Page 47 - ECOlogic Book

Duck! Here Comes the Sun!
(Summer, 1992)

The following ad appeared in a recent Orvis sporting gear catalog:

CAMO DOG VISOR: $14.50 . . . now your pet no longer
has to squint every time he ventures out into the bright sun.
. . . Aside from being dashing, the visor helps shield the dog’s
eyes, reducing harmful ultraviolet rays. Comes in four sizes.
the small size even fits cats and rabbits.

If it weren’t serious, this would be great piece of satire. “Shield your dog’s
eyes from the sun, reducing harmful ultraviolet rays?” Yikes! Is there
something they’re not telling us? It might seem ludicrous or absurd – but
then we read about the hole in the ozone layer over Antarctica and “down
under”. We know about that. Or do we?

Consider this: More than 75% of all people over the age of 65 in
Queensland, Australia now have some form of skin cancer. There, children
are required by law to wear large hats and neck scarves to and from school
to protect them against ultraviolet radiation. In Patagonia, hunters report
finding blind rabbits; fisherman are catching blind salmon. The protective
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ozone layer is thinning in other places as well, and scientists fear that the
phytoplankton, the carbohydrate-rich membrane on the ocean’s surface that
forms the basis for all marine life, is dying off.

The sun, which has been worshipped, adored and praised for as long as
humans can remember, now suddenly seems not so friendly. The dear
friend, whose warmth has comforted us, whose rays have tanned us and
supplied photons for plants to synthesize into carbohydrates for our food,
seems to be turning on us.

Of course, we know it is we who have turned on ourselves, or rather, on the
planet, and it’s understandable why some deep ecology extremists have
referred to the human species as a pathogen on the planet. We’re
stretching to its limit, perhaps beyond, the earth’s natural ability to heal
itself, causing earth’s auto-immune system to break down.

Some have suggested AIDS as a metaphor for what we are doing to the
planet. If it is true, as Thomas Berry says, that in our deepest subjectivity

47 Gore, Al, Earth in the Balance, (Houghton Mifflin, Boston, New York, London, 1992).

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