Two hundred and thirty years ago this week, our founding fathers declared in unison that
"all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness".
These most-famous words of our Declaration of Independence form the foundation of what we have come to term The American Dream: that anyone, given the freedom to do so, can build for themselves a high quality of life surrounded by others doing the same. For the better part of the last two-and-a-half centuries, we have sought to improve upon the imperfections of the Republic that have prevented us from realizing this lofty goal. Some of these fights to make things better have been social, some political, and some technological. In almost every case, each generation has sought to make life better for the one that follows, and each step - however small - has been a step forward. We sit on the precipice of being the first generation to enshrine a step backwards and our last great opportunity to rectify this lies in finally removing the barriers created by the environmental damage that supports a high quality of life for some while limiting the quality of life of many others.
We first dealt with the damage of the plantation economy through expansion. Then Civil War caused us finally to face the exploitation of people that our founding fathers had enshrined in our constitution. As our nation moved from agrarian to industrial, we saw the growth of the labor movement, the end of laws that had codified the ability of business to dominate the working class, and the protection of lands. We granted people of all genders equal access to a voice in our nation's policies. As we lost connection with the land, the focus on wealth led us to collapse, and that generation had to rescue the country from the ramifications an economy focused on wealth attainment instead of improving quality of life. For the sixty years hence, we have ignored the dangers - even though forewarned - of rebuilding our economy around the perpetuation of war. We finally established a legal foundation for protecting air and water. In each of these times, we tackled the shortcomings of our Republic and gradually created a more equal society where achievement depends only on our own desire and ability. Although many factors feed into the continuing push for equality, the issue that we ignored for the first almost two-hundred years of our country's existence, pollution and environmental damage, still permeates our society even four decades after efforts to eliminate it.
The equality of opportunity promised by the American Dream requires that each person born into our society has equal access to the fundamental tools to pursue happiness. Each person needs to breathe, drink, and eat to support the systems within ourselves that allow us to think, learn, and work. Unfortunately, many of the technologies that we currently use to support a high quality of life for some of us create conditions that are not conducive to life for others. We still farm largely in monocultures that extract resources from the soil at unsustainable rates, forcing us to replenish those resources through unnatural means. This monoculture provides an environment conducive to pests, requiring us to engineer plants and introduce chemicals into the growing cycle that we hope harm the pests without harming us. The fertilizers we use to replenish our soil require intense amounts of energy to create them, and the chemicals contained within these fertilizers often leave the soil through run-off and end up in our waterways. In order to create a low-cost food economy based upon quantity of sale and not quality of sale, we introduce chemicals into the preparation process without proof that those chemicals support health. We rely on energy systems for the fertilizer and to support the buildings, vehicles, and industry that give us the shelter, mobility, and utility that allow us to work. These systems also release heavy metals, particulate matter, and unnatural chemical compounds into our biosphere. These compounds change the quality of air, the natural composition of the atmosphere, and the way in which nature handles air and water. The industries that provide an ever-expanding array of products to entertain us, link us to each other, and enhance our culture, also rely on the same extractive, plantation economy that rips apart the earth, takes whatever resources it has to offer, then leaves it barren with no productive use to the rest of us or our children. Then, while producing the products that fuel our consumption, the unused materials are released into our air, water and earth in ways that make both the material and the surrounding environment useless to us.
Lest this vision of our society sound unrealistic, we only need look at something as simple as establishing urban farms. If you live in a city, and want to establish a plot of land to grow vegetables, test your soil to see if it is capable of safely growing food. You will find that almost none of our urban green space safely provides nutrients fit for consumption, but instead provides a dangerous dose of metals from urban pollution. If the view of farming sounds like a tree hugger's hyperbole, ask a farmer if they can grow on a monocrop farm without fertilizer, water, herbicide, and pesticide...then ask them if they will allow you to taste either of the latter. Whether or not you think that any of this has an impact, consider the following:
Lead poisoning, caused largely by placing lead into paint and gasoline, affects poor and minority populations at rates far exceeding those of white and middle-class families. As levels of lead decline in urban populations, not only have we seen stark drops in crime, but we have recently begun to see gains academically for those in minority schools relative to their white counterparts. Asthma rates for poor and black communities exceed those middle-class and white communities by fifty percent, which does not surprise since people of color make up thirty-nine percent of residents near coal-fired power plants (as opposed to twenty-nine percent of the population) and eighty-two percent of residents of inner-cities - where transportation pollution predominates.
We need our hearts pumping, lungs working, brain functioning, and digestive system delivering nutrients in order to survive and grow. On top of these basic needs, we need a quality education to provide the cognitive development necessary for us to become productive members of society, and physical development to make us strong enough to sustain that contribution over the course of our natural lives. A significant segment of our population still does not have equal opportunity to that development because of the decisions that another group of us makes. Even those that can develop to the point where they can work manual labor jobs to sustain themselves and their family, and make our lives richer, live shorter and less healthy lives than those that work in traditionally "white-collar" professions. A society that truly provides equality of opportunity will eliminate all of these disparities, will provide a foundation that recognizes that degrading one life for the sake of another is morally wrong, and will not rest until we truly recognize that "all...are created equal".
The most important piece of this discussion, is that we already know how to do this. We know how to deliver energy with little or no pollutants harmful to this or future generations. Our architects and engineers can deliver buildings that need little energy to provide the basic services. Our designers and biologists can create products based on materials that support life, and our chemists know which elements can provide a service without degrading life-supporting systems. Most importantly, we know how to grow food in such a way as to nourish the fields and create cycles of growth that do not require the chemical or energy inputs our current methods do; and we know how to do this and still feed a planet full of people all looking for a better life. It is not a matter of knowing, it is simply a matter of doing.
To truly deliver on the promise of our Declaration, we must tirelessly fight to deliver a society in which any community - urban, suburban, or rural - can grow its own food without fear of what it might contain. We must create a country where no parent need worry that when their child leaves the house, the air they breathe will stunt their growth physically, mentally, or spiritually. We must strive every hour of every day to ensure that when a person reaches down to a source of water, that we have not transformed a source that gives life into a source that damages life. Until we can guarantee this, we have not delivered an America where anyone can apply their gifts to their own benefit, take personal responsibility for their own success or failure, and determine their own quality of life. Oft forgotten amongst the great language of the Declaration, the last line seals our commitment to how we will attain the society that delivers on the promise of the ever-famous first line of the second paragraph,
"...we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor."
The minute we fulfill this pledge by ensuring that no action of business, person, or government damages the earth, air, and water that sustain us...that is the moment we truly establish a free America. We have all the knowledge, all the resources, and all the technology necessary to make this America real, but until we do, the words of our Declaration are just words, and our pledge unfulfilled.
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