BlackNotBlack.com

A Gift to the Earth

I got started on an Iceland kick back in October with two posts called Flags of Our Soccer Hooligans, Part 1 and Part 2, and now cold weather has me thinking about that country again. One of the things that impressed me about the place is the relationship between the people and the environment. It’s the ideal of a green nation. Admittedly, Icelanders have two built-in advantages—a low growth rate that doesn’t strain their green infrastructure, and abundant natural heat driven by volcanism. But these facts don’t diminish the truth that Icelandic nature is such a raw, overpowering presence that green, peaceful coexistence with it is the only realistic choice.


Looking back over my Iceland photos, the strongest emotions are triggered by images of the landscape. I’ve always understood that the value of nature does not lie in whether it can be observed or exploited. Hailing from Colorado, and seeing that region embark upon a path of self-destruction mislabeled as growth, cannot help but teach that lesson. Don’t get me wrong—people reproduce and they have to live somewhere. But the building of suburban condos without thought to how people will move from home to market and home to job has made miasmic labyrinths of cities. Building a light rail system only after the roads are already jammed to a standstill is folly when those same roads just fifty years earlier had working rail systems which were dismantled. Some cities, such as San Francisco, were farsighted enough to keep their mass transit systems. Now scientific data has caught up with common sense, and we know that green growth is demonstrably profitable.

It may seem impossible to resist the trend toward uncontrolled growth. Growth is good, growth means jobs. But behind the scenes, what growth really means is millions of dollars for ten or twenty men who live in the Caribbean, while the communities they build grapple with traffic, pollution, and high gas prices as their inhabitants struggle to make their way toward distant work places. But to resist growth is anti-American, perhaps even evil. After all, in capitalist societies the market is king, supposedly blessed by God himself, and the word sayeth that even though there be ample room in city centers, it is okay to raze virgin aspen groves to build condos. And it’s also okay to tell gullible buyers they’re purchasing a piece of untamed nature when the plan all along is to pack in a few thousand more homes, two malls, and six Burger Kings.


But there's a radical alternative, which is to question whether a class of people who are destroying the American wilderness—and with G.W. Bush's blessing propose selling national parks for condo development—are worth listening to anymore. In Iceland I saw what a culture looks like when it doesn’t make those disastrous choices. Parts of the country look like Vail, Colorado, before the mountains were stripped bare for quad ski lifts. Other parts look like northern California, before that region became dotted with alpine condos. The Icelandic example is the result of a continual fight against greedy real estate barons who refuse to be told when enough is enough. And that’s the entire point—when green advocates fight back, ultimately compromise and balance is the result. In the U.S. real estate barons are fighting a battle without adversaries.


Wandering around Iceland you start to ask yourself—is there another way? And the answer echoes back to you from the vast snowy landscape—it would be a gift to the Earth.

posted by Egan Ehlers @ 11:23 PM