“We live in such a beautiful place.” I hear this comment all the time from neighbors, both those who have lived here for decades or generations and those who, like me, are relative newcomers. In Western Massachusetts we are blessed with beautiful forests, magnificent rivers and streams, hillsides and fields, the abundance of croplands, sugar bushes and state parks.
Still, we have our concerns. Despite the rain predicted for this week we are in one of the deepest droughts in many years — more than seven inches below norm. Farmers had to irrigate extensively. Hunters are reminded to be especially careful about smoking. Fireworks are a very bad idea. Recently we saw no sun for several days as we breathed in the smoke all the way from the West Coast fires raging in an unprecedented number of locations. Microbursts flattened crops and farm buildings in our region and damaged the steeple of our first Parish Unitarian church. (“Never seen anything like it,” said the repair team with 75 years of experience between them as they surveyed the wildly splintered beam inside the spire.)
We know there is trouble across the country and around the globe. It’s been the hottest year on record. The unprecedented number of hurricanes already this season has caused billions in damages in multiple countries. There are fires in the Tundra; accelerated ice melt in the Arctic; around the country, flooding has become a routine hazard, not necessarily storm related. Fires out West have already burned over 6.6 million acres this year. August brought 100 degrees to usually cool San Francisco, plus the highest temperatures ever recorded on earth in Southern California, hotter than humans can survive. The list goes on and on.
Our environmental reading group at the Northfield Library (we have members from Warwick, Greenfield and New York City, too) is reading a new small book called “Rewiring America,” by Saul Griffith. It is the only hopeful book we have read in the past two years since we looked at “Drawdown,” edited by Paul Hawken. In this extraordinary book we are offered an immediate strategy, immediately implementable, based on existing immediately available technology, creating millions of jobs providing a way to re-employ Americans across the country with equity and access to all while reducing carbon emissions to levels needed to survive the climate emergency. I won’t preempt the experience of this highly readable book by adding more details here, but the problem is this: we are out of time.
Anyone who believes the current administration will take action to solve the country’s economic problems and respond to the climate emergency as Griffith recommends, is refusing to look at reality. Pulling us from the Paris accords was the least of it. At every turn this administration has removed protections for the health of the people and our landscape, given the green light to wasteful, polluting industries that poison our air and water daily, and cruelly promised to “protect” jobs in coal and oil that are simply no longer economically viable.
Rather than helping us make the transition needed to save our species and all the species on the planet, this administration lies and lines the pockets of corporations whose seek profit at all costs. The work ahead requires a completely different world view: the earth is not here for us to destroy for profit, to rule and abuse; it is a gift we are charged with protecting — a responsibility we ignore at our peril.
There is no time now for bogus claims, science denial and greedy schemes. Now is the time to make a mighty shift. It is now time to vote in the election of our lives. The last day to register is Oct. 24 (postmarked, turned in online or in person). Absentee (or mail-in) ballots may be requested until 5 p.m. Oct. 28 and must be returned postmarked or in person by Nov. 3. (Sooner is better.) Early voting is from Oct. 17 – 30 (in person or drop off). Talk to neighbors, family, friends. Make sure they know these dates, or the ones for their location.
Here is the task: Close your eyes and picture your favorite blue New England sky; see the scarlet, gold and green of turning sugar maples; view the verdant rolling hills and fields nurturing us; catch the crimson flash of the cardinal, the sunshine sweep of goldfinches. Then go vote like the planet, this beautiful place we live, depends on you.
Judy Wagner is an avid gardener, lover of words, grandma and sometimes hopeful resident of Northfield.