When Heaven & Earth changed places

This is a second part of a closer look at the current environment and why columnist Paul Haeder feels it’s important to continue his role as a writer/analyst/critic. Read Part 1 here The word “ecology” I discovered while working with Vietnamese, British and Canadian researchers in Vietnam was not incorporated into the languages of the people of Indochina until the 1990s. Maybe Aristotle or his student Theophrastus first described (as Western thinkers) habitats and interrelationships of animals as early as the 4th century BC. However, there is no proof they understood the interrelationships of man with ecology, the need to achieve steady state or even negative human population to balance needs of nature and needs for a just human society. Ecology has evolved since Alexander von Humbolt and Darwin to the point where we see the Gaia theory and man and the biosphere discussed as interrelating synergies to make a diverse and concomitant whole. Eugene and Howard Odum co-founded the concept of ecosystem ecology in the 1950s. Yet, ecology as a science and philosophy has evolved deeply and broadly since then. When our science team first reached Hanoi, we saw the famous pseudo oryx and barking deer, two “new” mega species “discovered” in Vietnam. We met the scientists who studied and live captured them … and ate them. These very last known – scientifically “discovered and retrieved,” that is – ungulates died after the biologists screwed up on feeding and treating them with antibiotics. This isn’t an indictment on their lack of depth or some flat-line sophistication of their science – that they’d feed a dynamic animal, who scurried through jungle foraging on very complex foods, only sprouts, or that they’d cut their antibiotic regimen by one-third in order to stretch the Western-sourced drug. Once the animals died, they carefully skinned them, cooked the meat, and had a good time at their barbeque, with rice and bamboo shoots thrown in. All 13 of us, from Britain, Scotland, Canada and the U.S., saw the two recently discovered species stretched in some sort of taxidermy Picasso-like angst. We examined bones, teeth and hooves kept in a primitive specimen drawer. There was a certain cultural elitism in those campfire conversations in deep jungle near Laos in 1994, but some of us already knew the contradictions lifting out of our bombast and bravado. The Canadian talked about clear cutting in his country, or how salmon runs had been virtually stopped because of logging and mining. I told a buffalo story – about 62 million of them, and 90 million beaver, both almost completely eradicated or trapped out. The Brits shared how English sparrows were going by the wayside because of Homo urbanis (urban man). The Irishman mentioned the British coming into his native land centuries ago and cutting down all pine and deciduous forests. The reality is that Vietnam then had over 85 million people with one of the fastest population growth rates around, high for even the rest of Asia. During spasms of war, civil unrest and purging, the people had to find every morsel of food to keep bellies from bloating. This is the conundrum today for the rest of the world, even post-industrialized societies like the U.S. or Canada; food security is at the top of lists of impending sustainability items to tackle. They are seeing food prices are mostly oil prices – fossil fuel tag tied to inputs of fertilizer and insecticides, all the agricultural mechanization and the transportation and packaging. That’s like 10 to 15 energy calories for each calorie of industrial food. Too often, though, food is equated with industrial models, but in the food movement of the greens, social or field justice is also advocated. For instance, just this July 4, I received a note asking me to sign onto a letter to the VP of Trader Joe’s recommending that the company quit throwing literally tons of good food away each month. Something like 55 percent of the good food we buy in the U.S. is tossed. We in this country that exports thinkers and science around the world to work on sustainability and ecological issues are blowing up mountains and fouling streams for dirty coal; we’re hydro-fracturing geological strata and fouling water for the price of gas; we’re driving polluted biodomes into Nagasaki hell, with factory farming and unsustainable land use practices. We’re thinking here in North America that we are vaunted, valued beyond measure, full of exceptional thinking, and entitled to a lavish and even quasi-sustainable lifestyle at the expense of other cultures and societies and the globe’s collective commons. Places like India see farmers committing suicide by tens of thousands annually, sometimes poisoning themselves with pesticides forced on them by companies like Monsanto in order to grow patented crops. China is scrambling with other countries in a race to gobble up millions of African acres and hedge bets on feeding populations, not just the basics but for bio-fuel and luxury foods. At the expense of local communities and entire societies, those countries face famine, civil unrest, and Diasporas. The role of the journalist and storyteller is that more important today. Here’s what one of my favorite journalists, Chris Hedges, adds: “Corporations, which have hijacked the state, are delighted with the demise of journalism. And the mass communications systems they control pump out endless streams of gossip, trivia and filth in lieu of new. But news, which costs money and takes talent to produce, is dying not only because citizens are migrating to the Internet and corporations are no longer using newsprint to advertise, but because in an age of profound culture decline the masses prefer to be entertained rather than informed.” “We no longer value the culture of journalism, as we no longer value classical theater or great books, and this devaluation means the general public is not inclined to pay for it. Journalists, like artists, are expected to provide their work free—this is the idea behind sites like The Huffington Post—and the only people who receive adequate compensation in our society are those skilled in the art of manipulation. Money flows to advertising rather than to art or journalism because manipulation is more highly valued than truth or beauty. Journalism, like culture, in America has become advertising.” The role I see myself playing is part of that bridge, looking at topics from a journalist’s eye, but also caring about the unseen, topics and beliefs shunted aside because of this culture of consumerism and sound bites. In some ways, the medium isn’t the message – the words and pragmatic work behind it are what count. Reporting is time-consuming and gets many to dead ends. We have to go through tons of documents, get out there and talk to people, immerse ourselves in communities, develop skills to see through the PR-spin and propaganda. We must find whistleblowers, look for new trends and understand the complexities of a global citizenry. We have to know history and celebrate truth. My little part in this journalistic pugilistic world will be played out at DTE. Enjoy, engage, and entice me. I will respect the nawalakw (a concept discussed in Part 1), and engender openness.