The Big Flood By Mike Roselle

Things are just starting to dry out on the Russian River after the big New Years Eve flood. One local described the deluge as the fifth biggest flood in the last thirty-five years and I believed him. The power went off, there was no water, the roads and stores were closed but fortunately we had put away a big stash of beer and food for a lot of people who were not able to join us because of the evacuation order and the police roadblocks. Only officials, locals and looters were allowed to pass. The Russian River was raging, and the hot tubs were making their seven-year migration to the sea along with a lot of patio furniture and the occasional propane tank. It had been raining steadily since I drove the El Camino out here just before Thanksgiving, and the day before New Year it really let loose. The creeks were swollen. Mudslides and down trees were everywhere, demonstrating why an eminent geologist once described California’s Coast Range as an “uplifted ménage of goo”.

The situation was getting a little sketchy so my friend Fiak and I decided to make some beer. Some of the folks whose houses were flooded in the lower areas came up the mountain for New Years Eve, and one of them, Rob, even brought his hot tub along. It was too late for his propane tank, which was prevented from joining the migration only through very heroic efforts. It was in the back yard tied to a post; bobbing and snorting, obviously very envious of the other tanks that were released into the wild to go wherever it is that propane tanks go in these situations.

Speaking of migrations, I am back out in the Golden State because this is the where the action is. Northern California is the center of the Progressive Universe and is home to many of its most prominent thinkers and activists. I also had a free place to stay, it is warmer than Montana, and Josh was getting tired of me sleeping in the Lowbagger office. I told him I was coming up here to write, but the mid-winter holiday season is no time to sit at a computer. No, I have been doing a lot of reading, and no, I probably won’t do any book reviews because most of what I have been reading has been science and history and to review them you would have to understand the subject matter a little better and probably not smoke so much pot. On the other hand, I have been trying to figure out what some of the latest scientific and historic discoveries all mean on the political level. It has to mean something!

There are those who have argued that human history is just a tiny speck of geologic time, even a tiny speck of biological time. We are recent arrivals, and our chances under the best of conditions to survive as long as say, the yeast in the beer, are remote. It now seems like it would only take about twenty million years to respecieate the entire planet after the human-caused mass extinction now looming on our horizon. So what’s the big deal? By fighting our own extinction, are we going against the natural order? If the mainstream of human history is a light-speed rush toward extinction, why should we attempt to alter the course of evolutionary history? Is it natural to want to save nature when our kind has been evidently trying to destroy it for over 40,000 years? Are we even evolutionarily equipped for survival?

On a purely biological level I think the answer to the question is no. Our genes carry the seeds of our own destruction. If we simply follow them blindly into the future, we will join the many other species that have naturally evolved into a highly specialized organism only to face extinction when the biological or geological or even cosmological shit hit the fan. It seems obvious that now that we know that we have genes, and where they come from, we can no longer allow them to determine future events. This is something we already do with some of our so-called “instincts”, which we now suppress regularly or face the likelihood of a long life in prison. We have the genes not only of hunter-gatherers, but of heavily armed, hairless warrior apes on drugs. Like the hot tubs and propane tanks of the Russian River, we heard a call to our destiny. Like the propane tanks, we have to chain those callings down or they will go feral. Now I know a lot of people advocate going feral in order to be more natural, but very few actually do it unless they work for the Buffalo Field Campaign, because let’s face it, few of us would eat road kill. Anyway, one thing we know about evolution is that it never goes backward. It may be that in order to save nature we will have to leave it behind.

I am not talking about leaving it behind in the literal sense, because we will need to recognize the importance of the natural world. I am talking abandoning our ancient concept of the natural world in favor of a more modern one. This is already happening and has being going on for some time. Preserving land for non-commercial reasons is a modern, even revolutionary idea. It is also increasingly necessary for the survival of our own species. Conservation is not only a revolutionary concept but evolutionary significant one. Our success will affect the chemical composition of the atmosphere and ensure the survival of a much larger gene pool for all of life except the bacteria, which would evidently hardly notice our passing. I think about this as I welcome the New Year and watch beer ferment. We have been co-evolving with the yeast in beer for 10,000 years. Will these little organisms wave goodbye to us as we exit the stage of evolution, or would they be glad to see us go, so that they can return to the wild? This is very difficult to determine by just watching them multiply, but they seem content for the moment.

The last year has been one of tremendous change both politically and especially environmentally. Conservation biology is a brand new science, even though conservation in some form or another is probably as old as civilization itself. The difference today is that the idea of conservation is no longer isolated in a number of islands distributed over time and space. Through the miracle of over population and over industrialization, we are now united into one big, frightened community of people who read more than one book. We are like a river, with many currents, all of them flowing into one mighty angry river, which itself flows into the larger more stagnant sea of progressive thought. In this sense, 2005 was the year of the big flood. One of the results of this flood is that the cause of global warming, one of the things that would forever cement us into geological history, is no longer doubted. I have long predicted that this would be a watershed moment in the history of human civilization, but I also predicted that the Oakland Raiders would make a comeback this year and win the Superbowl, heralding the new millennium.

The danger I see in all of this pesky knowledge is that people risk getting too fatalistic or even pessimistic about the situation, which could only be described as an emergency. After watching the locals along the Russian River respond to their emergency, I am encouraged by the way people find a way to work together during a crisis. Everyone I saw was smiling, even as they were trying to lasso their wandering propane tanks. They were thankful for any respite from the rain, for the warmth of a fire, the feeling of a meal and a beer in their belly, and never blaming nature or the gods. The Russian River dwellers know that this is part of the risk of living close to a river. Yet for them, being near the river is somehow worth the risks of severe weather and the resulting furniture migration.

And that is how it must be with global warming. We will work together to get through it, not only working with each other, but each of us working for nature, as well. We can rise to the occasion and get through it together by paddling forward, or we can just watch it from our hot tub as we are swept down the river to the fabled spawning grounds of the giant propane tanks. Or, if you are like me, sometime you will paddle, and sometimes you will just float along with a good buzz.

As long as we are talking about holidays, I got an invite from John Passacantando to attend the Greenpeace Holiday Party in Chinatown. I had no idea I was still on the list. Something else on the invitation caught my attention. The executive director of a large international environmental group was pushing for a large-scale industrial energy project in Nantucket Sound. John boasted that Greenpeace had “pushed the Cape Wind project nearer to acceptance so the hoi polloi from Martha's Vineyrd (sic) will have real green energy to power their cocktail blenders”

I was astounded. The same day that Greenpeace sent out their e-mail invitations, the New York Times had published an eloquent and passionate editorial by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. that argued against the Cape Wind project on environmental grounds. The proposed wind energy development includes 130 windmills over 400 feet tall, a transformer station and tanks containing 40,000-gallons of potentially toxic oil on a platform over one hundred foot high. Additionally, there will be hundreds of miles of submerged cables posing a threat to shipping and wildlife. Why would Greenpeace, a group with limited resources, be pushing a highly subsidized industrial power station in an area under consideration for a national marine sanctuary, and critical habitat for dolphins, seals and a half a dozen species of whales? Especially since this project is opposed by local fishermen, the tourism industry and the local residents.

It seems to me that the answer to this question might be in the wording of the Holiday Invite. It’s the “hoi polloi from Martha’s Vineyard” and their pesky cocktail blenders. Striking a blow against the hypocrisy of the rich probably seemed like a good idea. But is it really a good reason to support this kind of industrial development in an area that is used heavily by people of all income levels? Is this the new face of alternative energy? We will be asked to sacrifice more natural habitat for our own selfish and wasteful energy needs?

These are important questions in the age of “peak oil”. If some analysts are to be believed, we are nearing the peak of oil production on this planet. This means that prices will continue to go up. Higher prices will attract a huge new wave of investment in alternative energy and undoubtedly global warming will provide the urgency to scare people into thinking that more undisturbed natural areas are needed for energy production. Unless we prepare now, we may face a new threat to Wildlands from alternative energy advocates who care more about profits and kilowatts than they do about wilderness and wildlife. We will also face more of the shopworn arguments that conservationists are elitists who don’t care about other people. And now also the sad fact that Greenpeace will be standing with these venture capitalists and their engineers while they clutter the natural landscape with windmills, solar collectors, and other large scale industrial developments in the name of clean energy.

On a strategic level, it seems unwise to single out a community for a project just because they are rich and famous. This is no better that singling someone out just because they are low income, ugly and can’t play the guitar. We have many staunch allies among the well-heeled residents of Martha’s Vineyard and I am not just talking about Bobby Kennedy, Jr. Both Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. understood the importance of having allies among both the wealthy and well known and the poor and dispossessed. In a war between the rich and poor, both sides usually lose. The bottom line is that rich or poor, industrial scale energy developments such as oilfields, coalmines, and even wind farms are inappropriate in biologically sensitive areas.

I suggest you contact John at (john.passacantando@wdc.greenpeace.org) and ask that Greenpeace reconsider their position.

Mike Roselle is going to be in Northern California until late January. Floyd is in Alabama recovering from their last road trip. Roselle, and perhaps Floyd, plan to travel with Randy Hayes to the World Social Summit in Caracas, Venezuela at the end of the month. Mike plans to bring you the news you can use. He will cover the issues that no one else will cover, talk to people no one else will talk to, and report things that no one else will remember. That’s right; he will be covering the Bars.