Blame greedy capitalism, not EPA

To the editor,

“The Lord can make you tumble, the Lord can make you turn, the Lord can make you overflow… but the Lord can’t make you burn.” That’s Randy Newman’s take on the infamous event of 1969 when Cleveland’s Cuyahoga River, contaminated by decades of industrial waste, burst into flames. Though it wasn’t the first or worst time the river had burned, a Time magazine article about the incident eventually spurred the environmental movement, leading to what became known as the “Clean Water Act” of 1972. Though lacking combustion, the recent spill in the Animas River nonetheless caused the river to burn.

Local reaction, particularly among reflexively ideological Republican politicians, has been predictably self-serving and misguided. Ellen Roberts called the spill “The EPA’s Love Canal.” Love Canal was of course one of the nation’s worst examples of corporate greed and malfeasance, a housing development built on a toxic chemical landfill. The horrifying consequences to the residents living there included cancer and birth defects. This disingenuous scapegoating of the EPA is meant to weaken the very agency that is the bulwark standing between the environment and capitalism run amuck. Likewise Scott Tipton has proposed a probe of the EPA’s role in the disaster, when it is the mines that merit study.

Capitalism is the most dynamic force in humanity’s economic history. It has raised people out of poverty and improved the lives of billions. From a moral perspective, you can question the motives behind the capitalists drive for wealth and power but it is difficult to deny the positive collateral effect. Unfortunately the profit motive 4

is essentially amoral. Corporations can and do destroy the environment in the pursuit of profit.

The obvious response to an ecological disaster caused by unbridled capitalism is regulation. Industrial irresponsibility torched the Cuyahoga River, and closer to home, contaminated the Colorado Rockies and a watershed that drains half a continent.

Contrary to what some politicians want you to believe, government is the solution to many problems. In the sad case of the sullying of the Animas River, the solution lies with the government, specifically the EPA.

– Patrick Owens, Durango

Pulling words from the sediment

To the editor and all people whose lives interconnect with the Animas River:

In response to the contamination of the Animas River from the Gold King Mine catastrophe, I write this letter with immobilizing grief heavy on my heart. Few words emerge to express the languish of my soul, my one small expression of the collective soul, the lifeblood of the Animas River. Because my words have not yet found their way to the surface, still lying heavy in the sediment at the river’s bottom, I’m reprinting “A Discipline” from novelist, environmental activist, cultural critic and farmer Wendell Berry, as they express better for me what cannot yet be expressed: Turn toward the holocaust, it approaches on every side, there is no other place to turn. Dawning in your veins is the light of the blast that will print your shadow on stone in a last antic of despair to survive you in the dark. Man has put his history to sleep in the engine of doom. It flies over his dreams in the night, a blazing cocoon. O gaze into the fire and be consumed with man’s despair, and be still, and wait. And then see the world go on with the patient work of seasons, embroidering birdsong upon itself as for a wedding, and feel your heart set out in the morning like a young traveler, arguing the world from the kiss of a pretty girl. It is the time’s discipline to think of the death of all living, and yet live.

– Sarah Rankin, Durango

Escalation of spiritual ignorance

Precious Warrior Tribe of Durango,

My world-wide and local yoga and fitness students have asked my take and teachings on our now internationally acclaimed screw up of one of America’s few remaining wild rivers in my native hometown.

The white man’s track record since landing upon Turtle Island and claiming her as “his own,” has never proven to be a respectful steward – let alone a humble and conscious child of Mother (Earth) and our Father (Sky). Just ask a local Native American (I live with one) for their insights into our most recent toxic event and your perspective might be changed for the higher.

Since planting the white man’s flag and then fences and then fear-based forts before building and riding trains from which to shoot and kill buffalo beings for fun (buffalo medicine is prayer and abundance … are we capable to sense the prophetic metaphor?) en route to drilling thousands of humongous mining holes into Mother Earth with flippant concern about their toxic effects during the white man’s “westward expansion” for the sake of money proves that the white man’s spiritual ignorance has only escalated in co-efficient ratio to our Western addiction to perceived comfort.

My precious lifelong sacred river – many of my friends who used to poke fun at me since I always refer to the Animas as “Our Sacred River” are NOT poking fun at me now! – is now a fluid ribbon of toxicity that requires me as a blessed and sworn dharma protector to dig deep into my yogic/spiritual warrior quiver to reiterate my life message since 1985: The outdoors is sacred > care for it unconditionally!

Teaching: any human-made loud and/or chronic noise is usually a sign of spiritual decay, be it the sound of the “iron horse” chugging across Turtle Island or the mining cacophony of a 100 years ago or … (take a conscious breath here) to a mountain biker or runner or skier choosing to listen to an iPod instead of nature. When we superimpose noise upon nature? That’s where the crux transition from spiritual awakening to spiritual ignorance begins. In the beginning there was a harmonious sound, not noise: Om.

The natives whom still live traditional ways, yes, those who lived here on Turtle Island loooooong before us? Hard to see them, for they do not bring attention to themselves through noise. Hard to hear them, for they walk and live with grace and humbleness and at-oneness upon Mother Earth beneath Father Sky.

Silence – in meditation, in sports, in occupation, in life – is tantamount. It’s predictably pensive; over the last few years, the bear beings have been trying to tell us human beings in Durango to listen inwardly; their sudden rise in appearances was because s(om)ething big would soon need adjustment to our pathetic efforts at taking care of our Mother. Bear medicine is introspection. In Durango (and other mountain towns), bears (aka, introspection) have been making themselves obvious in our human trash piles. Yet instead of heeding their counsel (introspect our trash … get it? introspect our mine toxicity) we simply track them; count them; put their trackings in the media instead of accepting them as gurus - slayers of spiritual ignorance.

This toxic nightmare come true is a challenging parenting vehicle and guru for all of us… may we learn and rise higher.

Blessed be our sacred hamlet beneath Dibé Nitsaa.

Head bowed, spirit vowed.

– Feeble yogi Steve Ilg, native Durangoan