Dear HCN,
Paolo
Bacigalupi’s NIMBY status used to sound more selfish to me in the
past than it does now (HCN, 9/2/02: A NIMBY and proud of
it).
The major reason for my change of heart is
my awareness that there is more than one “self” involved in being a
NIMBY.
His rant points toward the possibility
that, if users, processors and suppliers somehow shared the pain of
the service, extraction, manufacture, disposal, or what-have-you,
there would be less pain to share because we would cause less
consumption.
Exploitation of any environment
sooner or later involves a cost, even to the end user. To avoid
being so exploitative, each of us needs to be reminded that we
share in several services which, because we want them at the best
price, allow us to be exploiters, too.
We may be
surprised to find out how connected we are to a particular service.
I live in the Santa Clara Valley (please, not Silicon Valley) at
the south end of San Francisco Bay, where we have just had a dustup
over installing a new electrical generating plant. Unlike so many
plants in the past, this one is natural gas-fired, so it will be
cleaner. That means we will be even less aware, as we turn on our
lights or write letters on word processing computers, that we are
using this natural gas, which is extracted so achingly from Big Sky
country.
It is increasingly obvious to me that
pain is not always physical, but it is always shared. We need to
increase the peace by sharing our burdens rather than increasing
any separations between us. I heard a comment in the jumble of
words honoring the trauma and recovery called 9/11 which will help
remind me of the variety of ways I am connected to other people’s
pain: Am I living in a way that makes violence
unnecessary?
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Increase the peace – share the pain.
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