Spirituality and Ecological Hope

Fostering Ecological Hope

Today from Margaret Swedish:

You've been hearing and reading reports (Wash. Post, NY Times, MSNBC) about the Army Corps of Engineers' self-critique regarding its woefully lacking levee protection system in New Orleans, the system that failed so dreadfully last year.  For those interested, here's where you can read the draft report.

For all its self-criticism, the reality is that the Army Corps of Engineers provides a perfect anti-symbol for how to live with nature.  For the Corps, there is hardly a natural system that cannot be improved upon by the engineering designs of we humans, literally beating nature into submission.  The entire Mississippi River, its flood plain, the delta, and the levee and canal systems around New Orleans are all profound examples of this.  Nature has its way, though, and often we get paid back for our hubris in thinking we can control its forces.

Even more incredible, claiming this sort of male-god-like worship of human ingenuity to tame nature, the Corps then tries to do it on the cheap, cutting corners, and in the case of New Orleans, bringing about "the largest civil engineering disaster in the history of the United States."  Your tax money at work, folks.

Now here we are, stuck with (if we aren't willing to change) cities and economies that depend upon the success of this hubris.  We never think the really bad thing will happen, but odds are that eventually it will.

The Bush administration is also so much to blame, drastically cutting back on money for the levee system to pay for the war in Iraq — even as folks were beginning to realize the catastrophic nature of the threat.

You see, ecological hope will depend upon a good dose of humility, a deeper comprehension of the web of life of which we humans are just one part.  We need to remember that we can actually disrupt and even destroy nature, and in doing so at the current scale will end up destroying ourselves. 

We need to remember also that nature could do away with the human species and still there would be nature, life.  Nature doesn't depend on us, we depend on it.

Only by restoring the balance of our relationship with this earth and its life systems, living gently and humbly within that web, will we have the hope of surviving as a species.  We can do this, but we need to dispense with models like that of the Army Corps in order to do so.

By the way, New Orleans is sinking.  Some scientists have known this a long time and have tried to warn people about it.  The Army Corps ignored this.  Everyone is avoiding it right now, frantic as we are to show, by golly, that we can rebuild and move on and prove how ingenious we humans are one more time.  Hey, we Americans, we always show 'em — we can do anything, right?