The Strong Earth

My friend Gia has asked me to write about “being green” from an American perspective. I don’t know the first thing about the environment or America perspectives, but I know New York.

The Hell Gate Bridge, which spans a famously difficult strait of New York’s East River, is an Arch bridge that’s almost a hundred years old. It connects the borough of Queens to two of Manhattan’s outlying islands and sits atop the final resting place for hundreds, perhaps thousands, of sunken ships. It is a railroad bridge, built to carry heavy freight trains in a time when such trains were running almost non-stop. The Arch itself, a structure discovered by the Mesopotamians, is one of mankind’s most robust, versatile, and resilient inventions. This is a strong bridge.

Roughly a thousand years after the last human has disappeared from the New York Islands, the bridge, having been eaten away by various organisms, left to expand and contract during the seasons, and untreated or re-inforced by mankind’s “genius”, will come crashing down into the East River, fall into pieces, get eaten by fish or left to rot on the bottom, and eventually disappear. But, again, being a very strong bridge, it will have been preceded in death by every other bridge that crosses the East River; and by every skyscraper and apartment building in the city; and by every road and sidewalk. When Humans are gone, the City will become, save for a few structural hold-outs waiting for their time, little more than a giant forest. Not the post-apocalyptic, post human wasteland envisioned by films, but a complete and triumphant return to it’s original state.

What green activists, oil executives, politicians, celebrities, and even scientists seem to have forgotten is a basic fact: In any struggle between Humans and the Earth, the Earth will win, hands down, every time. Long after the water has become undrinkable, the air unbreathable, our habitat unlivable; when we’ve killed ourselves to the last man; poisoned, infected, choked, and starved ourselves, Nature will not be at all hurt, but simply waiting. Waiting to step back in and reclaim; to clean the air, purify the water, lower the temperature, and return itself to normalcy.

New York, perhaps America’s bellwether city, is not at all green. It’s brown sometimes, grey in the winter, definitely black, it’s had short bursts of red, to politicians it’s usually blue, in the last few decades it’s been increasingly pink, and it has more than it’s ample share of rainbow flags, but never, ever, has it been green. The trash bins on every corner don’t distinguish between glass, paper, or Styrofoam cups. The smells of outer-New Jersey refineries are a fact of life, unlamented and rarely complained about. The early morning sees gardens of trash lying on the streets, an almost legendary reminder of where you are. And, in a city where you rarely drive more than 30mph, you’re more likely to see a Hummer than a hybrid.

I don’t point fingers at my fellow city dwellers, I myself am quite terrible. I rarely recycle, use far more water than I should or need, and if I pick up trash it’s more a question of aesthetics than responsibility. I’m not bragging here, I understand how terrible this all is and feel guilty, but like the city itself: I have too many concerns; must move too quickly, must make money, must have sex, must eat, must, must, must. In a New York Minute, even a second for the environment is a second that can’t be spared.

The other day as as I sat in a Diner, I found myself thinking about my environmental apathy while staring at a plastic encased straw. Plastic is very bad. But for most people, the idea of getting a straw, or anything, that’s not covered in plastic is a little disturbing. Why? Germs, of course! Everyone of the last two generations has spent their lives being warned about germs. The very things which we’ve been using to protect ourselves from nature, to sanitize and cleanse, are now, not surprisingly, nature’s biggest enemies. The old saying “You’re damned if you do, damned if you don’t” seems to increasingly be mankind’s position: Too reliant on destructive things to give them up, but eerily aware and conscious about there destructive capabilities.

As usual, I don’t really have an answer here (which is why people shouldn’t ask me things like this). But let’s be clear: I’m not destroying the Earth. I’m destroying myself. New York, America, and Humanity aren’t killing the planet; we’re committing suicide. The planet we live on, will live on. It’s stronger than the gases, than the plastics, than the people. Likewise, when we talk about “Saving the Planet”: It’s really Mankind that needs saving. Too many solutions seem to leave out Humans on the arrogant assumption that, in the long run, our marvellously unsuccessful species can really hurt this giant rock any more than a goldfish can destroy it’s own fishbowl.

This isn’t about Green, it’s about people.