A bird or a plane?
What a visual - the first thing we saw was a half-sunken plane and the pitiful little stick figures of humans forlornly standing on the wings slowly sinking into the freezing river and then the ferries and tugs rushing to their side like a huddle of anxious mothers plucking them, every single one of them, from that icy death and bring them safely to shore. Not bad for an omen. Everyone was in danger, everyone was saved.
Except the geese. What were geese doing in New York in January? Now part of the post-incident discussion is about the problem of birds and planes sharing the air space. My friend, Joey Racano, an activist in California, has an interesting take on this in his blog at EarthSourceMedia, an imaginary conversation between the tower, a pilot and a flock of geese.
Another either/or question was asked this week in Chris Clarke’s blog Coyote Crossing - a fish or a tortoise. . . . “Where, exactly, is the line between a new Glen Canyon Dam on the wild river of your choice, on the one hand”, he said, and clearing 5.2 square miles of the Ivanpah Valley for the Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System and relocating all the tortoises found on the site (which is a very complicated and probably fatal operation)?
Chris ends the article with: Which raises the question: why is a fish more valuable than a tortoise? Before we put our fingers on the map and say “there,” I’d like to hear an answer to that.
The only way to answer that question, in my opinion, is to find a way to look at the whole and sit down and make a plan that gives the best possible outcome for both the fish and the tortoise - and us and every other being involved.
The best example of this I have found is what has just happened in Ecuador. Ecuador has ratified a new constitution containing the “Rights of Nature” - the “right to exist, persist, maintain and regenerate its natural cycles, structure, functions and its processes in evolution.” The government is now responsible for “precaution and restriction measures in all the activities that can lead to the extinction of species, the destruction of ecosystems or the permanent alteration of natural cycles.”
Can you imagine? That “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” extends to all living things, to the fish and the tortoise, the human and the goose? Think of all the activities of human development - mining, drilling, producing energy, mass transportation, corporate agribiz and on and on - airplanes! - that interfere with wild nature. What does this actually mean? The people of Ecuador are ready to take on that question.
I have been following the work of the Peter Berg and the Planet Drum Foundation since it was founded in 1973. Planet Drum developed the concept of a bioregion: “a distinct area with coherent and interconnected plant and animal communities, and natural systems, often defined by a watershed”.
Since 1998, after El Nino rains and a 7.2 earthquake destroyed a large part of the Ecuadorian coastal city of Bahia de Caraquez, Planet Drum has been there carrying out a major bioregional project to re-vegetate a city barrio as well as surrounding hillsides with native trees for erosion control against future mudslides and creating an urban “wild corridor.” They also host a Bioregional Education Program for school kids in the area. Now the people of Ecuador are the first in the world to give equal rights to the natural world, itself.
In Starhawk’s book, “The Fifth Sacred Thing,” a book about how things could be in the not-so-distant future, the animals, the birds, the fish all have their representatives at the deciding councils. Let us hear from both the fish and the tortoise, from the geese as well as the humans on the plane.