by Jim Blackburn
(with help from Raleigh Ricart, Cathy Yang, Abi Johnson, Mary Carter and Garland Kerr)
September 30, 2008
Rothko Chapel
Copyright, 2008
Good evening. I am pleased to be here at the Rothko Chapel speaking about my spiritual quest. Anytime I hear the word quest, I am reminded of Don Quixote, a character with whom I feel a great connection. In fact, as I will discuss in more detail later, I have literally been fighting windmills on the South Texas Coast. And from the beginning, I want to acknowledge my partner in this life, Garland Kerr. She's the best of Dulcinea and Sancho Panza, simply the best companion that one could want.
Tonight I will speak of my spiritual quest. A quest is a journey, perhaps with some mythical, Quixotic overtone. Spiritual is a more confusing word - one that brings a lot of baggage and preconceptions. So let me be clear. By spiritual, I am talking about something that speaks to the center of my being, to my heart rather than my brain, that gives meaning to my life, that helps me define myself to myself, that helps me live by a set of rules and practices. I do not necessarily equate religion to spiritual.
So with apologies to Cervantes, I ask you to indulge me as I relate to you my quest for spirituality and for truth. And I ask you not to chuckle too loudly in derision of my suggestions as I am most serious about these ideas, these hopes, these dreams for our future and for the Earth.
THE QUEST TODAY
I am riding across a flat coastal plain. Before me, I see desolation unlike anything experienced on the Texas coast in my lifetime. Portions of my home - my place - have been wiped out by Hurricane Ike. Most signs of human habitation have been removed from the Bolivar Peninsula. Towns such as Gilchrist, Crystal Beach have been removed from the face of the Earth. A tiger has literally been loosed amongst the rubble. A development concept lies in ruins.
Galveston has been rendered unlivable. Believe it or not, that wonderful island was only hit by the back side - the clean side - of Ike. The west side of Galveston Bay has been beaten repeatedly, bloody but not dead, at least not yet.
I stand here today in awe of the power of the natural system. I bow to the power of nature, with respect. I understand ancient cultures praying to the storm Gods. Hurricane Ike was a force beyond our control and it was only a Category 2 storm. We still have not taken a direct hit by Category 4 or 5 with the dirty side hitting Galveston and Houston. It is from this vantage point emphasizing our lack of control over nature and the need for a partnership with nature that I look back on my journey and contemplate our future.
THE QUEST BEGINS
My quest begins in the 1980s, one of the most difficult times of my life. Ronald Reagan - the source of many of our problems today - was president. I was practicing environmental law and was watching the dismantling of the environmental protections that my country had passed during the 1970s. I had lived long enough that I had encountered realities about myself, about others and about the system and it would be an understatement to say that my experiences were not in sinc with my expectations.
One day in 1986 I found myself sitting in a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous. I have never been in such a low place before or since. My lance was shattered, my armor in pieces, my horse without a rider. I had a problem but was denying it existed. At AA, they told me that that I had to admit that I was powerless over alcohol. They also told me that I needed to acknowledge a "higher power" which was described as a power greater than myself that would provide me with spiritual strength sufficient to give me the ability to change.
Well - I fought both concepts, particularly that of a higher power. It seemed like capitulation, that I had to return to the religion within which I was raised and from which I had fled. And then at a meeting one day, a young man said that his higher power was a METRO bus. The METRO bus as a higher power made me smile and it allowed me to loosen up and think more creatively. At this time, I was doing work on Galveston Bay and had a good feeling about the bay, so I chose Galveston Bay as my higher power, a truly life-changing event.
Sometime later, I found myself in the marsh on the West End of Galveston Island in a remote cove in my kayak. As I paddled in late September, the tide was high, flooding the Spartina marsh that was green-gold against the clear blue sky. As I turned down a marsh channel, a white shrimp jumped out of the water beside me and a school of finger mullet bolted into the stalks, causing a blue crab to shuffle aside, orange claws pointed like jagged daggers, warning all to stay away. A white ibis raised its head from the edge of the marsh pond, made eye contact with me, determined I was no threat, and went back to ramming its scythe-like beak into the soft mud deposited by rainwater runoff of storms long past. I heard the whoosh from their wings and then saw a flight of blue-wing teal flaring up as they saw my lime green boat, then darting back down to set their wings and settle and feed.
At that moment, I was struck by the fact that I was a part of a living system - that I was experiencing other living things. I was struck by the fact that life was not just about being alive - it was about being alive and amongst other living things in a living system.
The energy flowed through me like a pulse - a pulse of connectedness with those with whom we share the planet. This was life and I was not just living it - I was perceiving it - feeling it in every cell of my body. Primal. Forceful. Clear.
We coastal residents live in a place that is full of wondrous "other living things" and we do not see them and do not feel them and do not relate to them. For me, the realization of connectedness with other living things redefined who and what I was and am. And it gives me both the will and the patience to try to alter the status quo.
This connection with the natural system helped me survive the eighties and beyond. I learned to be grateful and thankful with a bit of humility. My connection with other living things helped me set drinking aside. And it also was my first insight into the concept of enough. Over a period from about age 18 to 38, I had enough drink to last a lifetime Through a connection with something larger than myself, I was able to impose limits on my addictive behavior. That was spiritual and it saved my life
STUDENTS TEACHING THE TEACHER
It is the mid-1990s and I am now sitting up in the saddle, lance alert, armor in tact, approaching Rice University where today I am a Professor of the Practice of Environmental Law in the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department. Here at Rice, a group of students approached me and asked if I would teach a course in global sustainable development, a course that I continue to teach today.
My students were interested in becoming acquainted with some of the better environmental thinkers and I introduced them to Herman Daly, my favorite economist and philosopher. Dr. Daly has written extensively of the shortcomings of our current economic and ethical systems. He is an expert in sustainable development, the goal of which is to fuse economics, ecology and social concerns into a single way of thinking. Sustainable development is about meeting the needs of today's society without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs and without destroying the natural system. In his writing about sustainable development, Dr. Daly has divided human thinking into two parts - empty world thinking and full-world thinking. Empty world thinking was developed when the world was relatively empty of humans and human impacts. By contrast, full world thinking contemplates a world full of humans and human impacts - a world that recognizes and embraces limits, efficiency and protection of the Earth. Dr. Daly believes that our society must transition to full world thinking and must do it soon and I agree.
For example, consider the Texas legal system, a truly empty world system. The Texas law of groundwater dates back to the 1904 East decision. This case - which is still the law in Texas - holds that landowners can capture all of the groundwater beneath their property that they can physically pump, creating the so-called Rule of Capture. This case notes that groundwater is not susceptible to regulation because the study and analysis of groundwater involves the occult. Images of water witches abound in this decision that establishes a system exactly the opposite of what is needed in water-short Texas. How quaint that our controlling precedent for groundwater law does not recognize the technological advances of the 20th century. I've had enough of empty world thinking.
By contrast, we don't have enough full-world thinking - thinking that recognizes that we are living in a world with a finite ecological system - a natural, living system -which cannot continue to function if human activity continues to generate impacts without thought for - or concern about - the consequences of that action. In the empty world, humans simply did not need to consider the impacts of their action because, at worst, they could only destroy a localized area and would then move on. That is no longer the case, whether it be nuclear weapons, or chemical contaminants or simply the sheer number of people. The scale of impacts today is simply without precedent.
This Rice University class has delivered wonderful insights and moments of clarity. I once had a student describe her view of the challenges of sustainable development as similar to being in Chicago with a roadmap for Detroit. No matter how hard you try to interpret the map, it will not help you. Her conclusion was simple. We need another map - a social map to living in the full world. I've had enough of attempting to navigate with the wrong map.
In this course, we also are guided by Aldo Leopold, the great environmental ethicist and author of A Sand County Almanac. Leopold wrote lyrically about the song of the river and about connection with life and living things. Leopold also wrote of what he termed a land ethic - an ethic guiding human relationships with the natural system. According to Leopold, a land ethic is an ecological necessity and an evolutionary possibility.
Now, stop and think about it - what is an evolutionary possibility in the context of ethics? It is nothing less than altering past constructs and intentionally creating new ones - it is changing the way humans perceive themselves with respect to nature. Based upon my experience with the natural system, the evolution of Leopold's land ethic is - at its base - a quest that engages the spirit. That is exhilarating full world thinking.
Recently, I was wading down a bayou on Matagorda Bay. As I came around the bend, I came eye to eye with a long-billed curlew. The curlew is a lovely bird, with long legs, a mottled brown body that blends with the coastal bunchgrass and a long, curved bill. It was not alarmed and neither was I. We simply took the measure of each other from about ten feet's distance. I watched as the curlew lost interest in me and started walking in its elegant, long-legged way, almost gliding across the sand, then stopping and probing with its long beak, looking back every now and again as I moved on down the bayou. We were together in time and space and connected, one with the other. We had intersected and exchanged life energy. I felt a spiritual and ethical partnership with this bird - a partnership for a full world that maintains other living things.
THE CARACARA AND THE CURLEW
The caracara, the curlew and the jay
Live within their limits
And watch with dismay another day
The folly of human nitwits.
What can I say, what can I do
To change our way of living,
To alter ultimately our self view
Our basis of believing.
The curlew's beak beckons me
To pick up the heavy load,
To keep the quest and try to see
Where the prairie grasses mark the road.
QUEST STOP FORMOSA PLASTICS
I am sitting at a table after a several years of battle with Formosa Plastics. Diane Wilson and I had mounted up and charged Formosa Plastics, but rather than fighting the corporation, we discovered that we were fighting the government - agencies of both the State of Texas and the United States, agencies created to be concerned about environment but who were instead focused upon economic development, growth and jobs.
We are sitting at the table because settlements were negotiated with Formosa that helped transform Formosa from one of the worst environmental actors on the coast to a better performer. I signed an audit agreement that put environmental compliance of the plant in a three-person committee that led to 800 recommendations for change that were implemented. Diane and I signed a zero discharge agreement that led to a 30% reduction in the wastewater discharged into Lavaca Bay and may yet lead to zero discharge. And we both signed an agreement in 1996 regarding sustainable development that led to some very innovative and interesting work.
Sustainable development is both very simple and exceedingly difficult. It has layers within layers. The approach developed under the Formosa settlement had four distinct subparts - ecology, meeting basic needs, ecoefficiency and social - and we treated each subject as an onion. We started with the surface issue - the easiest issue - and then went down layer by layer, seeking the central or core issue.
For example, the ecoefficiency onion was concerned with the operation of the plants and producing plastics. The outer layer- the easiest layer - was environmental compliance. The next layer down was reducing pollution beyond what the law required, followed by the next layer that posited substitution of less resource and pollution intensive products. The next layer down was dematerialization, which considered removing plastic from the product chain, as in music downloads that don't involve a plastic CD cover. And then we were at the center of the onion - the end point of ecoefficiency - and I proposed that we label it "enough". Enough plastic. Do not need any more in society. No mas. Bastante.
The silence on the other side of the room was deafening. "What do you mean enough?" they asked and I responded - "enough plastic, enough raw material usage, enough consumption". And the faces stared back with sheer horror at the implication. Enough plastics was heresy.
At that point I got a glimpse of the reality of the corporate mindset. Corporations exist to produce and expand. I had already accepted that profit was necessary for a corporation, but this element of continued expansion - of never-ending growth - was a bit more confusing. Was there no place for the concept of enough in a corporate self-image?
This experience I had with Formosa has since been replayed with dozens of corporations as well as chambers of commerce, local governments and economic development booster organizations throughout the coast. No corporation ever seems to have enough. No city is ever big enough. Growth and expansion are the idols before which capitalists and politicians and many preachers pray. Growth and expansion without boundaries seems to be the corporate and government concept of a sound economic future. But there is a logical end point of this way of thinking. Ben Elton in This Other Eden stated the following:
"Judged by the logic of world economics, the death of the planet will be the zenith of human achievement, because if consumption is always good, then to consume a whole planet must be the best of all."
If full world thinking is to work - if we are to have an environmental ethic - it simply has to stop the devouring of the planet as a goal. We must accept that most feared concept - that it is possible to have enough.
THE QUEST MEETS KROGER FOOD MARKET
Pushing my cart around the aisle of the neighborhood Kroger food store, lance and armor left behind, I encounter a distraught middle-aged man with his two young children. The children are arguing, then crying. "Daddy, get the colored cereals, the ones I saw on TV". "Daddy - wahhh, wahhh, wahhh". If only I had my lance.
And then the father says, gently "That cereal is not good for you. You can't have it". What bravery that father had - to stand up to the wailing, wanting child and say no. I start to race over and embrace him, thanking him for his act of bravery, but then decide that perhaps that would be too much of a moment from Cervantes.
Perhaps the key to full world thinking - to living in a manner that does not devour or destroy the Earth - is the individual - the consumer. Needs are central to the definition of sustainable development and to full world thinking. We are the market. If we were to join and act, and redefine our concept of needs, we could be a powerful force for change.
THE HOPE FOR THE QUEST
I tell myself again and again
to think about my needs,
about what it is I think I want
and what desire it feeds.
Does it give me food and cover
or does it address my pain?
Or is it merely ornamental,
a statement that I am vain.
It's not that I cease to participate
in a normal healthy life.
It's just that I see in a different way
and cut out the excess with my knife.
THE QUEST REFRAIN
I use enough
I have enough
And for that I am grateful.
I am content
To purchase less
And try to be ever humble.
I do not need
To further expand
I am content
with what I am.
THE QUEST ENTERS THE 21st CENTURY
As I was serenely riding across the coastal plain, minding my own business, I was assaulted by the 21st Century, mugged by my own government. The World Trade Center bombing on 9/11/2001 changed our parlance and our focus. We became fearful. And we decided we needed to make war on Iraq. What a concept of NEED.
Few issues have affected me like the Iraqi war. Garland and I mounted up and marched through downtown Houston and onto Buffalo Bayou in opposition to the war, joining our friends Ann Hamilton and George Reiter along the way. On March 23, 2003, my country invaded Iraq; since then, over 4000 American lives have been lost and hundreds of thousands of Iraqi citizens have been killed, many of whom were not raising arms against us. Throughout this war, I have watched many of my generation - those who were against the Vietnam War - support it, a fact that saddens me.
Do you remember the words of President Bush when - as he announced the invasion - he asked us to participate in the American economy to support the war, essentially saying go out and consume a bit. Now, that is not my idea of how wars are fought. At a time when we should be husbanding resources and saving energy and money, we were urged to buy something, anything, to show support for our economy.
If any of us were thinking right, we should have asked a number of fundamental questions about what we were doing and what type of economy - what economic principles - we were supporting. And now, five years later, we have the largest debt in the nation's history as well as a huge economic crisis about which we are basically ignorant.
I've had enough of institutions - religious and otherwise - that condone killing innocent Iraqis.
I've had enough of a government that manufactures lies to support a war.
I've had enough of debt to finance a morally corrupt war.
This war and unregulated capitalism have endangered our economic system, and my personal security. Our economic system is bloated, distended, as are many Americans. We look like our economic system. We have fat throughout. We are financed by excessive debt and we are practicing corporate socialism, bailing out irresponsible financial institutions that threaten us all while condemning individuals to fend for themselves. We are living beyond our means and we are not healthy - certainly economically if not physically.
I've had enough of bad economic thinking.
I've had enough of unregulated capitalists.
I've had enough of greed.
And then there is climate change, arguably the largest environmental, economic and social disaster ever caused by humans. Climate change is altering and will continue to alter the Earth. It will profoundly affect the way we live. It will be the single largest transforming event of the 21st century, barring nuclear holocaust.
For the last eight years, the Bush administration has been denying that climate change is occurring. For several years, the administration had censors who would review governmental documents and remove unapproved statements about climate change. James Hanson, the NASA scientist who initially raised concerns in the 1980s about climate change, was censored - told that he could not speak about his scientific findings. This was tantamount to Copernicus being excommunicated because his scientific findings contradicted the church orthodoxy by suggesting that the Earth circled the sun. Except now, whose orthodoxy is being contradicted? The corporate clergy?
The evidence regarding climate change is overwhelming. 2000+ scientists were brought together under the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (the IPCC) and they have produced report after report establishing that climate change is occurring and that it is linked to human actions. This body of evidence is overwhelming and represents the work of the most sophisticated dispute resolution process that I have ever seen. Yet, this work was not enough for the United States, which continued to deny that climate change was occurring and which still has failed to take important steps to address this problem.
We United States citizens have not incorporated climate change into our thinking, even as the rest of the world has slowly begun to make such changes. The Europeans are ahead of us. The Canadians are ahead of us. Many South American and Asian countries are ahead of us. It is now our ethical challenge to acknowledge and take responsibility for changes we are contributing to throughout the world, changes that will flood entire island countries and coastal villages, changes that will alter disease distribution patterns, changes that will make past rainfall patterns no longer usable for predicting future water availability, changes that will eliminate more species than any other human activity to date.
I've had enough of those who pretend that climate change is not occurring.
I've had enough of living as though our carbon footprint was irrelevant.
I've had enough of denying science for the ease and comfort of society.
THE QUEST AND LOCAL GOVERNMENT
I find myself in dense woods between the Brazos and San Bernard Rivers, the so-called Columbia Bottomlands. I am called to defend a lady in distress - a woman who moved to the bottomlands because they were dark and green and full of living things. Her property was slated for condemnation by the local drainage district that wanted to dig up her creek and tear out the trees adjacent to the water, destroying life although the need for the project, the need for the destruction, did not exist.
I put on my suit of armor and show up for a condemnation proceeding in the Brazoria County courthouse. I am in the midst of a kangaroo court hearing where the will of the Drainage District is rubber-stamped by a group of good ole boys who, when confronted by the suited foreigner from Houston, meet in the hall to decide what to do to cut off the lady's rights. Luckily, their conversation is overheard and an affidavit is sworn that supports the filing of a civil rights lawsuit that exposes their chicanery and delays the condemnation. Through three contentious years, she holds on, finally securing a deal that saves her sacred watercourse and trees in spite of the attitude and rulings of the judge, in spite of a system that assumes the government - any form of government - is working in the public interest.
Like many whom I meet on the quest, she is fighting the government - a government that is determined to support what they call growth and economic development. But she was something they had not counted on - someone with the will and the spine to fight back - a prickly porcupine who cared about the natural system and was willing to fight to protect it - a person of spirit, a connected person.
THE BOTTOMLANDS
She has a special name for them - the elected drainage commissioners and their minions who
joyfully destroy life in the bottomlands.
Gleefully denuding the banks of secret watercourses incised over centuries in the Pleistocene mud, spraying herbicides across the creek to kill her opposition.
Bullying, blustering, sputtering, spitting, hating, hurting elected czars, flicking away concerns, ripping plants and streams asunder.
Acting with deep intent and malice aforethought - acting from fear and hatred of things they don't understand
Such as a woman who enjoys walking in the late evening light, delighting in the revealed spiderwebs spun from sapling to sapling,
A woman who smiles at the native shrubs that hold the precariously-placed stream bank soil in place, providing the cranny for the frog and clean water for the fish,
A woman who marvels at the warblers working the insects in the craggy oaks and sheltering yaupons on the flood plain bench,
A woman celebrating life that has escaped the empty-worlders for another day.
I've had enough of governments that act against their citizens while claiming the public interest.
I've had enough of governments that destroy nature without question.
I've had enough of the empty worlders.
THE KENEDY RANCH AND THE WINDMILLS
I am now mounted, lance engaged, charging the windmills of Kenedy County. The Kenedy Ranch sits atop the south Texas sand sheet, a relatively pristine area of mixed wetlands and prairie and oak mottes described as The Last Great Habitat of Texas, of the United States, and among the last of the world. It was here that I jousted with two major wind farm developers.
From the beginning, this fight was different. I was fighting "green" energy - wind energy - the supposedly benign power source - one pitched as our salvation to global climate change.
The issue regarding these wind farms was straight-forward. The Texas coast is the migration pathway for millions of birds and the winter home to millions more. The major environmental harm associated with wind turbines is their impact on birds. This was not an attack on the wind industry per se but rather a question of the environmental impact of the development of this site. So, I felt it to be reasonable that national organizations concerned about environmental issues would be concerned with serious impacts to migrant and resident birds. Yet, I found that not to be the case.
Many local groups were willing to join the fight that was led and funded by the King Ranch. Among these groups were the Houston, Coastal Bend and Frontera Audubon Societies, the Lower Laguna Madre Foundation, the Audubon Outdoor Club of Corpus Christi, the Matagorda Bay Foundation and the Galveston Bay Conservation and Preservation Association. But only one national group - the American Bird Conservancy - was willing to join with us in an attempt to protect this migratory corridor. Most national environmental groups that usually fight to protect ecological systems chose not to join the fight. Instead, they practiced environmental triage, writing off the environment of south Texas and the millions of migratory birds in the interest of being pro "green energy", in the interest of showing that they were "reasonable".
Environmental triage is a big deal. A conscious decision was made to sacrifice - to allow the unopposed destruction of - certain ecological systems in order to divert resources to more important issues. My question is - why are our environmental leaders making triage decisions when there is so much fat in our system - when there is no imminent need to make such a decision?
The United States and Texas have thousands of megawatts of electricity that could be provided by reduction of demand - by conservation. These savings represent low-hanging fruit. They are available at very low cost. In fact, they are win-win alternatives, money savers and energy savers. Yet instead of pursing this low hanging fruit of conservation, my national leaders in environmental thinking made a conscious decision to write-off the migratory corridor and natural system of South Texas so that the American consumer would not be challenged to reduce their energy usage which is the highest in the world. Such leadership.
Have you recently looked at the web sites of our national environmental organizations? Most major groups have one or more pictures of the polar bear, the fund-raising symbol of the war on climate change. Climate change fund-raising has pre-empted other issues and perhaps the soul of the environmental movement. I cannot imagine that a self-respecting environmental group wouldn't at least require an analysis of environmental impact and a permitting process before a major industrial land use impacting 35,000 acres could be constructed, but such was the case with the wind farms in South Texas.
So I mount up and charge, not at the windmills of South Texas, but at the lazy thinking of the national environmental collective. When we need innovation - when we need full world thinking - from the environmental community, we get environmental triage. We get the abandonment of principles of environmental impact analysis upon which the national environmental movement was based and which is the cornerstone of full world thinking. We get the sacrifice of the environment of the South Texas coast. Where is the ethic in that?
I've had enough of the polar bear arriving at my mail box, asking for donations to support climate change policies that are nothing more than environmental triage.
I've had enough of so-called green energy producers who will not govern themselves or support regulation of their industry.
I've had enough of our national environmental leaders.
Radar studies by Texas Gulf Wind indicated that from 1.5 to 2.0 million "targets" were detected flying through the several hundred feet of elevation where the rotors turn, called the rotor swept zone. These so-called targets included individual birds, individual bats, flocks of birds and large insects. That's a huge number. When I read the consultant reports and saw the use of the word "target" to indicate the birds that I care about, the migrants that I cheer, it affected me deeply.
TARGETS
The consultants label them targets - the flocks of migratory birds that may fly into the area swept by the rotor blades spun to generate grid electricity from our most fashionable green energy source.
Not unlike a junkie supporting a habit, electrical consumers and even environmentalists callously and indifferently allow the killing air space to be erected without permit, public review or debate.
The whirr of the rotors will be the sound of death to the river of birds that have migrated from north to south and back again for longer than we know - raptors and cranes, bluebirds and grosbeaks, avocets and redheads - all alive and living with us.
Birds acting upon their imperative as living things to survive on the earth where they have found themselves beside us - birds who have no voices in the human halls of justice - birds whose lives hang by the shredded threads of human ethics.
Targets of greed - of the opportunity to issue a few more junk bonds to fund another venture, the success or failure of which is left behind in the rush to the next deal.
Targets of the absence of leadership - prey not to predators for food but to uncaring indifference.
Targets of spirits lost and lives unfulfilled by the excess we call the American way.
For me, the most personal part of this fight involved my friend the long-billed curlew. This is the same bird that I made eye contact with in Matagorda Bay, the bird with whom I connected, with whom I share the Texas coast. According to one of the studies flushed out in preparation for the federal court joust, the worst-case estimate was that 4.5 curlews would be killed per turbine per year. Across 400 turbines, that's about 1800 curlews per year. This becomes a bit more alarming when one considers that curlews are in decline and that the total global population may only number 20,000. But such is the nature of environmental triage.
HAPPINESS AND ENOUGH
As I am impaled by the briefs of opposing counsel, I see visions - a shimmer in the distance. Why are we ever racing to meet a demand for energy that keeps increasing? I would not need to take on the suppliers but for the ever-increasing demand.
So let's look at demand. Our national carbon footprint is about 20 tons of carbon dioxide per person per year. The other industrialized nations of the world generate about 12 tons per person per year. The global average is about 4 tons per person per year. And the two most populous countries in the world - China and India - currently produce about 1-2 tons per person per year. By my concept of global equity, we should reduce our generation of carbon dioxide by about 80%. That's each of us. And it can be done with a little incentive and motivation and spiritual help. So why does this seem so hard? What is pushing us back?
For one thing, there is the consistent message in U.S. society that we can achieve happiness through consumption. Isn't that the message of advertising? Isn't this what those two screaming kids in the Kroger aisle were parroting? Isn't that what our economy is based upon - buying our way to happiness?
The problem with - the addiction inherent in - our current consumerism is that consumption becomes an end in itself. We buy for the sake of buying. The satisfaction of the desire to have, instead of the satisfaction of an actual need, becomes a reason to buy more. Consumption becomes a ritual through which we seek our spiritual and ego satisfaction. And it drains our money reserves. Compared to earlier times, the ratio of savings to consumption is at all time lows in the U.S., much lower than Germany and Japan are today. We are just like coke addicts, broke, out of money, seriously compromised.
According to Richard Layard in his lectures at the London School of Economics, we compare our happiness against what we perceive to be the "norm" of happiness - with the norm being how much money is needed to sustain a certain level of happiness, a norm that is ever rising. This leads to a consumer treadmill.
We gain pleasure from a single purchase, but the pleasure plateaus. We must buy more. We become addicted to the pleasure that purchasing gives us but not to the pleasure of the material good, which may even be discarded or forgotten. Under this scenario, there is never an amount of possessions that is "enough" to make us happier than we are now. And rivalry - competition among us - makes it worse, because we often think others are doing better than we if they can consume more. In fact, consumers continually report a "need" for about 40% more than they make.
We are on a treadmill and we need to get off. We are addicted to both oil and consumption. Now addiction is something I know a bit about. One must admit the addiction and find a way to change. One must find something larger than one's self, something I would call a spiritual connection.
I pull over, dismount, lay down the lance and recline in the shade of a tree. I am struck with the thought that it is here - in our addiction to consumption - that the natural system has an important role. Nature can nurture us, but only if we stop denying nature and start accepting the fact that we are part of a living system and that we have an important role to play in the continuing functioning of that system. And part of that role is simply observing nature, taking the time to look out of our windows and see other living things.
CONNECTUALITY
Three male grackles sit on the telephone wire,
Their iridescent green-black-purple feathers puffed out,
tails spread like small fans in the morning sun,
wanting to be noticed by the reticent lady nearby.
The pale blue morning sky provides a background
for the bright and varied greens of the pecan
whose leaves lift up toward the sun,
removing carbon, producing oxygen, supporting me.
I walk outside and feel the warmth of the sun,
affirming to myself that I am alive
a part of this wonderful planet full of living things
that fit together for the benefit of all.
I am sobered by the lack of understanding,
by the lack of humility and gratitude that exists among
supposedly sophisticated and advanced primates
who either fail or refuse to understand the Earth.
We fight about whether God created it
or whether it all came out of the Big Bang
and fail to stop and appreciate that it and we are what we are -
alive and inextricably connected.
Energy pulses through my brain - triggering circuits.
Allowing me to behold something real,
something alive,
something of which I am a part.
Peace arrives softly, gently calming my soul.
I am made secure, relaxed and confident for
I know that I am not alone
but that I am connected.
Remounted, reinvigorated with connectuality, I charge off, searching for the key to determining what is enough for me? To begin, I learn to calculate my carbon footprint. Once you start calculating your footprint - once you pay attention to it, to what your consumption patterns generate - it makes a difference. I was amazed to find that fully 1/3 of the carbon dioxide generated by my office was from air travel and I don't really fly that much. I just had not thought about it. Did I really need to make those flights, or could I have handled the matter by conference call?
It's like driving a hybrid and seeing the consumption displayed - after a while, you start to drive a bit slower to get better mileage. I have found I can get there fast enough at 65 rather than 75. And I have found that there is no reason for summer to be the coldest time of the year in Houston. Air conditioning may be necessary for life on the coastal plain in summer, but summer does not need to be colder than winter. There is a concept of enough air conditioning.
For me, the will to change my carbon footprint and my consumption pattern comes from the natural system and it remains my higher power. The caracara and the curlew, the bunting and the hummingbird help me find my way. They infuse me with energy. Living with other living things emerged and continues to emerge within my life, making me grateful and humble and hopeful of making a difference,
ENOUGH AND THE COAST
On occasion after occasion, I have taken up my lance, dressed in my suit, and attempted to protect the wetlands, the bays, the residents, the birds, the fish and shellfish of the Texas coast. And the tournament will rage on. But have we ever stopped to ask if the Texas coast has enough growth, enough employment, enough development? Have we ever stopped to ask if the Texas coast has contributed enough of its vast natural resources - of its natural wonders - to support human endeavors?
The Texas coast contains about 8400 square miles, about 3% of Texas and about 0.2% of the United States. It has about 6.3 million people, about 27% of the Texas population and a little over 2% of the U.S. population.
From an energy standpoint, the Texas coast has served the state and the country far beyond its size and population. The Texas coast is home to 4% of U.S. oil and gas production, both onshore and offshore, it brings in 32% of our oil imports and contains 22% of the refining capacity of the United States, not to mention plastics and other petrochems. We have two constructed LNG import facilities representing 39% of U.S. capacity. We generate about 40% of the state's electricity, with 279 gas-fired plants and 5 coal-fired power plants along with two operational nuclear units and four more planned, currently representing about 50% of Texas nuclear capacity. We mine 7% of the nation's uranium. And to top it off, about 500 MW of wind power are now being built in Kenedy County with another farm planned in San Patricio County.
In exchange, our natural environment has suffered extensively. We have lost hundreds of thousands of acres of wetlands. We have dredged and scraped out our bays. We have only one functional natural pass between the bays and the Gulf of Mexico, a key to life cycle movement of fish and shellfish. We have a dioxin and PCB warning on speckled trout consumption in the Galveston Bay system and a warning on mercury contamination in redfish and crabs in the Matagorda Bay system. We have not set aside any freshwater inflows for any of our bays and estuaries. None. Nada. Without such set asides, we will lose the white and brown shrimp production, the blue crabs and oysters along with our finfish. We don't have an effective or even legal coastal management program.
And now, we have to consider the future of coastal development after Hurricane Ike. Current plans call for a couple of million more people to move to the Houston area in the next twenty or so years, with several hundred thousand of them slated to move south of Loop 610 in Southern Harris and Galveston County. In my opinion, we cannot protect the people who live in the Houston area at this time, much less take care of additional millions.
If there were a Category 4 storm bearing down on the Houston area tonight, how many of you would stay? Well, if you live inside the loop, you will be told not to leave, to let those who live in the "evacuation zone" leave. And I guarantee that many of those in the evacuation zone who chose not to leave for Ike will leave when the next storm comes. And now imagine another 300,000 people - the new growth - trying to evacuate the kill zone, and another couple of million new people competing with you to get their electricity reconnected. How long will that take?
Our concept of growth and development has led us to the point of insanity - to continue to fill up evacuation zones - kill zones - with people who buy homes thinking they are safe, that they are protected when they are not.
I've had enough growth and development in hurricane evacuation zones.
I've had enough of governments that spur on development without considering the long-term economic cost.
I've had enough of developer control of our cities and counties.
And oh, by the way, I've also had enough of Jerry Patterson, Commissioner of the General Land Office of Texas and our coastal development leader.
If we are going to change this situation, we must take on coastal development directly. And that means taking on governmental entities and developers and corporations that don't care about impacts to humans or nature, that have no concept of enough. And in order to take them on, we must act. We have flood problems that can be solved, but not if we continue to approach them as we have. We have air pollution problems that can be solved, but not if we continue to approach them as we have. We have coastal development problems that can be solved, but not if we continue to address them as we have.
Addressing these issues requires personal commitment. It requires activation of our hearts and our heads. It requires acts of bravery, standing up to the addicts and enablers and saying ENOUGH. ENOUGH. ENOUGH.
THE QUEST GOES ON
One day about three years ago I found myself in St. Lukes hospital looking at an image on a screen. I was told I was viewing the widow maker and that if I had a heart attack, I would be dead in a couple of minutes. About two hours later, I had triple by-pass surgery that saved my life. Today, I can define enough as it relates to chile con queso and enchiladas and chicken fried steak and cream gravy and peanut butter and ice cream.
Do we have to have community heart surgery to get past denial? Has Ike shaken us up enough to have a conversation about enough? Or will we have to suffer a Category 4 and thousands killed before we can talk?
Enough is a hard topic. It causes discomfort. In many respects, the inquiry into enough is an inquiry into our individual and community soul. There is a phrase - feeling comfortable in your skin. Enough is about feeling comfortable in your skin, about defining self to self. Enough is about self-image.
On the quest to enough, I would love to consult a map, but we only have a map to a society that no longer exists. We are lost and must find a new way. And like it or not- believe it or not - we are all involved in this quest. We all either are or will be searching for a new map.
I believe that this journey - this quest without a map -will ultimately be spiritual because I can see no other basis to find the will to do what must be done, the will to forge our way. Intellect and reason lie on the roadside like broken lances. This is work for the heart, not for the brain.
I've had enough of living in denial of spirituality.
I've had enough of religious institutions that have no spirituality.
I've had enough of a society with no concern about its effects on others, effectively lacking an ethical base.
And I've also had enough of people who tell me that they agree with what I am saying, but decline to join with me publicly, saying they are with me in spirit but can't fade the heat of the positions. Sorry folks. It's time to step up and do something. It's time to take a stand. We have an 80% reduction in our carbon footprint to collectively achieve and we need to get on with it. We have a debate ahead of us on development of hurricane evacuation zones. We have work to do. The future will not allow us to hide behind empty world blindness to apparent problems. Full world thinking compels action and it compels it now.
I have found the country of India to be an amazing place, a place from which I have learned much, a place where various forms of spirituality are lived. India is a visual feast and I found nothing more compelling than the animistic statues and gods and images that adorn the rural landscape. The life breath of trees is celebrated with wreaths of marigolds. Ganesha, the playful four armed elephant God dances before you. Other living things are respected more than anywhere I have found on the Earth.
In India, rivers are sacred and none more so than the Narmada. I had occasion to visit the Narmada last fall, to see the pilgrims come to the water's edge at dawn and dusk, paying respect, saying prayers, then lighting cups of oil and sending the light down the river that is the source of life and the path forward. It was one of the most spiritual sites that I have witnessed - serene, reverential, connected.
I remove my suit of armor and walk down behind the arboretum to Buffalo Bayou - the heart of Houston - to watch it beating. It is morning and a slight mist is on the water. The water passes through limbs that have fallen, making patterns in the stream, putting forth a slight shushing sound. A sandbar reveals footprints, clear prints, of the raccoon, of the Great Blue Heron, evidence of life being lived by other living things. A gar splashes in the water, sending out ever expanding circles across the eddy pool toward me. From the large pines and oaks on the high clay cut-bank, a blue jay cries out, telling me, telling the world that it is alive for another day. A butterfly flits in the morning sun, magnifying life energy through its dazzling yellow wings directly to my repaired heart.
I take a breath and am thankful that this beautiful stream, this natural wonder, has not been destroyed, that life is still being lived here by other living things. Perhaps we should start a tribute to the natural system where we come to Buffalo Bayou, in downtown Houston at the demonstration area designed by Charles Tapley, and launch cups of lights down the bayou toward the bay and the Gulf in celebration of our connectuality, creating a statement of reverence, of appreciation, a celebration in one of many sanctuaries of the church of the Earth.
We have an abundance of natural wonder in and around Houston. In addition to our bayous, we have bottomlands, prairies, marshes, bays, pine forests and oak forests, islands and ocean. We even have a group called Houston Wilderness dedicated to identifying these natural wonders - this natural capital - and bringing it to the attention of our region and its leaders, hoping that in Houston's apparent race to devour the Earth we will set something aside, make certain areas sacrosanct, protected, left living. Such a hope.
So I urge you, go out and connect with the natural system, acquaint yourself with some portion of it, greet the fall migration of birds, welcome these intrepid travelers back to Texas for the winter, go out on Katy Prairie in early November and marvel at the snow geese as they greet one another with raucous pleasure.
Find connectuality and feel it from the top of your head to the bottom of your toes. Swim in it, bathe in it, relish it. And let it liberate you. So I mount up again, infused with connectuality, lance and armor at ease, moving forward, moving toward enough.
I use enough
I have enough
And for that I am grateful.
I am content
To purchase less
And try to be ever humble.
I do not need
To further expand
I am content
with what I am.
Thank you.
