effect on all life, the entire ecosystem, all the countries. Will this project enhance life in the area, degrade it, or have no effect on it?

Without an answer to that question, we won’t know whether or not this is an exercise in futility.

Elizabeth B. Duncan of Monroe lobbied on open-government and environmental issues in Georgia for 20 years.