You think we’re saving the earth? No, we’re saving ourselves

For nearly 20 years, I wrote a monthly “My Turn” editorial for my-then local newspaper in Greenfield, Massachusetts. When I moved to Taos in February 2014, the editor of that paper graciously allowed me to contribute a perspective from New Mexico. I did so, searching for topics that were relevant to both the Southwest and the Northeast.

Not surprisingly, the subject of my first op-ed piece was water.

Although New England rarely endures the same level of drought New Mexico experiences, water and water rights are a relevant topic to that region. In 2007, the international conglomerate Nestle, wanted to grab the water located in the aquifer under the Montague Plains, a pine barren of mostly conservation land in Western Massachusetts. Their goal was to use it for their bottled “spring water.” The water supplies the needs of a nearby fish hatchery, many private wells, as well as quenching the thirst of several small towns.

As always with major corporations who want to take something from a local community, Nestle promised jobs, a temptation for one of the poorest counties in the state. In return, they planned to extract about 500,000 gallons per day out of the aquifer. Fortunately, state laws and the lack of support from an environmentally-sensitive governor, put a halt to the plan. Western Massachusetts, which is as blue as Northern New Mexico, also fought against a planned gas pipeline and prevailed.

With the election of Donald Trump, the environment is more in danger than ever before. He just appointed Scott Pruitt, a climate change denier to head the EPA and his choices for Secretary of the Interior are mostly oilmen and fellow global warming skeptics. His picks will no doubt roll back the protection of natural resources put in place by the Obama Administration. The fossil fuel interests are already licking their lips in anticipation of four years of free reign plundering.

When progressives talk about climate change and any environmental issue, their usual catch phrase is the need to “Save the Earth.” My response is: Nonsense! The earth is over three billion years old and has survived worse catastrophes than Republican conservatives. What we’re really talking about here is saving our own butts.

Climatologists can throw up a wall of statistics, but such data usually makes the average citizens’ eyes glaze over. The threat is abstract. You can talk about coastal cities being underwater but the reality won’t sink in until a minor tsunami fills the streets of Miami, Charleston and downtown Manhattan.

Here in New Mexico, we need no further proof that the earth is warming. Talk to anyone who has lived here for decades and you will hear that 30 years ago, the northern counties received several dozen feet of snow and days of sub-zero temperatures every winter. And while such conditions occasionally prevail, the snowpack is much more diminished than in the past. There is no reason to believe such a trend will reverse. Overall, drought and devastating wildfires are not viewed as theories, but as actual threats. So is the need to safeguard our water supply from outside interests. “La Agua es la Vida” is more than just a catchy bumper-sticker slogan.

Some renowned climatologists like Bill McKibben, have stated that global warming is already past the point of no return — that even if we lower the CO2 content in the atmosphere, we won’t forestall the consequences. Again, such a calamity will not turn our planet into Venus, but it might in the long run make life for humanity “nasty, brutish and short” to quote Thomas Hobbes. While it is true that it will take billions of dollars and a vast transformation of global priorities to forestall climate change, to ignore it will cost trillions and cause widespread suffering and dislocation.

Recently, physicist Stephen Hawking spoke at Oxford University and warned that the human race has only 1,000 years left to live. He suggested we better find another planet by then, although how we transport the entire world population there was left unsaid.

Such an option is not viable. We are stuck here with our earthly home. In the future, it will survive. We might not. The amount of damage Trump and the Republican-controlled government can cause is, at the moment, incalculable. But one thing we can all bet on, is that it will be a step in the wrong direction.

Brown is an artist, writer and former public school teacher living in Arroyo Seco.