Pop culture would seem to be harmless until you realize that it may well be causing us to forget the really serious stuff. It’s like getting caught up in the floor show on the Titanic after hearing a loud thump.
To wit: Will children in history class 50 years from now be able to believe that the top news preoccupations in early 2004, beyond the war in Iraq, were the appearance of a singer’s areola during a football game; a baseball that was blown to pieces; a sadomasochistic movie about Jesus that belched controversy 2,000 years after the fact; a disc jockey who talked naughty on the radio; and some homemaking maven who cheated in trying to make money while the biggest cheaters of the day remained free?
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Supposing that the environment will be in a much more advanced stage of decay by then, according to many forecasts, the students probably would want to guess that the American population was transfixed by the battle to detoxify the planet.
Unfortunately, the fairy tale here is the reality; we’re hung up on the things that ultimately mean nothing.
Look at a few of the environmental issues that were bubbling up at the same time the other “news” hit.
– European researchers released a report showing that 2003’s heat wave was the hottest summer on their continent in five centuries.
– The insurance company Swiss Re warned that extreme weather events are on the rise, caused in part by human-influenced global warming. In short, corporate interests are acknowledging that we’re in deepening environmental doo-doo.
– The United States told the international community that it will request an even larger exemption from global restrictions on the pesticide methyl bromide, which damages the ozone layer.
– British environmental leaders warned that fish populations are collapsing globally.
– The Pentagon disclosed that it had received a think-tank report suggesting eventual “climate” wars that would dwarf terrorism as a threat, though defense officials said the report merely was a worst-case scenario. The point, though, is that the scenario is on the radar at all.
– Century-old heat records fell in California, and it’s not even spring yet. That’s not necessarily a problem so far but just another in a disturbingly frequent series of recent weather aberrations.
Odds are that most people knew all about the first group of stories and few of the second group.
Nevertheless, some people are sensing trouble, even though issues affecting our very breath tend to be crowded out of the popular consciousness.
Jack Darin, director of the Illinois chapter of the Sierra Club, said membership in his environmental organization is on the increase–to about 26,000 from the 24,000 four years ago–bucking a trend that usually heads down in tough economic times.
“Our membership has steadily risen over the last four years,” he said, “because people are just outraged at what they see as a giveaway of our national resources.”
Part of the problem in spreading the word, he added, is that “it’s easier to worry about the things that might kill us tomorrow or next week” rather than the things that turn deadly over the long term.
So we can either start pushing some environmental concerns into open view, or we’re in for one heck of a “Survivor” series. Our choice.
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Send e-mail for Ross Werland to [email protected].