Francoise Hall October 15, 2010
Creation
I am that tree you just felled,
That frog absorbing toxins through its skin,
The mountain you are decapitating,
The Sally Lightfoot crab cleaning your shores.
Life itself has shaped me to its own requisites.
When, 2.8 billion years ago, aquatic cyanobacteria
Began producing free oxygen, the course of
Evolution turned dramatically toward more diversity.1
329 million years ago, the burial of forests lowered
Earth’s atmospheric carbon dioxide, causing a cooling
Which fostered the development of complex organisms.
Your use of fossil fuels today reverses this process.2
What will you do when I can no longer sustain you?
Live off the bank notes you are now accumulating?
Eat the pests and slime which are proliferating?
Implore rules other than those I have decreed?
I am a free gift to you, yet you treat me as your servant.
You divide Earth into parcels and call it your property,
Overtax its ability to support you, even consider
Life a commodity, calculating its “exchange value.”
Before you came along, there was no waste.
Now, waste clogs up your cities, streams,
Oceans, atmosphere, space itself – and you
Talk about stuffing your extra CO2 underground!
Sin is the failure to recognize the indispensable
Interconnection of all life. It is always punished
Because no life can survive in isolation.
You would not be, were it not for life around you.
All that glistens is not gold. Industrialization
Has allowed you to master speed and efficiency,
But it has also condemned you to a mechanical,
Atomized, alienated, disenchanted way of life.
I was not made for hubris, empire, power projection,
Full spectrum dominance, control of outer space,
Exploitation, endless economic growth, perpetual war,
Cluster bombs, nuclear threats or factory farms.3, 4
Global warming is only the latest, and, unfortunately,
Perhaps conclusive consequence of a value system
Which replaces my final authority and arbitration
With those of a fantasized “invisible hand.”
The idols you worship are false. Give them up.
Treat me like you would like to be treated.
Recognize that its context is what makes life precious.
Hear the moan of your abandoned soul,
And I will try to heal . . .
Dedication
This poem is dedicated to the species Grapsus grapsus, variously known as “red rock crab,” “abuete negro,” and “Sally Lightfoot crab.” This charismatic crab is one of the most common along the western coast of South America, including the Galapagos Islands.
The crab is semi-terrestrial, living on shores, between rocks, in the often turbulent, windy environment just above the sea spray. Its diet consists primarily of algae, supplemented by plant matter and dead animals. It is quick-moving and agile.
The crabs were described by Charles Darwin (1809-1882), and studied further by John Steinbeck (1902-1968), who described them as having “brilliant cloisonné carapaces,” “clear, brilliant colors – red, blues and warm browns,” “remarkable eyes,” and “an extremely fast reaction time” (Wikipedia 2010 “Grapsus grapsus,” pp. 1-2).
Thank you to Robin Saltonstall for drawing my attention to these beautiful representatives of the stunning world we are in the process of losing.
The crabs are not on the 2010.3 Red List of Threatened Species, compiled by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN). However, like all other species, they are unlikely to survive as shore waters become increasingly polluted, as the water level rises, as the ocean warms and becomes increasingly acidic, and as the marine fauna and flora on which they feed migrate poleward, not necessarily at the same rate as the crabs themselves will migrate. If ocean acidity is not an important factor for them, as one study shows, these other factors will still represent a threat to them (IUCN 2010. Oceanus 2010, pp. 1 and 3).
Notes
1. Free Oxygen: During the Archean Eon (3,800-2,500 million years ago), cyanobacteria populating the swamps and oceans began producing free oxygen from photosynthesis. Over the course of 2,610 million years (from 3,150 to 540 million years ago), they converted Earth’s early atmosphere, which had no free oxygen, to an atmosphere with nearly the 21 percent level we have today. Biodiversity and animal size increased explosively. Oxygen-intolerant organisms were nearly exterminated (Wilson 1992/1999, summarized in Hall 2005, p. 3. Hall 2006a, pp. 1 and 3. Wikipedia 2010 “Geologic Time Scale,” p. 32. Wikipedia 2010 “Archean,” p. 1. Wikipedia 2010 “Cyanobacteria,” pp. 1 and 3-4).
2. Carbon dioxide: During the Carboniferous Period (359-299 million years ago), the land was covered with swamps in which large trees, ferns and other leafy plants grew. The swamps and oceans were filled with algae. The plants and their predators lived and died in their billions.
As this dead biomass sank to the bottom of swamps and oceans, it formed a layer of a spongy material, called “peat.” Over hundreds of years, the peat was covered by “sedimentary rock,” a mixture of sand, clay and minerals. The weight of the rock squeezed the water out of the peat, and, over millions of years, the peat became what we know today as “fossil fuels” [coal, oil (petroleum) and natural gas] (Government of California 2010, pp. 1-2. Wikipedia 2010 “Geological Time Scale,” pp. 23-25. Hall 2006b, p. 1).
Rolf Sieferle (1982) points out that fossil fuels are a “subterranean forest” which, until very recently, lay deep in the bowels of Earth.
The burial of forests prevented their store of carbon from being released as carbon dioxide (CO2) into the atmosphere. It thus played a key role in lowering the temperature of the planet. Earth cooled sufficiently to be able to sustain the wide array of biological species which have dwelt on it since then. Life and geology brought about conditions fostering the evolution of life (Northcott 2007, pp. 86 and 300).
3. Many of these terms reflect the foreign policy goals of the United States, and to some extent those of the West. The focus on the rich is appropriate since the United States and Europe together are responsible for more than 90 percent of the historic (already in the atmosphere) emissions of greenhouse gases (Bacevich 2010a, pp. 12-14, 19-27, 128, 144, 150 and 222. Bacevich 2010b. Northcott 2007, pp. 50 and 295).
4. It is not the first time in history that a geopolitical/ecological crisis threatens a civilization. The difference is that today’s civilization is global.
Writing in exile from the ancient city of Babylon, the Hebrew prophet Jeremiah (ministry 626-587 B.C.E.) had a theological interpretation for the invasion of Jerusalem by the Babylonians (587 B.C.E.), the destruction of King Solomon’s Temple, the fall of the House of David, and the ecological collapse of the land of Israel. Jeremiah’s analysis sheds a powerful light on the current geopolitical/ecological crisis.
It contrast to the Egyptians, Assyrians and Persians, the Israelis believed themselves to be the chosen people of Yahweh. Before entering the Promised Land, their ancestors had made a covenant with Yahweh. He would bless them as long as they fulfilled the commandments of Moses, but would curse them, if they were unfaithful to these. The covenant laws forbade the Hebrews from exploiting their neighbors, animals or soil. The land was to be fairly distributed and farm sizes kept small. Neither the soil nor people were to be enslaved, and there was to be no excessive accumulations of either material wealth or social power.
Jeremiah determined, therefore, that the central reason for the fall of Israel was an imperious refusal to accept bio-political limits. Too busy with her imperial projects, Israel had abandoned the terms of the Mosaic covenant. It had become too powerful, her rulers too successful in their military enterprises, her elites too wealthy, and her smallholders and soil too enslaved.
Global warming speaks to the same truth as that to which Jeremiah points. Economic relations which neglect justice and the health of the land, ultimately bring ruin to all. Justice is part of the sacred order of Creation (Northcott 2007, pp. 4-5, 8, 10-15, 41-42, 69, 73, 75 and 160-161. Wikipedia 2010 “Jeremiah,” p. 3. Wikipedia 2010 “Solomon’s Temple,” p. 1).
“My people shall be satisfied with my bounty, says the Lord”
(Jeremiah 31:14, quoted in Northcott 2007, p. 267).
Jeremiah is the first ecological prophet in both literary and religious history (Northcott 2007, p. 12).
References
Bacevich, Andrew.
2010a. Washington rules – America’s path to permanent war. New York, N.Y.: Henry Holt/Metropolitan.
2010b. “The Washington Rules.” Presentation, Santa Fe, NM. April 21. Broadcast by Alternative Radio.
http://www.alternativeradio.org/programs/BACA003.shtml.
Government of California, 2010. “Fossil Fuels – Coal, Oil and natural Gas,” (Chapter 8), in Energy Story. California Energy Commission, Energy Quest.
http://www.energyquest.ca.gov/story/chapter08.html. Accessed October 15, 2010.
Hall, Francoise,
2005. “Ask the Mosquitoes.” (Poem). March 19 (13 pages, unpublished). (See Wilson 1992/1999).
2006a. “Life.” (Poem). June 10 (4 pages, unpublished).
2006b. “The brief and disastrous reign of Homo petrolatum.” September 30, 2006 (61 pages, unpublished).
International Union for the Conservation of Nature, 2010. “Red List of Threatened Species 2010.3.”
(No entry for grapsus grapsus).
http://www.iucnredlist.org. Accessed October 16, 2010.
Northcott, Michael. 2007. A moral climate – the ethics of global warming. Maryknoll, N. Y.: Orbis.
(Northcott refers to Rolf Sieferle. 1982. Der unterirdische wald. The book was published in English, in 2001, as The subterranean forest – energy systems and the Industrial Revolution. Translator Michael Osmann. Cambridge, UK: White Horse).
Oceanus, 2010. “Ocean Acidification: a risky Shell Game – how will Climate Change affect the Shells and Skeletons of Sea Life?” (Kate Madin). Woods Hole Oceanic Institution. October 16.
(Madin describes the work of Justin Ries, Anne Cohen and Dan McCorkle, published on-line, in the journal Geology, December 1, 2009. The researchers found that, as carbon dioxide levels in water increased (within limits), the blue crab, the American lobster, and shrimps grew heavier, not weaker, shells).
http://www.whoi.edu/oceanus/viewArticle.do?id=52990. Accessed October 16, 2010.
Wikipedia, 2010,
“Archean,”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki. Updated October 11. Accessed October 15, 2010.
“Cyanobacteria.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki. Updated October 11. Accessed October 15, 2010.
“Geologic Time Scale.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki. Updated August 23. Accessed August 24, 2010.
“Grapsus grapsus.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki. Updated September 25. Accessed October 15, 2010.
“Jeremiah.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki. Updated October 16. Accessed October 17, 2010.
“Solomon’s Temple.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki. Updated October 10. Accessed October 17, 2010.
Wilson, Edward. 1992/1999. The diversity of life. New York, N.Y.: W. W. Norton.
Summarized in Hall, Francoise, 2005. “Ask the Mosquitoes.” (Poem). March 19 (13 pages, unpublished).
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