Writing in “The
Genius of the Place: An Ecological Approach to New Agriculture”, Wes
Jackson discussed how we seem historically and presently unable to act until it
is too late.
Jackson told how he and his wife, Joan, rarely interrupt
each other when reading, unless something they are reading is so “arresting”
that it simply must be shared.
His wife was “The History of Love”, a novel by Nicole Krauss
and a short segment prompted Joan to interrupt with “listen to this”.
Jackson wrote, quoting a section from the novel:
“The protagonist in the story, a young man, describes a woman in his
village in Poland who had paid special attention to his writings. It was when
Hitler’s troops had entered Poland, and for whatever reason this woman had
moved from the village. Joan read aloud the following passage:
“After she left,
everything fell apart. No Jew was safe. There were rumours of unfathomable
things, and because we couldn’t fathom them we failed to believe them, until we
had no choice and then it was too late.
“We both fell silent. We knew what the other was thinking.
“Here is the modern problem: we continue to hear “unfathomable
things.” Beyond the climate scientist’s statements that the earth is warming
up, the modellers say we can expect more severe storms. The permafrost is
melting five times faster than earlier predictions. Rapid fossil fuel
consumption, rapid population growth, Worldwide degrading of soils, loss of biodiversity,
disruption of eco systems. We have somewhere between 150 and 1,000 dead zones
in our oceans from nitrogen applied to agricultural fields. The list of “unfathomable
things” associated with climate change alone seems endless.
“Too many reputable scientists publishing in refereed
journals are taking the discussion beyond the level of mere hearsay for us to
ignore.
“I am one who trusts the conclusions by the National Academy
of Sciences and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the consensus
they handed down: human-induced climate
change is here”.
No comments:
Post a Comment