IT'S THE END OF THE WORLD (AS WE KNOW IT)
A couple weeks ago, the World Wildlife Fund released an exhaustive study on the effect of human impacts on the planet. The news was not encouraging; in fact, it was downright apocalyptic. At the current rate of consumption, or as the WWF put it, at the rate we are "plundering our natural resources," this planet will expire in 50 years. The report went so far as to suggest that planetary colonization was the only hope for the human race. Can you imagine the cockroaches waving goodbye as the last starship departs, wiping whatever passes for brows and sighing, "I thought they'd never leave."
But all this is just wishful thinking. I don't believe the planet or its living occupants will expire in 50 years--many of them, perhaps, but not all--and I'd expect to find humans among the survivors.
As if 'surviving' has any advantages.
Ed Abbey used to proclaim, "Our only hope is catastrophe!" and I constantly hear similar refrains. The notion that a world calamity will "take care of our problems" is a response I hear frequently when I get into a real hand-wringing rant. But I don't think a big disaster could possibly turn the human race around.
Consider the greatest man-made disaster in the history of the world--World War II. More than 50 million people died in that six year global conflict, millions more were maimed or scarred. Trillions of dollars in property damage was inflicted upon the great nations of the world.
And what came of it? The biggest building and baby boom in history as well as its greatest military expansion. In just one decade we created weapons of mass destruction that could release as much fire-power in one bomb as all the ordinance exploded in WWII. The technology that came out of the war created a materialistic society that, in 2002, threatens to reach the far corners of the planet. The global consumer economy moves forward with unparalleled zeal, now fortified and reinvigorated under the cover of our war on terror.
Our government has now declared its God-given right to unilaterally attack any nation on earth that it perceives to be a threat to the security of the United States. We don't even have to prove it; we just have to think it.
Conveniently, it also gives our country access to the natural resources of that conquered (or liberated?) nation and provides us the opportunity--no, the DUTY--to "offer" our advanced and civilized American Culture to these primitive and backward peoples. Backward, that is, as we see it. For what nation can claim to be civilized if it lacks a McDonald's, Starbucks, Wal-Mart, Enron, Worldcom, and Coca-Cola. After all, things go better with Coke.
Which after several rambling paragraphs brings me back to the original premise of this little lament. The world will not expire in 50 years, nor will its human population. What the world will become, I think, is a much blander, less interesting place. A world with greatly diminished biological diversity. And a world where its human culture is just as bereft. As one scientist put it recently, "If a world with four kinds of trees, cats, rats and a few types of finches is sufficient, then biotic impoverishment is for you."
And it just might be. The human trait that has always allowed us to survive as a species is its adaptability. If I wanted to be kind, I might suggest we're resilient; if I wanted to be honest, I'd insist we're stupidly malleable. As the diversity of Nature declines, one species at a time, we'll shrug and say, "Isn't that a shame?" and move on. Today, does anyone grieve for the passenger pigeon? Or the moa? We rarely grieve for things we know nothing about, and as knowledge of history becomes more irrelevant with each new generation, the loss that our planet sustains will scarcely be noticed.
Technology alone will keep us going far beyond what doomsayers today predict. "Soylent Green" comes to mind. And the price paid our "victory of science" will raise very few eyebrows.
The dumbing down, the loss of human diversity is almost necessary if it is to endure the correlating loss of everything else around us. A shallow and superficial human environment is the only answer.
Which is why, in this issue, we offer a preview of Things to Come. Extreme Sports for the 21st Century. Some pray for catastrophe. What we need is enlightenment. What we get...is this.
Now excuse me while I go slash my wrists.
EXTREME GOOFINESS
OK...now that I've cheered you up...
I eagerly admit to a bias against reckless, adrenalin-induced, narcissistic, self-indulgent, mindless sports. Except sex.
In the 21st Century lexicon, these activities would be called extreme sports. I don't get it.
Maybe I was jaded at an early age because my job as a ranger required me to rescue these morons from time to time.
(Oh god, Martha...he's telling another "ranger story.")
There wasn't that much of this idiocy 20 years ago and I don't know how the working field rangers in 2002 can stand it, unless they're adrenalin junkies themselves. Admittedly, in the first couple years, I got into the rush of a rescue. I enjoyed being proficient and knowledgeable of the techniques needed to extricate some hapless soul from a dangerous situation. There was a certain heroic aspect to it all. And of course we all suffered from a shocking superiority complex when we compared ourselves to these boneheads who jeopardized their own lives and ours in the process.
But after a while it became routine and annoying and always dangerous. Ranger Roger Maki and I were once called to the scene of a rimrocked climber near Landscape Arch. He'd become trapped on a six inch ledge and was screaming and making noises that I'd never heard any human being make. He sounded like a cat being converted into guitar strings.
We had to carry all our gear to the top of the steep incline past Wall Arch, traverse the fin above him, establish a belay and then descend to his level (We'll never really descend to his level). We hooked him into a harness and he was pulled to the top. The moment he was safe, the terror left his face, he flashed a twisted grin and he yelled, "Whoa DUDE! What a rush!"
I turned toward the victim, but Roger grabbed my elbow. "With your luck, Stiles, you'd go over the edge with him."
Now the man was raising and pumping his arms Rocky-style and Roger said, "Hey buddy. You almost got yourself killed down there. And us too."
"Hey Dude!" he laughed. "The rock is in my blood!"
Roger gave him the Blue Swedish Glare. "Another couple minutes and your blood would have been in the rock."
He didn't get it. I hope that today he is permanently rimrocked somewhere.
Over the years, it became so boring. One aspect of a rock rescue is that the same protocol must be used, whether the stranded climber is 100 feet above the ground or 12. It just seemed like a lot of work to drag out all that equipment for such a dinky little rescue. My fellow ranger Salamacha and I proposed the use of aluminum ladders, but our superiors said it was an improper rescue technique. And once, when a kid stranded himself on a ledge just ten feet up and near a large juniper, Salamander and I encouraged him to jump.
"For cryin' out loud," Mike yelled up to the boy, "the tree'll break your fall. You're looking at nothing but a few cuts and scratches. Broken ankle tops."
But he wouldn't do it.
That was all small potatoes, compared to the risks the Grand County Search & Rescue Team encounters nowadays. I don't think I have the proper attitude to rescue a BASE jumper. One of Moab's BASE guys once told me that his sport resembled "soaring like a hawk." When I told him he should try it without the chute, I never heard from him again.
Those guys just don't have a sense of humor. And when we were dealing with the likes of him, neither did we.
EDITORIAL DILEMMAS
To write or not to write. That is the dilemma. More than a few times in the last 14 years, I've had to decide if a story was worth telling, or better left alone. Shining light on some issues can often make things worse. And sometimes, I have to hope that in the long run, the story will do more good than harm.
A few years ago, I received solid information from a National Park Service ranger that an NPS employee was deer hunting inside the park and that it was perfectly legal. He explained that on Utah State School Sections, park rules and regulations were void and that this employee was taking advantage of that loophole to get his buck. He was even reportedly leaving salt blocks inside the park to the lure deer.
If I reported the story, I was potentially informing hundreds of deer hunters about a new untapped hunting ground. If I didn't report it, I knew at least one mule deer inside a national park was not going to live past October. Ultimately, I didn't write the story.
This issue's article about Arches National Park's weak climbing policy and its lax commercial permitting system presented a similar dilemma. But this time, the need to inform the public outweighed similar concerns that I wrestled with right up to press day. If an agency of the federal government, mandated to protect wilderness lands, needs to rely on the ignorance of the public to compensate for inadequate regulations, then the policy is the weakest link, not the reporting of it.
Several circumstances have combined to create the current breach at Arches, most of it the doing of NPS personnel who no longer work there, and in this case, the US Congress. The NPS staff now dealing with the problem have, for the most part, inherited it. I hope they have the foresight to correct these loopholes--for the park's sake.
