Healing Our World : How Do We Decide on Which Leader? Does the President Matter?

This earth spun of soil and sun,

Water and air for all to share,

Lives or dies by the work and play

Of every creature, every day.

From a Filipino Creation Story (Author Unknown)

Most people hate elections. With all the rhetoric, lies, misinformation and mountains of issues among candidates who look like they came from the same mold, how do you decide? I think it may be easier than you think.

C.A. Bowers in his book Education, Cultural Myths, and the Ecological Crisis (State University of New York Press, 1993), states that the condition of our Earthly habitats should be the prime concern of our culture that should frame how we think about everything we do. I take this idea one step further - how a candidate expresses his or her concern for our environmental crisis will tell me how to vote.

Time may be running out for many of the life support systems of our planet. We may no longer have the luxury of examining the details of a candidate's spending plan or how they stand on tax reform. If they are not sensitive to the need to have environmental protection and restoration be the basic priority from which all others are measured, then they cannot have my vote.

This may seem an extreme position to many who have been brought up to view the environment as just another societal factor to be considered along with road construction, health care or tax reform. This is no surprise and such folks cannot be criticized for their perceptions. Most of us have grown up in a culture that works hard to disconnect us from the web of life. Precious earth is called dirt and has to be washed off. Most animals are considered pests if they enter our homes and must be killed. The natural world is considered unsafe and we are taught that the wild is to be feared. Cleared land is considered more valuable than a rich, vibrant forest.

We have been relentlessly raping the Earth for centuries and we are near the end of the line in many areas. Rapid industrialization and resource consumption on a scale never before seen in history has been taking place since the Industrial Revolution in the 1700's. The buildup of toxic materials in our air and water and soil used in the endless drive to industrialize has deeply invaded our bodies. Many ecosystems and species cannot sustain even another 4 - 8 years of the kind of abuse that a conservative regime will impose.

Up until now in history, humans have believed that everything will work itself out given enough time. In the past, although people died, there has been the fundamental assumption that humans and the Earth would live on. This may have been true for a long time in human history, but the Industrial Revolution eliminated this as an option. Machines can work exponentially faster at chewing up our Earth than a human with a plow. The last 300 years has seen a level of environmental, ecosystem and species destruction that it would have taken many more centuries for a less technical society to achieve.

It is hard to imagine that it is ever possible to run out of time. But with only 5 percent of our rainforests left and 95 percent of the forests in the lower 48 states having been logged at least once, time is a serious issue. Large areas of our oceans are poisoned and lifeless and in some parts of the world, birth defects are a way of life.

Since the debacles of James Watt during the Reagan Administration when this Secretary of the Interior openly showed his contempt for environmental issues and captured massive media attention, conservative forces have gotten really good at keeping their environmental destruction below the level of most media attention. I preferred Watt - at least you could keep an eye on him and know where the battle lines were.

The conservative of today knows how to talk the lingo and distract us from what they are doing with promises of fairness.

This must end (photo by Abram Brown from http://www.igc.org/psr/airpol.html)

We are in an unprecedented era in human history, one where ecosystems and planetary life-support systems upon which the future depends are being destroyed. Therefore, the condition of our planet is the concern that should frame all others.

Sadly, this is a relatively new concern for Westerners since the start of the Industrial Revolution. Recognition that cultural practices are not independent from a concern for the well-being of the planet is a relatively new awareness in politics and goes back a mere 50 years or so to the work of Rachel Carson, Paul Ehrlich and Barry Commoner, to name a few.

Although you may not see destroyed ecosystems like those in popular science fiction movies like Blade Runner and Soylent Green when you drive down the street, the constant spread of toxic chemicals into our world for the last 300 years has seriously affected the life-sustaining capabilities of habitats worldwide.

Television coverage of environmental disasters are so common that ozone holes, oil spills and species extinctions have lost their power to capture the public's attention.

A candidate who recognizes the fundamental role that the environment plays in our lives may be more likely to apply that awareness to other issues. A candidate, regardless of his or her party, who promises economic prosperity for the people while promoting an agenda of continued resource extraction at all costs cannot be taken seriously. All the tax benefits in the world, whatever your income level, will be meaningless if we have no clean air to breath, safe water to drink, or soil in which to grow food.

Now after you make the right presidential choice and cast your vote, forget about it! The office of the President may be the lease important one in the nation. Sound crazy? Think about it. The President sets the tone, and appoints lots of people, but a President, regarless of what party they are from, must uphold the economic system of the United States above all else.

That means that he or she much do everything in their power to keep the nation making things so that people can buy them. He CANNOT, by definition, be that concerned with the environment because true environmental management and preservation would require that many industries shut down and that people stop buying so many things. These actions are fundamentally at odds with a President’s fundamental duty to the economy.

So get real and don’t expect profound change from ANY president. The only true, lasting, and meaningful change must come from a fundamental change in the attitudes of the individual. We must all take it upon ourselves to consume less, drive less, and to make peace and feeding the world our number one priority.

Time is running out for us all - especially the politicians.

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