Coming Down to Earth

By Curtis Ogden

I am intrigued by the conversations taking place at the national level about our current economic crisis, and in particular speculation that what we have to do is dismantle some of these mammoth and infected financial institutions and make them more manageable. In other words, there is a sense that our institutions have become too big and complex for their and our good, that they have gotten away from us, and are not immediately relevant to our lives. With the loss of that connection come a loss of accountability, of responsiveness, and of effectiveness.

I find an interesting parallel in some of the conversations about how best to address global problems such as climate change and biodiversity conservation. There are those who see global approaches to such issues as missing the essential point. For example, the effort to focus on those biodiversity hot spots around the globe where one might get the most bang for one’s buck, while making sense, also risk overlooking some of the more local solutions. Something about the notion of global strategies takes the issues out of our hands, leaving some with a sense of disconnection from what we are talking about. And what we are talking about is as common as dirt and fundamental as the air we breathe and water we drink.

Essentially, all politics, economics, and conservation is local. The ecologist Chris Uhl has written that, “As mundane as it may sound, for many of us the land at our doorstep provides the starting point for developing an affection for the earth, which is a necessary foundation for living respectfully within the confines of our planet.” Which is to say that connection is crucial. Lack of connection is what allows one human being to sell a risky mortgage to a vulnerable and unsuspecting other. It is what allows us to salt away our life support systems and sources of well-being. So as the conversations continue at the national and global level, I keep my ears tuned for those that bring us back to our senses about the confines in which we live, what we can realistically manage and the local relevance of our actions.