poop

My neighbor has given me poop.

From her ducks, that is.

She has given me duck poop smeared straw, the perfect winter blanket for my garden beds. Duck waste breaks down in my garden, nourishing the soil in preparation for planting. My harvest, in turn, helps nourish her egg laying ducks. I give her yummies from the garden or headed to compost in exchange for duck eggs. My neighbor and I are eager for the summer when we will herd her ducks over to my vegetable beds for an all you can eat insect buffet.

At first I thought ducklings were like cartoon goats, able to eat anything-rotten vegetables, moldy bread (let the record show I never gave them tin cans). This is not at all the case. My patient neighbor created a duck menu for me so I wouldn’t kill her fuzzy dependents with my ignorance. 

When we take kale or greens to the ducks, my daughters sometimes feed them. Having observed them from duckling to practically grown now, we’ve watched their personalities unfold. Also in my ignorance, I had thought only people and pets had distinct personalities. Now I wonder what other species have personalities.

Have you ever experienced a duck egg? Sturdier and harder to break than a chicken egg, the shell’s hue varies, delicate blues and pinks. They also differ in size, surprising if you’re accustomed to uniform store bought eggs. The yolk is bigger, summer sun orangey and the whites are more viscous. The flavor is strong but does not linger the way store eggs sometimes do.

There isn’t a rule saying you can’t bake with duck eggs but I do not want them absorbed into something else. They are for frying. And smelling. Tasting. Savoring. 

I know the journey of these eggs. 

I know my neighbor rearranged her life and backyard to accommodate a dozen ducks and another neighbor helped design and build their enclosure. I know all about the hoops of getting permits, not to mention how much my neighbor researched the proper care of ducks. So when I receive these eggs, I am mindful of how they came to me.

This mindfulness satisfies something more deeply than the eggs themselves.

I am now connected to my neighbor. We each have something the other needs and wants. We value each other’s efforts-she works to keep her ducks thriving and I am motivated to grow enough veggies to share. For six years, this neighbor and I had only waved to each other in passing. Because of her ducks and my garden we have a relationship, slowly evolving beyond eggs and greens. 

And poop. 

holocaust, part 5

This blog series was inspired by a group of twentysomethings with Great Plains Tar Sands Resistance. I heard them explain their engagement in Nonviolent Direct Action at a Sustainable Sanctuary Coalition meeting. They first detailed the process of how tar sands becomes oil then explained their fight against it. 

Tar sands resisters attempt to physically thwart any part of tar sands production and transport. Actions include barricading oneself inside a pipe to halt construction, sitting in trees slated to be clear-cut and staging hunger strikes and mock oil spills.

Following the tradition of civil disobedience, they use tactics outside political venues to peacefully challenge the institutional violence energy companies inflict. Not only have traditional methods to address environmental injustice proven futile, traditional institutions typically support those inflicting injustice. 

Civil disobedience is a way to stand in solidarity with those without political, social and economic means by becoming their allies and bringing attention to injustice as it happens. It is how ordinary people organize their collective power to change the world. 

What struck me listening to the Tar Sands resisters was their quiet conviction. They make manifest these words of Ghandi, “noncooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as is cooperation with good.” They learned about the Canadian tar sands megaproject and responded with compassion, their sense of moral obligation overriding self-preservation.

I am struck also by their courage. Oil companies have enough money to buy local police, politicians and newspapers for years on end. These amazing activists literally put their bodies on the line to advocate for marginalized people and nature sacrificed for resources and profit. In no way does it benefit them personally to shackle themselves to forklifts. 

They sometimes go to jail for this.

In fact, in December 2013, for the first time ever, terrorism laws were used against American citizens protesting a corporation's activities when four resisters were arrested.

Motivated by a sense of social justice, tar sands resisters are undaunted. Their very selves-simple, ordinary stones to topple Goliath. 

This is what they’re doing with their privilege.

What am I doing with mine?

***

I get that not everyone who reads this will suddenly want to engage in direct action. As the group emphasized when they spoke, this is the response they have chosen, not the only response. 

But everyone can respond. Everyone can do something. 

When one learns about injustice, the heart reacts. Then the mind kicks in with rationalizations to continue the status quo, to justify why things are they way they are. I think back on a conversation regarding slave labor producing the cheap goods we Americans love. The person responded with a shrug saying, “at least those people are earning money.”

Compassion insists on a different trajectory of thought and therefore ensuing action.

So if you’re not going to lie down in the path of an oil company’s bulldozer, what can you do? Here are 6 not so easy or convenient things to do.

1.) Start with compassion for yourself.

We live within destructive systems, based on extraction without thought to restoration. Since that’s the foundation of modern society, we are each hard-pressed to choose paths outside grooves worn since the industrial revolution. For instance, I can't start tooling around town on a horse because I'm anti-fossil fuels. How then can I lessen my cooperation with evil?

You may think I am being dramatic by calling the fossil fuel industry evil, particularly since what we privileged folks experience is the benefits. But understand oil, natural gas and coal have been and continue to be a slow motion holocaust.

2.) Educate yourself. There are thousands of resources available.

http://gptarsandsresistance.org/
http://www.nrdc.org/about/

http://ran.org/about-ran

http://350.org/

http://ssckc.org/ It was at one of their meetings where I first met the tar sands resisters. SSC is a local, ecumenical group that provides congregations with assistance in taking on creation care.

http://greenfaith.org/ 

3.) Let what you learn inform your choices.

An article on Nutella cited the six different countries required to make a jar of the stuff. The price point at my grocery store for Nutella does not cover its fuel cost. People who live where fossil fuels are extracted, shipped and refined pay that. It’s paid for in habitat loss for animals and people alike. And this is just to motor it all over the world. 

My kids love Nutella. Last year when we learned about the ingredient palm oil and habitat destruction, we had a conversation about not buying products containing it. Learning now about the fossil fuels involved, further affirms our decision to avoid Nutella. Instead of my kids feeling deprived of a sweet treat, they feel empowered when they pass it in the grocery store. They understand their choice helps orangutans.

4.) Seek like-minded people so you can help each other navigate challenging situations. I’m grateful to have found this group on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ClimateParents. 

I believe we parents can steer our children toward a more harmonious relationship with the earth and its inhabitants if we together, collectively, make different choices with our time and resources. We can turn globalization on its head so that we regard our interdependence with reverance rather than a vehicle for consumption. 

5.) Use what you’ve got. 

One of the resisters said he does this work to blockade passivity, to blockade indifference. In whatever ways we can, isn't that the responsibility-or in Ghandi's words, the moral obligation-of each of us? 

Channel your passion or vocation into creating a more environmentally just world. It grieves me that we've lost kinship with the natural world. Having been churched all my life, it's particularly grievous to listen to hymns and sermons about God's awesomeness manifest in nature yet witness Christians descerate creation in their daily choices. It grieves me to be unaware of how my goods get to me, who and what they impact along the way or where they go when I'm through with them. 

So I write. 

6.) Most importantly, understand there is no neutral. Our choices reverberate in a web of cause and effect.

Choose compassionately.

"Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity." Martin Luther King, Jr.

holocaust, part 4: who do the odds favor?

It’s probably not a shock I like dystopian novels and consider them cautionary tales. Since my oldest is into The Hunger Games, it’s on my mind a lot. Plus there are similarities that make us uncomfortably like the folks in the capitol. 

Without digging beneath the surface of things, we are preoccupied with entertainment in the forms of fashion, sports, reality TV and ‘human interest’ stories, as though what media presents is all there is to see. We have more consumables than we could possibly use or need. In a nod to globalization, these consumables come from outlying districts we’re only vaguely familiar with. Our goods have been extracted, harvested, and manufactured in conditions and through means of which we are oblivious. 

You may think the disparity between those in the capitol enjoying their coal driven technology and leisure and the poverty in District 12 is fabricated but it aptly parallels the true poverty of coal ravaged Appalachian regions and our own coal driven technology and leisure. 

And although we claim we would not endure the suffering of others, we are willing to sacrifice others to maintain our standard of living in the capitol. In our case we sacrifice nature and people.

This is environmental privilege.

In my fuel usage, I experience benefits without having to regard the true price. I drive my child across town for camp. I burn fuel to pursue my interests. In fact, some of my entertainment is based on burning fuel. I am unaware of the environmental privilege scaffolding me and mine above others. Even more so with tar sands oil, privilege allows me to think what I pay at the pump is the cost and boy, am I miffed if that seems too high. But my heritage is not being siphoned. My family’s private land is not coopted from me. My neighborhood doesn’t compromise my health and my water supply is, for the moment, safe. As for my children’s future of diminishing fresh water and an unstable climate, I can busy myself with test scores and extracurriculars.

Privilege allows me to disengage from the slow motion holocaust of people and nature while perpetuating it. Again, like those in the capitol, I feel entitled to focus on my own comfort and pleasure. And why wouldn’t I? I’ve earned it, right?

I have no more earned the right to clean air, water and soil than a First Nations Cree child deserves to eat tumor-encrusted salmon. Does yours?

I know. No one wants to hear this.

We want easy, convenient things to do like don’t idle or don’t top off the tank. We want the particulars of our lives to continue unaffected. But what about the particulars in the lives of those affected by tar sands? We have created a mess through ease and convenience and something more is required. Easy and convenient would be like asking the people in the capitol to tone down their hairdos in order to equalize the distribution of goods to outlying districts. 

Addressing environmental privilege is different than addressing racial, class or gender privilege. Leveling the playing field, in this case, doesn’t mean equal squandering of natural resources for all. Because environmental privilege is predicated on destruction-based consumption, the goal isn’t for everyone to be entitled to the same environmental license I have.

For those of us in the capitol, it means understanding the flip side of environmental privilege is environmental injustice. For starters then, it means educating ourselves about the resources we gobble up rather than unquestioningly consuming them. 

Tar sands pipelines crisscross North America compromising habitats, fresh water and the health of other beings (environmental injustice) to support my fuel consumption (environmental privilege). If I understand where my energy comes from, how it gets to me, who and what it impacts along the way, would I use it so blithely? If I myself would not pay with my health, habitat and heritage, why would I be content letting others do so?

Despite the illusion of the capitol, my choices do not exist in a bubble and are not neutral.

What makes Katniss such a compelling heroine is her compassion. Compassion moves her to volunteer as tribute, to honor Rue and to risk her life for Peeta. Through the trilogy, Katniss struggles with saving her own skin and her sister's-the privilege to protect one's private bubble-or choosing what will ultimately benefit everyone. To be clear, it is privilege to think one can hide out in a private bubble, protecting one's own. But that only works for so long; environmental destruction harms everyone.

Addressing environmental privilege will require a change of heart. Compassion has to move us beyond our privilege, personal comfort and overweaning addiction to entertainment in order to see the environmental injustice inflicted on marginalized people and nature. 

It's the only way the odds can be in everyone's favor. 

holocaust, part 3

Maybe we cannot see a holocaust as it is happening because it evolves gradually. Incrementally, dominant society accepts the ideation about and treatment of a targeted group. Whatever injustice occurs is conveniently executed out of sight, thereby out of consciousness.


Human health hinges on a healthy environment. As bitumen is extracted, processed and travels North America through pipelines, it corrupts the environment and threatens the health of marginalized populations-those with the least social, political and financial means.

Northern Alberta

The Athabasca Chipewyan and Mikisew Cree First nation communities downstream from tar sands extraction experience higher rates of cancer, particularly rare forms. Since they subsist on a traditional diet, it may be connected to the deformed fish in Lake Athabasca or the moose that drink from it. And this may be connected to the higher incidence of arsenic, mercury, cadmium, chromium, cobalt and lead in the water. The fish that First Nations peoples consume exceed US guidelines for mercury consumption. This means that parents are feeding their children what, for centuries, they’ve always fed their children. Only now their children also get a dose of heavy metals with every bite.

Speaking of water, there is no contingency plan for tailing ponds once operations at a site are finished. A conservative estimate suggests operational tailing ponds leak about 3 gallons daily. Billions of cubic meters of contaminated water will be left unattended. Do you think anyone’s coming back to clean up? Do you think wildlife know this water is lethal? If the river had always provided your family food and drink, what are your options now?

Besides the water being compromised, remember the forest? Since it’s being clear cut, where will First Nations people get their medicine or supplies for rituals? People previously self-sufficient are now increasingly dependent on social services because the essentials for their traditional way of life are being destroyed.

Minnesota

Enbridge, the largest Canadian tar sands pipeline operator, pumps dilbit south through Leech Lake lands. To keep it flowing, dilbit requires a tremendous amount of heat and chemicals, both of which are corrosive to the pipes, causing fissures and spills all along their length. In fact, there have been over 2,500 pipelines spills in the last decade. In 2010, three spills occurred within a 35-mile radius of tribal boundaries. One spill wasn’t detected until an oil soaked marsh accidently caught on fire and tribal members had to alert the company. Although Enbridge has plans for new construction, there are no plans to clean up existing spills that have polluted tribal waters.

Two major aquifers in Leech Lake are part of a watershed that feeds the Mississippi. What would happen if the headwaters of the Mississippi River-which runs to the Gulf of Mexico-are compromised by tar sands?

Because of eminent domain, landowners and farmers do not have to consent to companies running pipelines through their private property. This is happening in rural areas all over the United States, including Texas, Kansas, Nebraska, South Dakota. Anyway, how would a rural landowner or small farmer stand up to the money and might of an oil company bent on his or her land, even if aquifers, watersheds and community drinking water is at stake.

Michigan

Refineries and heavy industry are mostly located in low-income communities where citizens have the least resources to protect themselves against polluters. 85 percent of residents are African American with a median household income half the national average. Southwest Detroit already has 27 high polluting facilities. Tar sands refineries would exacerbate the already compromised health suffered by people living in area neighborhoods. 

When ‘natural’ disasters occur, we rally with generous aid, astonishing compassion and even prayer to support stricken communities the world over. Why would we turn a blind eye then to the slow motion holocaust of nature and people? Fuel?