Some errors of our era

We finally got lots of rain last night. The telltale puddle in the driveway was close to full this morning. Yesterday brought several severe storms to our north with winds and hail bringing down lots of leaves and some trees. Meanwhile, the UN secretary general has announced that “the era of global boiling has arrived.” Nevertheless the Biden administration has chosen to not (yet?) declare a climate emergency. Neither have I read that there are any pre-established triggers or criteria for such a declaration.

Meanwhile, closer to home, yet another aquifer puncture has been discovered along Enbridge's Line 3. I’ve not yet learned how all the fines in the world will actually restore the environment, sort of similar to how long it’s estimated to take for earth’s climate to begin to return to “normal” if we ever minimize greenhouse gas discharges. The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources is being sued to keep it from requiring approved manure management plans for Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations [CAFOs]. In Minnesota, I wonder if there’s any state agency that does as much to support metals recycling as the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources does to support metals mining.

recycling before extraction

Photo by J. Harrington

Back when Manifest Destiny was aspirational, the colonizing powers gave away land to get the country “developed.” In 1972, the Clean Water Act Amendments updated and expanded the “Rivers and Harbors Act (1899), the Federal Water Pollution Control Act (1948), the Water Quality Act (1965), and the Refuse Act (1970)” Folks are still debating the interpretation and coverage of that legislation. There has been no comparable update to the Mining Act of 1872. We have long “settled” and colonized the country from coast to coast. We no longer need to promote extractive industries as an economic development strategy. Protecting and restoring clean air, water, food sovereignty and, probably, manufacturing are more critical priorities if we wish to have a survivable future, let alone a sustainable one.

There’s an old saying in the planning profession: “More of the same never solved a problem.” The same is true of law and politics. We can and must do better and stop the “same old, same old” solutions.

Value Added

By Stephen Sandy

No one knew what the stones like squatting frogs

signified. There they were, fuming in rows, out

of the ground; every critic had his explanation

or hers. But—we had to remember—they

 

came to nothing, every one; those large stones

out of the earth served the systems

of those who considered them, as explaining

something about the past it was important

 

for the explainer to explain. And yet

no one had any idea truly; there was no

basis in fact for any view of them, and

they remained like their origins—or like

 

smiling Olmec babies, sweet but ominous figures

come from the earth to reproach us, almost

cheerfully, for our ignorance—a mystery, just

as the probe of our feelings came up with nothing.

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