A former partner, Susan McLaughlin (a truly super lawyer!) replied to one of the endless things I've been posting on Facebook, this one about beaver dams. It requires more than an acknowledgement in a reply. In fact, it just grew into a short blog post. I’m ready for the endless parade of hearings I have tomorrow, so I got time.
Watercourses are - from the source to the ocean - connected
ecosystems. Some people think a word
like "ecosystems" is some sort of liberal, modern-day doublespeak and means
nothing. How silly. It means that nature has slowly evolved, with
only rare, occasional sudden changes (think the Mt. St. Helen's explosion, the
Tunguska event, etc.), and any figurative grit between the stones has slowly
been worn down over geological time.
Nature fits neatly.
Humanity is the first creature who has had the ability to
change nature abruptly and my goodness have we done so with a will! The examples are legion: carbon dioxide in
the atmosphere (bad, good, climate change, non-climate change, whatever, it's
still at a high level due to some extent or near-total extent due to humans),
the "harmless" cloroflorocarbons which still are wreaking havoc with
the protective ozone layer in the mid-statosphere, microplastics in damn near
everything (the effect of which we aren't sure about, but it's either neutral
or bad, and I'd prefer not to eat plastic), yadda, yadda, yadda.
Yeah, I know I'm on a rant.
Either live with it or ignore it, I can live with either decision. The Guy From Boston passed away, so I’m using
a little of his thunder, although he was a master as cursing which I will
never, never match. Hey, I miss Joe and
his cigars.
If you do something to any part of the watercourse, you change it. Destroying beaver dams because they are damn inconvenient is common, but we don't know what we are doing to the whole system. Maybe very little; maybe a great deal.
One major
contributor to humanity effects on watercourses is common in Appalachia,
mountaintop removal mining. When you fly
over it, even at commercial altitudes, it is fugly. Fugly is reason enough to quit it, but I’m in
a small majority that think that. They
remove the "overburden" (the stuff above the coal seam), take out the
coal and burn it, and toss what is not coal in the valleys below where the coal
seam was. That destroys the upper part
of the watercourse and the flora and fauna necessary to the completeness of the
ecosystem is gone. Aw, it might kill
some fish or mollusks that we never heard of, how sad. Well, dammit, it IS sad, because we don’t
know the importance of those creatures to the health of the ecosystem. We just don’t know. Look, we have seriously impacted the bee
population. No bees, no pollination; no
pollination, no vegetation; no vegetation, no food; no food, we die. That’s more than an “oopsie,” that’s serious
shit. We don’t know all of what we are
doing. We know SOME of what we are
doing. By mountaintop mining, we are
exposing lots of silicates. (Remember
the Hawk’s Nest Tunnel dug in the 1930’s?
A large number of the people who worked on the project died of
silicosis, which is a particularly nasty way to go.) We are exposing other products which nature
has kept underground for Her obscure purposes – Purposes that we will not
realize until something comes up and bites humanity. We sit in the lap of our Mother the Earth,
and make a holy mess. Humanity ought to have our collective asses kicked.
I don’t pretend to know nearly as much science as I need to
nor am I amongst real nature nearly so often.
Ok, that’s my fault. That doesn’t
keep me from considering that we might be digging ourselves into a hole that
sooner or later, may kill us. As I tell
my client who have dug themselves into a hole, the first thing you do is quit digging.
Mizpah. I hope.
Someday, I might explain that. If you knew my beloved late brother Oce Smith,
you might already have a clue.
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