Musings on Our Growth Footprint
Reckless urban sprawl, that is sprawl without responsibility, grows no different than terminal cancer. The roads, water lines, sewer lines and electricity are like veins in a human body. After the cancer begins, it recruits new blood vessels to aid in oxygen flow to create more cancerous cells to further branch out into the body and on and on and on. Once cancer or urban sprawl takes shape, it's nearly impossible to contain.
That said I live in urban sprawl. Worse yet, there is an artificially-inflated consumerism that surrounds most development, mine is no exception. The Walmarts, Bed/Bath and Beyonds, Lowes, Staples (actually, I really like Staples) and dozens more big box retailers then generate a phony need, want and desire for 'stuff' nobody would think to buy if it weren't 'on sale.'
None of this progress is organic growth or growth that can sustain the environment indefinitely. It's completely unnatural and unbalanced in favor of profits, consumerism, waste and greed. Some might call this economics, I call it the incremental growth of irresponsible capitalism. In the end, it's the small streams, beautiful wildlife and verdant forests that suffer and this lessens our quality of life dramatically.
Where might all this ideology be stemming from?
Well, one too many green documentaries at midnight under the influence of a cold cappuccino pull at my heart strings but also travel. Whenever I fly over a city at night and see the veins of a 6-lane highway and the uniformity of a treeless development, I think of cancer.
I also think of my step-mom staying vigilant about fighting her cancer despite the odds. I also think of where I live and how many dozens of trees I planted to make up for a reckless developer who mowed everything down to save money.
I think of hundreds of little towns throughout the U.S. benefiting financially from development in the short term but suffering from environmental consequences in the long term. I think of alot of things.
Lastly, I think of Edward Abbey, a passionate environment advocate, who said 'Growth for growth sake is the ideology of a cancer cell.'
posted by Sonja Stark of PilotGirl™ @ 8:19 PM
1 Comments:
To me, this mania to cut everything down instead of living in harmony with the earth goes all the way back to Genesis in the Old Testament, specifically to these words, purportedly from 'God' but, of course, written by a human being:
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And God blessed them, and God said to them, "Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth."
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This is, of course, pure nonsense. There's not a reason in the world why 'man' should have 'dominion' over the earth. It makes far more sense to live in harmony with the earth, to live with trees and not to cut them down, to live in towns and cities and leave the countryside as it is naturally, not to 'tame' it with grass and asphalt. I love Staples and BestBuy and many other excellent stores, but why do they have to be in flat boxes plopped on top of meadows? Why not make our cities habitable? It's not growth which is the problem but, as Edward Abbey says, '[uncontrolled, nonsensical] growth for growth's sake'.
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