Green Options

From biodiversity loss to peak oil to the need for recycling, many of the messages coming from the environmental community have one common underlying theme: scarcity.

Messages of scarcity take their power from the fear they produce. As marketing guru Seth Godin points out, fear is a powerful emotion that can make people act. Tell people that there isn’t enough of something to go around, and you can bet that many will act quickly to make that they get theirs…

That may be one of the supreme ironies of environmental messages involving fear: it may ultimately lead people to desire those things we claim are in short supply. Can you say “Drill, baby, drill??

Finally, there are no shortages of fearful messages out there, and since people seek security when they’re scared, they’ll probably embrace the message that produces immediate comfort… or, at least, validation. “Energy independence” works as a message in one instance because it ties directly to a fear many Americans find familiar: the fear of violence from outsiders. We have vivid images associated with this fear — it’s something we know. Tell people that we take money out of the hands of “state sponsors of terrorism” by leveraging domestic energy supplies, and they start listening closely.

Friday’s interview with presumptive GOP VP nominee Sarah Palin on CNBC focused largely on ANWR. But when Bartiromo asked about the specific steps Palin would take to mitigate environmental impacts, she answered by talking about how the naysayers and fear mongers didn’t get it.

After being fairly fearful as a child, I am happy to say that not much genuinely scares me nowadays. The list of things that make me want to hide under the covers at night is quite short: clowns, Teletubbies, Pee Wee Herman, SPAM (the kind in the can), Disco. Overall, then, I am a pretty happy and peaceful fellow–though like all humans I still have my moments of nervousness and anxiety.

Nevertheless, I have often experienced periods of serious dread and despair when it comes to the environment. Even when my green aura does not develop streaks of black, I frequently sense an underlying fear about the future state of the Earth and my life upon it. Sometimes, a specific cause will precipitate these fits of fear. Perhaps some scientific study or news report will declare some more grim data and dire predictions–the International Panel on Climate Change’s most recent report, for example, or another attempt to allow oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Perhaps a book or magazine article I read will draw my attention to the poor state of affairs and the bleak outlook they seem to foreshadow–Lester Brown’s Plan B 2.0 or Mark Lynas’s Six Degrees come to mind. At other times, though, there will be no direct cause that I can point to…the fear just sits there gnawing at away my innards.

Earth Day 2007 was a particularly rough time for me. As the holiday approached, usually a joyous one for me, it seemed that all my usual natural delights caused sharp pangs of grief and concern instead. All I could feel was a sense of their fragility and impending destruction. Then, when the Virginia Tech shootings occurred, I nearly broke down and lost all hope in anything.

I wanted to write about these sorts of experiences because I think many other environmentalists, and even folks who simply care about some patch of Earth or appreciate a good sunset, likely have experienced similar moments of fear, despair, and hopelessness. This seems almost inevitable, since there is so much bad news coming at us left and right, with terrible predictions about food shortages and natural disasters and species loss, and with the period for reversing the downward spiral apparently getting shorter. Speaking for myself, I cannot help but be afraid when I think of what my own life will be like in the world to come, what unknown struggles and sacrifices I will be forced to suffer through.

So I am hoping here to open up a discussion about ways for coping with these Dark Nights of the Green. I have found a few things that seem to work pretty well, and I know other folks have similar approaches to loosening that knot of terror that often develops deep within your gut.

With my feet propped up, an open book in my lap, and the morning sun baking me in my skin like a potato, I certainly was not an intimidating presence. A young squirrel certainly did not find me so, at least, as it came scurrying up to where I sat. It would slink forward a few feet, stop and extend its nose to sniff my way, slink forward a bit more, stop and sit up on its haunches to get a better view, before finally it circled around my feet and looked inquisitively up at me repeatedly. I seriously suspected it would jump up in my lap (and kind of hoped it would!), perhaps to check out what I was reading and discuss literature with me, maybe ask for a cup of tea and something to nibble on.

But no, it finally scuttled away again, returning once more a bit later with its friend/sibling for another reconnoitering mission. It is still hanging around, eating fallen birdseed and doing various other mischievous things.

While this unusually friendly squirrel was clearly wary as it investigated the baking human, I would not say that it showed a whole lot of fear…even if it did not jump up in my lap and surely would not have let me pick it up.

Later, in a bit of synchronicity, my father told me on the phone about how friends of his had saved a baby raccoon from a tree that was being cut down. It was no more than the size of a mouse when they originally rescued it, and they were raising it as a pet. So now it was sort of like your typical rambunctious kitten or puppy, playing with toys and perfectly content interacting with its owners/rescuers. In saving the baby raccoon’s life, then, these kind people had also domesticated it (along with practicing a bit of “adoptive stewardship”), turning it from wildlife to family pet–with all the familiar behaviors.

Incidents like these where wildlife do not flee from the first sign (sight, smell, or sound) of humans always make me wonder about the nature of animals’ fear of us. I wonder if it is something instinctual, a natural reaction to us and relationship with us, something perhaps developed for survival through the ages. Maybe the ancestors of modern wildlife had bad experiences with our ancestors, who were likely looking for anything to serve as food and clothing and what have you. Maybe those animals saw one too many of their companions captured and turned into workers and/or pets, and so they learned to distrust and avoid us in order to live free.