Gleanings from the Editor

If you missed Bill Moyers’ latest offering on PBS — Earth on Edge ­­— you need to check the schedule and see when it is running again.

        First aired on June 20, this program takes an honest look at where we stand in terms of environmental degradation and safety.

        Earth on Edge looks at the questions:  Will Earth continue to have the capacity to support the human species and civilization? and What can we do to protect our life-support system — the natural environment?

        The program is not sensational, nor is it alarmist, but it systematically demonstrates how humans are pushing the ability of the environmental systems to recover from insult, restore balance after  assault, and sustain the growing population that is utterly dependent on it.

        “We are pushing our planet to the absolute limits of its ability to function,” said one biologist interviewed. All of the experts were cautiously optimistic that the problems can be solved and the balance restored — but it takes a will to do that, and so far, too many of us lack that will.

        Our president mouths an interest in and concern for the environment, but his actions clearly belie the words.  Not only will he not support the efforts to reduce global warning, he insists on creating more problems by putting sensitive environmental areas in even more jeopardy.

        It isn’t a matter of Democrat or Republican. It isn’t a matter of business or tree-hugger. It is simply a matter of foresight.

        We need to be able to look further down the road than our next fast car. We need to think about our grandchildren and their grandchildren.

        It seems so simple: We cannot survive without clean air, water, and soil — I ‘m talking literal survival here, the difference between life and extinction. We cannot live without clean air, water and soil. We can easily survive without big gas-guzzling cars, without huge corporate profits, without perfect landscape, completely bug- and weed-free.

        We seem to suffer from severe tunnel vision — all we can see is what we want right this minute. We don’t look ahead to see what an action may cause down the road a day or a week or a year from now.

        I hear politicians talk about how they won’t do anything to harm American business, but they ignore the basis of business — vigorous citizens and consumers. The environment is the context in which everything operations, the sine qua non — without which nothing.  If we don’t have clean, air, safe food, good water, we’re dead — and that means business is dead too.

                Watch the program, visit their website at www.pbs.org/earthonedge and talk to people about it. It isn’t too late yet, but the time is ripe for action now. We can’t wait for someone else to take care of us.  That’s what being grownup is all about.