The Planters and the Destroyers

As I reported previously, Alsace in France planted a half million trees last year. This is in a rainy part of the world that already has lots of trees. But its residents welcome even more trees, to create shady spots of cool microclimate during the summer, and to remove pollutants from the air. And Alsatians are quite open about their reasons for wanting more trees.

This is in stark contrast to the lone vandal who has recently cruised around Los Angeles on a bicycle and cut down urban trees. One can only speculate on why he did these destructive acts. Who was his enemy? Did he resent the local government for doing something that, he thought, did not directly benefit him? Does he hate Nature and Nature’s God? Does he hate the poor, dark people who live in urban Los Angeles?

Urban trees, on a tree-by-tree basis, have more impact on the world than do trees in a forest, because urban areas (in Los Angeles, or Alsace, or anywhere else) are often devoid of trees. Each tree absorbs pollution, and transpires water vapor which creates little islands of coolness (what the French call îlots de fraîcheur). In a concrete jungle of buzzing air conditioners, urban trees might be the only positive points on the landscape.

More generally, the French value long-term investments in the quality of life as being worthwhile, but many Americans are cynical about a future that contains poor people whom they do not like.

Among the investments in the quality of life in France are days of complete vacation. I am writing this on May Day, which is the French Labor Day. On American holidays, lots of stores remain open. But the French are serious about their holidays (journées feriées). On this particular holiday, even the trams do not run. This is in addition to the fact that most French businesses close on Sunday. May Day is a day for protests in favor of further social improvements, and for spending time with family.

A Nice Spring Day?

I was walking home the other day through the most beautiful springtime you could imagine: just enough warmth to be enjoyable, a slight breeze, sunshine, fresh green leaves everywhere. You would expect that I would have rejoiced at it. And I tried to. But it didn’t work. Here’s why.

Many of the trees were almost barren. They had been stripped of most of their fresh green leaves by a hail storm the previous week. Another hailstorm was predicted for the night before my walk, to finish off the job, but it didn’t happen. Fresh green leaves everywhere? Well, if you count the dried-up green leaves in the gutters. Now, of course this was an act of nature. As I might have said before, Mother Nature can be one tough mama. But the problem is that even though humans have the capacity to come together, to cooperate, to love one another, and help one another against the dangers of the natural world, we often do not do so. We could, as a species, form an altruistic network that could dampen the disruptions of Nature, but we do not.

One house that I walked past illustrated the Oklahoma anti-environmental, anti-altruistic attitude in just about every possible way. Old cars were parked on the lawn. The house is about to fall over. Inside the fence there are very, very mean dogs. An indoor couch was outside, soggy with rain. The dogs ran around in puddles of accumulated water. A tree had been cut down, the chunks left lying around, and beer bottles were propped on the stump. And there were lots of beat-up, dirty toys, proclaiming redneck fecundity. These people neither care about their immediate neighbors or about the rest of the world. Their attitude is not too different from that of their dogs, with the difference that the poor dogs don’t know any better. Nearby, a pickup truck drove slowly down the street, spewing thick clouds of smoke and fumes.

Durant, Oklahoma, is a world center of three things: Trump supporters, Confederate supporters (mostly the same people here), and creationists. Our local state senator is an outspoken creationist, but he sneers openly and loudly at anyone who wants to protect the habitats of non-human animals and—and plants! He believes that God made all of these species so that he and his friends can destroy them. They hate God’s creation and would enjoy destroying as much of it as they can. And with the Trump juggernaut, they might just get a chance to do so. Everyone knows that Trump’s attitude toward biology is, if you can’t eat it or fuck it, what use is it?

So as I walked home, looking at the trees stripped of their leaves and breathing deeply of pickup truck exhaust, I mourned rather than rejoiced in the springtime.

The Same Old Anti-Environmentalism

In 1990, Dixy Lee Ray and Lou Guzzo published a book called Trashing the Planet: How Science Can Help Us Deal with Acid Rain, Depletion of the Ozone, and Nuclear Waste (Among Other Things). Ray was the former governor of Washington state and chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission, as well as a zoologist on the University of Washington faculty. According to Ray, who was trashing the planet? Environmentalists, of course. The good-hearted industrialists, and the good-hearted conservative politicians who wanted to let them do whatever they wanted to do, were the ones who loved the planet and humankind.

The first chapter is titled, “Who speaks for science?” Not surprisingly, Ray indicated that she was the one to do so, because she was a scientist. She said she was opposed to pollution as much as anyone, but she was also opposed to environmental alarmism. Sounds reasonable, except that she spent the rest of the book saying that almost any environmental concern is alarmism.

Given her background, it is not surprising that Ray focused on nuclear waste issues. Don’t worry about nuclear waste, she said. Her evidence? There are mounds of natural radioactive earth in Gabon and in Brazil, and there are plants and animals that live on them. The fact that the natural radiation does not instantly kill all of those organisms shows that we do not need to worry about nuclear pollution. Why, for crying out loud, there is actually a colony of rats living on one of them! Nuclear, glowing rats right out of the Simpsons (she might have said ten years later). And if rats, which only live a couple of years anyway, do not die prematurely from the radiation, then humans don’t need to worry about it either. Really, you can’t make something like this up.

And she went on. Nuclear bombs kill people, but fire kills people too, so don’t worry about any uses of atomic energy or even nuclear war. She helpfully pointed out that more people died in the firebombing of Tokyo than in the nuclear blast at Hiroshima. Gee, I feel better already.

Also, she said, don’t worry about carcinogens and cancer. After all, except for childhood leukemia, most cancer affects old people, who are just going to die pretty soon anyway. Besides, most cancer is caused by smoking. So if you smoke, you deserve cancer; and if you don’t, you deserve no further protection from environmental carcinogens or radiation. She didn’t quite use these words, but the implication was clear. And writers who disagree with her were committing, quote, “sob-sister journalism.”

In another chapter, she demonstrated that the good old days weren’t so good. People died back then, too. So take your penicillin and stop whining about environmental contamination.

Ray was especially upset that people were concerned about acid rain and what she considered the non-threat of ozone depletion. But even Republicans would not listen to those who spoke the way Dixy Lee Ray (who was a Democrat) did. In 1990, the president was George Herbert Walker Bush, who wanted to be remembered as “the environmental president.” And right as Ray’s book was being published, nations were coming together to solve acid rain and to ban CFCs. And even though Ray did not want us to worry about nuclear weapons, the rest of the world went ahead and defused the Cold War.

Unfortunately, what was fringe anti-environmentalism in 1990 has now become the norm in the Republican party, against which Democrats have little influence. The anti-environmental spewings of Donald Trump make Dixy Lee Ray sound mild.