Conference hydra::dejavu

446.0. "BABYLON" by GLORY::WETHERINGTON () Wed Aug 12 1987 11:29

    This note is to explore some of the things that are happening to
    our planet; if it belongs in another conference someone please don't
    hesitate to tell me this; being a new noter I don't want to put
    things here that don't belong.  But since I have seen the New Age
    discussed here, and I believe part of the result of the coming of
    the Aquarian age will be a change in and a new awareness of how
    we have treated the Earth in the past and how we can live in harmony
    with her (figure of speech, I don't believe the planet is a living
    entity) I think this topic desperately needs to be discussed.  I
    hope to get many responses from just this excerpt (read the bit
    about the "Network" at the end"
    
    I am calling this note "Babylon" in honor of a song by Grace Slick
    on the most recent Starship album, "No Protection"; check the song
    out if you can at all.
    
    From "Nature's End" by Whitley Strieber and James Kunetka, Warner
    Books, c. 1986; quoted without permission but with implied consent
    
    JESSICA SOMETHING-OR-OTHER SMILER: THE END AND BEGINNING OF NATURE
    IN THE HUDSON ESTUARY
    
    I was not yet born in March of 1984 when the first of the great
    tree falls occurred in this area.  According to George there was
    a freak storm in that month, with winds rotating up from the southeast,
    bringing wet, heavy snow. In those days the effects of acid rain
    were far from understood, and the susceptibility of conifers to
    brittling was not known. When the heavy snow weighted those trees
    and the winds hit them, some immense trunks fell, especially among
    the kills, which served as funnels, compressing the wind and raising
    its speed.  
    There were about fifty thousand trees lost in the region that
    night,some of them with twelve foot spans at the base. People should
    have realized that something was seriously wrong when eighty and
    hundred year old trees started falling, but there was no particular
    alarm.
    Over the next thirty years the problem slowly got worse. There were
    a whole series of state and regional, finally federal, programs
    aimed at stopping the decline. Even as recently as 2015 there were
    a couple of hundred thousand trees standing in Ulster County. By
    that time I was a member of the Hudson Estuary Network, founded
    by George in 1984, and I was very much aware of what was going on.
    The long term effects of acid rain were fully understood by 2015.
    We were living with them. Walter Parker published "Acid" in 1995
    and awakened the nation to what was happening to its forests. There
    was a leap of conciousness involved, and one that was hard to make.
    The forest seemed immortal-or at least it died so slowly that the
    problem could be passed from one generation to the next.
    During their era it would have taken a great leap of conciousness
    to understand the huge impact of what was happening to the forest
    cover. They knew about acid rain, but they did not understand soil
    changes or the danger of atmospheric nitrogen. I get a sense, reading
    the proceedings of the Trust, and things like George's Hudson Estuary
    Bundles, that there wasthis basic belief in the persistence of the
    biome that they couldn't escape from. They could not use their
    imaginations to break out into the future and see what was coming.
    To save this land, they should have become forest revolutionaries,
    they should have marched the long trails with their voices raised,they
    should have gathered the people and gone where they had to go, to
    Albany, to Washington, to the capitals of the states of the Ohio
    Valley-the states that were killing their forests, and fought for
    change. They had the commitment, but not the urgency born from
    understanding. Here in New York, the Department of Environmental
    Conservation was taking a "wait and see" attitude on acid rain as
    late as the Dieback of 1998 when it was realized that most of the
    Adirondack forest had stopped growing. But by then the dieback was
    already uncontrollable.
    Nowadays, of course, there's nobody who doesn't agree that the forest
    should be "saved". Saving the greenlands is a political cliche,
    now that there aren't any greenlands left to save.
    What we do here at the Station, basically, is grow trees...The trees
    are growing in a fundamentally hostile environment. The main problem
    is nitrogen-laden dust blowing in from the Midwest, that and the
    water supply. Acidity in the rain is still a problem,although nowhere
    near as bad as it was when the forest died. Really, what we are
    trying to do is grow these plants in an environment that is no longer
    suited to them. The conifers are the most sensitive. The days of
    stands of pine and hemlock are gone, I'm afraid. About all we can
    do there is send genetic material and spore to gene banks to be
    stored in hope of better days.
    Whan I was eighteen the family closed Mohonk Mountain House...It
    hurt so very much to leave this land-and by then it was so terribly
    scarred. I remember I want up to our overlook on the last day of
    Mohonk-and I looked down across the Hudson Valley toward the Taconics,
    which were grey. A cloud of dust hung over the New York Thruway.
    I did not want to cry then. I wasn't angry. Instead my head filled
    with plans...I decided I would not give up, no matter what.
    ...that night I went across the Mountain and stayed with George.
    We sat up talking, and he told me about the Network. Do you know?
    I don't think I should tell a media person, except to say there's
    this very large group of people in the world called the Network,
    who come from a thousand different backgrounds, but who share a
    desire to reshape human culture along the lines of a more coherent
    conciousness. The Network is about ending the assault on the planet,
    and beginning a new life of harmony.
    Of course, no matter how many trees we grow, mankind is going to
    have to manage things from now on. Natural balance isn't possible
    on this planet anymore. Human planning must take its place.
    ****************************************************************
    What I'd like to do with this topic, folks, is try to discuss ways
    to use some of this enlightened knowledge we've been discussing,
    in a practical way to change the way the world is now, or at least
    to point out to you and others how out of harmony Western civilization
    is with the natural laws of the universe; and how we can change
    it to be more in harmony, in a practical, real-life way. Truly,
    we must have this resiliency if we are to survive.
    

    I think this note is most welcome in this conference.

    When I went back to this topic, I remembered reading it back then.
    FWIW, this was one of the things that got me writing my letter. ;-) 
    
    Considering the note I wrote in "Last days" I thought I'd resurrect
    this note to talk about ecology --Where we are, where we've been,
    and where we're going.
    
    I decided to write the ecology letter back in September.  Since
    my first draft, I've noticed a lot of media coverage about ecology,
    TIME and BUSINESSWEEK (Businessweek?) talked about the impact, both
    social and economical from pollution.  Overall, I think this awareness
    to the issue is the first step in the right direction.
    
    By the way, the United States is the greatest polluter in the world.
    
    Dave