editorial

What will it take to save the earth? What will it take to stop our current headlong race to geocide? How many of the current crop of ecocides can we use to trade in for one geocide?

What will it take to turn the arrogant grandstanding of politicians mouthing relatively trivial and inane concerns into truly wise words, nay, truly wise actions, that can lead us out of this mess. Why do they follow us into the moral lapse of the least common denominator?

West Virginia native, Jedidiah Purdy, in his singular book, For Common Things, cites an excellent example of the typical politician’s disfiguring of the truth. When Bruce Babbitt in West Virginia stood at the strip mine ruined cite at Hobet 21 and proclaimed that the devastation represented a good example of "having a vital economy and living in equilibrium with the landscape," he was conforming to all the evil verbal excesses that politicians are heir to.

Says Purdy, "For Babbitt ... words became a screen between the speaker and the world, concealing the shape and texture of things in the gauze of anodyne phrases. That kind of talk ... does not appreciate the difficulties with which the world presents us." Well said, if perhaps a little understated.

If there is any way at all to save the earth, it must be through a firm counter to the incessant bombardment of mind numbing palaver spewing from an American religious faith through not only politicians, but from the mainstream media, accompanied always by the ever present profit-induced advertising. It must be done through environmental education in the very deepest sense. (Essentially, the education of all levels of society and age groups. But mostly I’m talking about the young folks.)

Governor Underwood in his state of the state address spoke of "balanced" environmental education being introduced in the schools. Unfortunately, many schools in West Virginia are now getting too big a dose of pro-industry propaganda that serves as the kind of balance Underwood is likely talking about. In our state the schools have been permeated by this kind of "balance" since time immemorial by Big Coal.

When people take seriously the notion of a "balanced" science being taught which includes creation "science" (which obviously is not science at all but a religious faith), then how can we get to present the deeper ecological issues to set to rights the highly erroneous, culturally driven, earth-destroying religion of Progress, the American Way and blatant Materialism?

As Michael Hasty implies in his column this month, this religion is infecting the earth with much more power of destruction on the human (and unfortu- nately all other) species than some dire new all-pervading pestilence. Yes, the Walmartization that has swept America had not long ago blossomed into the world dominion of Coca Cola and McDonalds. The world looks up to America and, it’s sad to say, wants to emulate it. Even more reason for us here to totally change our ways of being on the earth.

One area of encouragement is that college students are now beginning to revisit the activist program they had going in the ‘60s. The principle issue then was the Vietnam War – now it is the growing power of international oligarchy that is mindlessly and greedily exploiting the earth, destroying equally species of indigenous forms of the human kind as well as species and ecosystems from the rest of the natural world. Students were a force in the Seattle protests. Large numbers of them are expected to protest against the IMF and the World Bank on April 16^th in Washington, DC. Jack Slocomb in his article in this month’s Voice relates an inspiring moment with a lad who, immersed in a natural woodland setting, suddenly seems to catch a glimpse of the enlightenment that our young people will need to bring about this kind of change. He emphasizes that the young need to get out into the wilds to view the gestalt of the natural world – it cannot be done in front of a TV set or computer, or even in the classroom.

Perhaps out of Mona-Thon 2000 there will be new awakening of the young to the wilds through the hiking activities of the oldsters. Perhaps there is the kernel of a movement that will snowball into the revolutionary change that is essential to the earth and the survival of all living creatures on it.

And, yes, Hugh and Gabriel (guest columnists), I’m glad that SEN has reconvened. Moreover, I’m glad that the spiritual transformation that occurred with Gabriel in his tracking pursuits has locked him into the connection with the natural world that we all have lurking somewhere in our beings. E. O. Wilson speaks of this as a basic instinctual biophilia (which the American Way tries its best to rid us of). It will take nothing less than a kind of evangelism to make the essential outreach into the human realm of the biophilia in all of us widespread and meaningful.