Sustainability Politics

We were left in the last article pondering the relationship between gas-guzzling SUVs and the current trend towards anti-American sentiments in various regions of the world. Believe it or not, our disproportionate use of resources is a major cause of the mounting animosity towards the USA.

Will you excuse me a minute while I digress into politics?

I am a product of the Cold War. As a youngster, I would read news accounts that pitted “our” arsenal of nuclear weapons against those of the former USSR. These accounts would give horrifying statistics of how many cities each side could melt into oblivion, with accompanying data of the thousands and thousands who would be affected by the accompanying fallout.

This kind of material is not really good stuff to meditate on, but it had its intended effect: I distrusted anything associated with communism. What I could not figure out was the “why” behind the phenomenal expansion of Marxism. Just why would people come to promote what I been propagandaized to believe to be an overtly barbaric system?

In the beginning days of the year 2000, I found myself in the heart of Bolivia, South America. There I began to comprehend the “why” of the communism’s growth.

To me, “commies” were ruthless persecutors of religion. They were heartless oppresors of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. They were men without values.

And then I met face to face with the disciples of “Che”.

Ernesto “Che” Guevara is a name unknown to the majority of North Americans. Perhaps part of the reason is because he was a victim of the Cold War political machine—the capitalistic one.

Yes, the capitalists hunted down Che, captured him while he bathed in a Bolivian river, and then executed him, burying his remains—minus his dismembered hands—near the landing strip of a backwoods Bolivian town in 1967.

To the capitalists, he was the friend and collaborator of Fidel Castro; sentence enough to merit immediate death.

To masses of the poor in Latin America, he is, to this day, the man who tried to deliver them from the unjustice of economic inequality. He was the man with a message of parity; the man who told them that it was not fair that 10% of the Latin American population controlled 90% of its wealth and 100% of its politics. The upper 10% lived sumptiously, and the other 90% survived from hand to mouth.

Now, take off your $100 Wolverine boots and strap on a pair of leather and rubber sandals—cut from the discarded tires of the rich man’s Jeep.

You earn $3/day, if you can find a job. You started out your maried life with $37 and a hoe and machete. Your wife had two pots and two dresses. Yes, you have gotten ahead: you now have a 320 square foot adobe house in which to raise your six children. They are all clothed, and you were even able to scratch enough together to buy their pencils and folders for this year’s school term.

You watch the rich drive by in their air-conditioned Toyotas. The thought of you ever owning your own vehicle is about a remote of an idea as the rich man’s owning his own airplane. It does happen to a few, but most likely will not happen to you.

The rich guy pulls the strings, politically. When donations come from other lands to “aid the poor”, somehow big chunks of these funds end up in his pockets. He knows how to make things happen; like how to get the deed to thousands of acres of land, on which he forbids you plant a garden.

“¡Che, no es justo!” (Hey, this is not just!) someone says.

You pause a moment from digging potatoes in the rich man’s big field, where he has hired you for the day, and look into the face of none other than … Che Guevara! (Che got his nick-name from his constant use of the word “che”, equivalent to “hey” in English.)

His message of injustice and inequality speaks loud to you. You cannot disagree, because it is truth. To say that it is just and fair for one man to live luxuriously while nine eke out a living for their daily bread, is simply hard for any honest man to say.

And so you, contemplating the message of Che, have just become another convert to communism; one among millions. You may or may not be inclined towards Che’s militant attitude. But something deep inside kind of smiles at Che giving the rich guys a punch in the nose…

What does all this have to do with sustainable living?

In a nutshell, either we “privileged ones” begin to scale back our out-of-proportion consumption and hording of natural resources, or more and more Che Guevaras will keep arising. They call themselves “revolutionaries”; a more accurate description would probably be “reactionaries”. Regardless of the term used, they are angry and dangerous. Che Guevara admitted he would have attacked the USA with the nuclear missiles of the “Cuban Missile Crisis”, but Russia, thankfully, had never relinquished control of them to Cuba.

Will we heed the warnings? Or do we think we are incapable of being touched by these reactionaries? Do we trust in an ever-growing need of military might to keep the pumps in the Middle East pushing black gold our way?

What would happen in the USA should the petroleum valves get shut off for several months by these anti-American reactionaries, who have had enough of our gobbling of resources?

All those trucks that used to go rumbling 24/7 are sidelined, no California produce in Ohio, empty shelves at Wal-mart (not to mention no money to buy anything anyways), job layoffs because of no markets, hordes of hungry city folk desperate for food they cannot obtain…

What would happen?

Maybe we had better begin to practice a little sustainability before we have to learn the hard way!