Industry as the Equivalent of Evolving: America's Story?

Who is responsible for the Earth?Two House of Representative committee chairmen have filed a bill to keep the federal government from regulating GHG’s. Is this ok?

It brings up the question of who is responsible for greenhouse gas emissions- as in, who should be responsible for monitoring them and reducing them. I’m reading Ishmael, by Daniel Quinn, right now (you should too if you want to have your world rocked!) and I’ve read it before, taught it as a class, and it has seeped irreversibly into my consciousness and framework with which I understand the Earth. It’s a lot of question and answer, very Socratic method based learning, but the essential components are: 1) Everyone is responsible for the Earth, and 2) We live out the story we believe.

So I thought I would consider what kind of story we as a country have about Greenhouse Gas Emissions, capital letters intended. About 150 years ago the Industrial Revolution started. The goal was to make things efficiently because the more stuff you make the more you can sell and the more money you make. We got better and better at it and entire industries grew up around the idea that we can make energy with stuff from the ground and make things with it and sell these things to other people. Now, we have an entire country built around that process, and our approach has come to be the defining aspect of what an Industrialized, or “Developed/ First World” country is. Anyone who hasn’t embraced the Industrial Revolution is considered a “Developing” country. I think that terminology is a big part of our story.

It belies an assumption not just that every other country wants to become industrialized but that at some point they WILL. That it is eventual, unavoidable, imminent that other countries must Develop Industry, as if it is a natural evolution. And that Industry is somehow better.

Which I think may be why the reaction against limiting greenhouse gasses is so dramatic. On the surface it sounds like a good idea because you can say you are saving the world. But underneath, it’s attacking the subconscious belief/understanding that we have all been brought up with: that Industrialized is better. That to dismantle it means going backwards, or giving up, or failing.

And in America especially, we pride ourselves on not being controlled by the government. We can depend on it for things, but not be controlled. If Industry is an evolution to a better life, then allowing the government to regulate how that Industry does what it does is asking the government to keep us from being better.

Asking the government to make us worse, to devolve. To stop human progress.

Am I going too far? Perhaps. It may not be that cerebral. But the fact that the U.S. has opted out of both Kyoto and Copenhagen essentially because we don’t want to limit our industrial emissions unless everybody else has the same rules means that it is a big part of how our country identifies itself. To limit our emissions would be to limit our evolution, to deny ourselves the right to fulfill the story we have been telling ourselves for generations.

What do you think?

Photo Credit: aussiegall (via Flickr under CCL)