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TODAY Monday 14 July 1997 Each weekday. Conn Nugent on what's new in the world, on the site. |
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TODAY Monday 14 July 1997 Each weekday. Conn Nugent on what's new in the world, on the site. |
TODAY IN THE WORLD: Follow Me
Katherine has stopped smoking. The necessary willpower and energy are formidable. Mostly her willpower and energy, but bystanders have a role in supportive therapies.
Like many in her position, Katherine has sought comfort in salubrious activities neglected a bit during the pack-a-day era. Hikes, swims, crossword puzzles. Last night it occurred to Katherine that since postponing death was her major objective, a trip to a graveyard would be tonic. When told that the nearest cemetery included the grave of Emily Dickinson, she brooked no delay in getting there.
The sun was setting when we arrived, and the angled red light cast the headstones in appropriate relief. It took a while to reach Emily, for the graves nearest downtown were seductive. Granite and marble incised with willows and angels and winged skulls, often underlined by cautionary texts on the transience of life. Our favorite was a verse, carved in deep italic, under a name now eroded:
Readers, behold as you pass by.
As you are now, so once was I.
As I am now, so must you be.
Prepare for death and follow me.As middle-aged members of the third generation of Americans with vaccines and safe water, we assume that a few decades still separate us from the end. But surrounded by mothers dead from childbirth, seven-year-olds swept away by cholera, and young men overcome by the filth of Civil War hospitals, we are reminded of the sheer historical novelty of our assumptions about lifespan. That we anathematize a pleasurable but life-shortening narcotic is a demonstration of time-won confidence in the stability of late 20th Century longevity. Fatalism is not a particularly American response. In societies with older cultures but less mature consumerism, cigarette smoking is growing spectacularly. In Russia, in 1990, 50% of the men and 10% of the women smoked cigarettes. Today it's 65% of the men and 30% of the women.
The specialists who study polls and focus groups will tell you that the surest way to arouse American public opinion about an environmental threat is to describe it as a threat to family health. The environmental problem most often cited by voters is "pollution;" the most common fear is of some variety of contamination -- seen or unseen -- that causes sickness or premature death. There is also a widespread and distinctively American appreciation of open space, parks, and wilderness, but it is an appreciation more difficult to galvanize politically. Thus climate change is presented, inter alia, as an opportunity for new or revived tropical diseases to spread among populations heretofore unaffected by them. The loss of biodiversity is described as the squandering of natural sources of the wonder drugs of tomorrow. This anthropocentric health-obsessiveness is almost surely required in a mass democratic society. That enviros are getting good at it is a welcome development, no matter that some of us may disapprove of the vulgarity of it all.
Over the last twenty years or so, scientists have been presenting evidence that indicates that natural ecosystems have their own life-and-death cycles, irrespective of human interventions, just like we animals do. Steady-state equilibrium is much more rare than earlier supposed; given enough time, natural systems tend to crash and burn. Sometimes the forces that impel the destruction are internal. But more and more, it seems, the hand of death comes from outside the organism. Almost everyone agrees that big rocks from space hit the earth much more than was believed a generation ago; apparently, one especially big rock hit the Yucatan Peninsula and killed off the dinosaurs and a few million other species. It is now theorized that every 50,000 years or so there is a really big-big volcanic explosion that decimates the ranks of flora and fauna. Marty Strange -- a man frequently associated with sustainable agriculture -- said he personally didn't use the word "sustainable" much because someday the earth would be hit by a comet that wouldn't spare the model farms of Nebraska.
This line of musing may seem to consign environmentalism to the function of buying time to save nature from human destruction while we await the death of nature from natural destruction. Personally, I regard buying time as an excellent thing to do, whether it's by stopping smoking for your lungs or stopping carbon dioxide emissions for your atmosphere. You and the atmosphere won't live forever, but that's precisely why we care about nurturing life, and why we glimpse and describe realities that predate us and follow us. When at last we reached the grave of Emily Dickinson, the inscription was simple: her name, her dates, and a brief epitaph. "Called Back," it said.
TODAY ON THE SITE
For an excellent summary of the public health implications of global change, have a look at Paul Epstein's High Five review of the Web resources on the subject.
Recent "Today" columns:
7/11: Blood Sports
7/10: Oil and Taxes
7/09: Mexico
7/08: By the Sea, By the Sea
7/07: Huddled Masses
7/03: Three-Dot Environmentalism...
7/02: Bothersome Science
7/01: Forest for the Trees
6/30: Investing in Pessimism
6/27: Good Speech (Keep it Quiet)
To access more "Today" columns, click "Archives" below.