Waking Up From a Nightmare

I feel like I am living in a science fiction movie - one where the world I live in is being destroyed by evil people and I have been running around crying out "we must stop them" for decades but my fellow beings have all been dogmatized and are hypnotically marching to to a rally cry in their heads: "progress... progress... progress...." as they carry more fuel to the inferno of Earth's demise.

Seriously.  There is a facebook group called "The dirty fucking hippies were right" - and guess what?  We were.

Only a couple of years ago I had a brief discussion with a seemingly nice man, a musician who my husband greatly admires.   He lives in an upbeat, groovy city - one that ranks at or near the top of the heap for folks who ride their bikes to work and other such green phenomena.  This man is a nuclear engineer.  Our short-lived exchange was regarding the Fukushima disaster, nuke plants and their danger.  He proclaimed in a matter-of-fact, end-of-chat sort of way that we could not have all the progress we have without them.  I replied that we could in fact have a wonderful existence and that if an adjustment to our debauch level of consumption was required, so be it, a small price to pay for the safety and health of our children.  At that point, he walked away in disgust.

Forty years ago, people were walking away in disgust when I told them the whole nuclear power plant  push was a mistake.  I was the long haired, no make-up, hairy legged vegetarian (what could she know, right?)  who lived off the grid, refused to use herbicides and so spent seven years hand pulling star thistle from her yard, who bought her clothes used so that she would not be directly supporting third world slavery, who picketed a major lumber/paper company for aerial spraying of herbicides over massive areas, causing birth defects and illness, who rallied against an asphalt batch plant being installed adjacent to the local high school's football field.  I have spent my entire adult life having people shake their heads and walk away in disgust.  I have been videotaped menacingly, bullied, threatened...

But I was right.

Today, as I sit here bleary eyed from another troubled night, envisioning the hundreds of thousands of gallons of radioactive water being pumped into the Pacific Ocean each day in Japan because of one of hundreds of nuclear power plants, any of which could 'blow' at any moment, I wonder why I did not do more to stop the madness.  At some point I merely checked out - went and hid on the backside of a mountain.  But what if I had spoken more loudly, more often?  Would anyone listen?  Would they, in this mad, mad world where women are automatically less respected, less acknowledged, have less rights, less credence?  Where, yes, it does matter what a woman looks like - WAY more than what a man looks like?  Where women themselves will attack another woman for standing up - for speaking the truth?  (no, not all women - of course - thank goodness)

And what now?  Now that we are warned not to eat fish from the Pacific Ocean - the largest ocean in the world.  Now that we are warned against dairy products from the Pacific Northwest of America - against dark green leafy vegetables - against allowing the rain to touch us - against drinking the water?  I find myself living in what would be a veritable Eden, but questioning every meal, every sip of water, beginning to shun all food from my own area just as I shunned food from Europe after Chernobyl.  I have long felt that people should live in an area that is largely self-sustainable.  And here I am, in one of the most verdant areas of the world, being warned that I should import my food.

What is being done to stop the nuclear holocaust that is wiping out safe water, safe food?    Is there still a chance to stop the madness?  Who is making all these decisions?  Who is backing them?  Why did no one listen when many, many of us cried out against the madness of installing giant, deadly, monstrous contraptions with ridiculously lacking plans for maintenance, repair - for disposal of contaminants, for emergency measures?  Who ok'd building them on faults?  In Tsunami zones?

Yes, this is like a science fiction movie.  I am watching the plume spread from our latest greatest disaster and wondering if enough people will wake up, soon enough to stop the madness.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the continent I live on, the other major Ocean is bubbling with oil spills. Ah, the mad irony, that the greatest source of healing, of health is the ocean, and yet, America has become a place where access to the very essence that our own bodies evolved to emulate is being cut off at a frightening pace.  And in the middle of this continent, huge monster pipelines, bursting willy nilly... spewing the earth's bile across the land - into the fresh water.

The laws that allow fracking to be carried on with immunity to water safety regulations, pipelines to be built - and built shoddily, that offered massive tax rebates for buying a gas hog vehicle weighing over three tons.... where does all this come from?

There is a meme on the internet of a fork in the road with nirvana one way and 99 cent burgers the other.  Everyone is heading off to the burger "deal".  Yeah, funny.  Except it is absolutely true.

We are so easily controlled.  Racism, prejudice,  perhaps most of all, selfish greed.  I know that I have many, many times betrayed my values for a pretty bauble, a yummy meal, some - oh, yeah! - MONEY.  All out of greed - and apathy.

Americans - make that humans - tend to scramble over each other, desperately clambering for "the top".    We all "need more than most people".  And whatever each of us is doing to further choke off the very life sustaining properties of this planet, it just does not matter, does it, because look at what all the rest of them are doing, eh?  And so we carry on, driving 5 blocks in our diesel trucks, soaking in our outdoor hot tubs (guilty), buying products that are shipped from around the world - such as, uh, water (big wtf here), getting more and more of our meals as take-out, neatly packaged in materials that require all of that energy we are so hooked on.   Yeah, energy.  We love that stuff.  Cannot get enough.  And it does not matter how, amiright?

Ah, the madness.... hello?  Is anyone awake around here?

So, uh, yeah... I hope we all wake up soon...  maybe someone should sound the alarm.