I’ve been re-reading some of Joy Williams’ books from 20 years ago: her novel The Quick and the Dead, and her book of essays, Ill Nature. The latter opens with her essay “Save the Whales, Screw the Shrimp.” It’s kind of like a philosophical dialogue between a hypostasized, typical “well-off”/yuppie USAmerican & an interlocutor who’s kind of like a Greta Thurnberg with a snarky sense of humor.
The latter starts out talking about nature photography: “you” just can’t enjoy it anymore, because you know they’ve cropped out the condos. Such photos “are making you increasingly aware that you’re a little too late for Nature. Can you feel it? Twenty years too late? Maybe only ten? Not way too late, just a little too late? Well, it appears that you are. And since you are, you’ve decided you’re just not going to attend this particular party.” The “you” then responds and allows that, while open space is nice, so are shopping malls: “Products are fun.” Yes, the speaker replies, “You believe in growth. Controlled growth, of course. Controlled exponential growth is what you’d really like to see.” In fact, “Nature has become simply a visual form of entertainment, and it had better look snappy.” But, the interlocutor You responds, “we’ve been at Ventana Canyon. It’s very, very nice, a world-class resort. It sprawls but nestles, like. And they’ve maintained the integrity of as much of the desert ecosystem as possible. Give them credit for that. Great restaurant, too. We had the baby bay scallops there.” The speaker is not impressed: “Wildlife is a personal matter, you think. The attitude is up to you. You can prefer to see it dead or not dead. You might want to let it mosey about its business or blow it away.” It’s a matter of consumer preference: Free to Choose! As to global heating, “So this is the plan: you can plant millions of acres of trees, and you go on doing pretty much whatever you’re doing – driving around, using staggering amounts of energy, keeping those power plants fired to the max. Isn’t Nature remarkable? So willing to serve?” As for those trees, “They would probably be patented trees after a time. Fast-growing, uniform, genetically created toxin-eating machines. They would be new-age trees, because the problem with planting the old-fashioned variety to combat the greenhouse effect, which is caused by pollution, is that they’re already dying from it.” What a downer this person is! The interlocutor exclaims “wow, lighten up, will you? Relax.” But she doesn’t, of course: “You want to find wholeness and happiness in a land increasingly damaged and betrayed, and you never will. More than material matters. You must change your ways.” “What is this? Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God?” “The ecological crisis cannot be resolved by politics. . . . For this is essentially a moral issue we face, and moral decisions must be made.” “A moral issue! Okay, this discussion is now over. A moral issue. . . . Who are you, is what I’d like to know. You’re not me, anyway. I admit someone’s to blame and something should be done. But I’ve got to go. It’s getting late. Take care of yourself.” Thus the essay ends. You fall asleep. When you wake up, 20 years later, your body is overgrown with weeds, your dog is gone, the rifle, rusted. You wander into town and find out it’s 2020. Everything looks the same, but somehow different. The kids don’t know who Al Gore is, but scientists know so much more about climate change! Nevertheless, the vehicles seem to have gotten a lot bigger (“SUVs,” they call them). It’s 2 climate-change accords later, and the US isn’t in any of them. They’re cleaning up after the last storm, which was bigger than the storm before, which was bigger than anything you’ve ever seen. The coal-fired power plant is still chugging away, its smokestacks a familiar landmark on the horizon (dear old power plant!). The river is down to a trickle. There aren’t many birds. You turn around, walk back up into the hills, go back to sleep.
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June 2021
Kristin Prevallet Author/Editor
I'm a writer & teacher in Lawrence, Kansas who actually believes the scientists. I wrote a book of poems called Of Some Sky that seems to have something to do with all this. |