One Utah

My last post, So What’s Wrong with Superiority, prompted the usual and not unexpected sniping from the Right, who suggested that my rhetoric was windy enough to power a 2 MW windmill. Better that, I replied, than a pinwheel, which is about all the Right’s feeble attempts at a meaningful response could power.

One reader, however, saw a deeper truth in some of the right-wing reactions. I quote his response to give my own that follows some context.

“Somewhere along the way it came to me that snark would save the world. There’s more of course and your essays are a reflection of that. Thank you.

W3, no less than anyone here, has his position, experience and hopes in directing the conversation. My hope is that in all the discussion, any one reader gets the feeling that there’s room to move, and that with that movement he or she can modify some of the effects of misdirected energy, begin to allow for a more appropriate solution to the problems that we face. The difficult part, and the part that W3 keeps pointing out, is that somewhere along the way it is possible that a problem or complex of problems may very well become INSURMOUNTABLE. He’d have us all face that potential as opposed to denying it.
Thanks.” –CAV

My response to CAV, I thought on reconsideration, is perhaps worthy of a post of its own. So here it is.

CAV, thanks for your comment. Your summary of W3’s pessimism is more positive than his, I think, but the point is well taken. And with that view I must admit to more than a little sympathy. We may in fact be at such a point already. When my dad, Ed Sr., was giving stump speeches against MX twenty years ago, he was fond of quoting a line from Tom Stoppard’s play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead in which Guildenstern says as they’re about to die (I paraphrase perhaps), “There must have been a time, in the beginning, when we could have said — no. But somehow we missed it.”

As our pair of unwitting assassins discover, it’s hard, maybe impossible, to know when you’ve passed the point of no return. I personally doubt that we’ve reached that point as far as humanity’s survival is concerned. I’m much less sanguine about the survival of our civilization. Under George Bush, we’ve lost eight years, EIGHT YEARS (!)–my contempt for this little toad from Texas is beyond my ability to articulate, though someday I’d like to try to convey just how much I despise him–and our country isn’t yet talking much less working with the urgency that will be needed to reinvent our economy on a sustainable footing. So, W3, if that’s your basic point, I understand your pessimism.

I can’t give in to it, however, for to do that is to ensure that we will fail. Dark as my thoughts are sometimes, I’m essentially an optimist. And the environmental ethic I’ve been advocating is also essentially optimistic. Perhaps all liberal agendas are. They presuppose the hope that we can change for the better.

Hence my question, “What is the alternative?” Neocons are great at tearing down and throwing black bile over the liberal vision (and so far, UNFORTUNATELY, it is primarily a liberal vision) for the future. But they haven’t given us a vision of their own to replace it other than “stay the course.” Can any rational person, seeing the rise in oil prices and the INEVITABLE decline of oil supplies, the catastrophic pollution from our coal-fired power plants, the rising cost of food and the pressure on food supplies, the rise in pollution-related illnesses such as asthma, pneumonia, and even autism suppose that we can go on like this? The nutcakes, to use the term coined by the chief nut, roarin’ Orrin Hatch, are not the liberal ecofreeks but the staid and respectable executives at GM who look surprised when SUVs suddenly become white elephants that they can’t give away. The nutcakes are GM’s minions in congress who feel they’ve done something for the world by imposing CAFE standards for a puny 35 mpg that won’t come into effect for another twelve years! The nutcakes are the real estate developers here in SLC and St. George and the public servants they buy who think that we can pack another 500,000 people into this already poisoned valley and that St. George could become a metropolis of 500,000 to 1,000,000 people. These people are FUCKING crazy!

In the face of such lunacy, it would be easy to say, with W3, that walking to church on Sunday as a solution to our problems is like pissing in the wind. It is and it isn’t. If that’s the limit of what we do, of course it’s meaningless. But a true ethic of conservation isn’t about doing one thing or fifteen things for the environment. It’s a discipline for life, a way of thinking and being that is DIAMETRICALLY opposed to our present lifestyle. Walking to church is simply my Trojan horse for getting people here to start thinking about the consequences of their actions. If THAT becomes the norm, then the rest takes care of itself. Gandhi liberated India through simple acts like making salt on the beaches. I have hope that similarly simple acts here will also change the world.

Of course I’m not going to sit back and wait for the church parking lots to empty themselves. It’s imperative that we get the LDS Church institutionally involved. The Church is key not only to what happens here in Utah, but also to what happens nationally. That may sound odd, as the Church isn’t much of a national player right now. But consider what would happen nationally if an exceedingly wealthy, conservative organization like the Church, the most potent political force between the Mississippi and California, were to declare that it intends to become energy-independent, as the Vatican (though not the Catholic Church as a whole) has recently done. It would send shock waves through the power industry. It would energize the solar industry. And, it would shake the present complacence of LDS membership TO ITS CORE. This single decision could change the entire national debate about energy policy. Years ago, I happened to talk to a guy who had worked in the furniture industry as a supplier for the LDS Church. He told me that the Church is the biggest builder and furnisher of buildings in the U.S. outside the federal government. The Church builds large wardhouses at the rate McDonald’s builds little burger franchises. Think of the market-making potential that the Church has as a result, of which it is probably not even cognizant. This is a big target, a big, hairy, audacious goal. Anyone and everyone who has a connection to the Church should think about how they might try to get the Church to lead the nation in deed. I certainly think about this, and am committed to doing what I can to bring this miracle about.

So, I say to W3 [the chief naysayer in the earlier discussion thread] that LDS folks walking to church is my belweather. When we see the churches full and the parking lots empty, we’ll know that something wonderful is happening in the LDS community, something with profound implications for the rest of us.

This entry was posted Sunday, July 20th, 2008 at 10:02 am and is filed under This Blog. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.