Page 10 - ECOlogic Book

Zug Island and the New Bottom Line
(Summer, 1990)

Dream: My son and I are in a row boat, being pulled inexorably toward Zug
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Island by a powerful current. The blast furnaces on Zug Island belch out
towering flames and huge menacing billows of black smoke, rivaling the fires
of hell. Pulling on the oars with all our strength, we manage to get the boat
turned around and begin rowing as hard as we can, against the powerful
current. Then we see something moving beneath the surface of the water.
As we get closer to it, we see that’s two manatees, cavorting playfully. We
are struck by the aliveness and vigor of these two strong mammals, and
realize that our having seen them is a sign that we will make it home.

Whatever else the dream may have meant for me personally, it’s a vivid
metaphor for the historic moment we are experiencing as a culture.
It is a moment when our industrial processes have pushed the natural world,
on which all life is based, to its limit. The price of our phenomenal success
in creating for ourselves a world of ease and “plenty” has not yet been fully
accounted for. Now our debts are being called in.

Among the mind-boggling array of intertwined environmental problems is
the mounting evidence of dramatic climate change already well under way.
The carbon dioxide generated by our industrial processes and our addiction
to fossil fuels has increased to an intolerable level. In his book, The End of
Nature, Bill Mckibbon states: We have increased the amount of carbon
dioxide in the air by about 25% in the last century and will almost certainly
double it in the next. We have substantially altered the earth’s
atmosphere.” These atmospheric changes are profoundly affecting weather
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patterns, beyond the ability of natural ecosystems to adapt. It’s no longer
news that ecosystems are crashing all over the globe.

We are in the grip of a profound pathology, a powerful inertia that keeps us
plowing blindly ahead even though we can see we’re on the wrong road.
Even our efforts to correct our abuses are based on an assumption that we
can keep on as we have been; that if we just add some scrubbers and bring
down auto emissions the problems will be solved. These things are needed,
to be sure, and the faster the better, but they do not get at the root of it.
These problems, says Kirkpatrick Sale in an article in the Nation are “the

2 Zug Island is a small island that’s been turned into one big foundry in the middle of the Detroit River.

3 McKibbon, Bill, the end of Nature, Random House, New York, NY, 1989), P. 18.

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