Dear Friend,
Today is the day I set aside nine years ago, to close down the Ghost Nets project. It felt momentous to me and a bit sad and yet ordinary, as I felt New Year's Day: we were going into a new millenia and the world was the same, nothing terrible had happened and yet one thousand years of history were now behind us.
When I began this project, I described it publically as an effort at "housekeeping" during the decade ahead of Global Choice that would make or break things. In retrospect, I'm not so apocalyptic but I am more radicalized.
What if, in the boundless world of What If, every time a couple had a second child rather than adopt, every time a new housing development was built rather than integrated into existing urban space the "perpetrators" were charged with environmental abuse and given the same jail time as a case of child abuse? What if it were illegal to plant a lawn in arid parts of the world?
What if we demolished shopping malls and even cities to make space for waterways and animal migration routes? What if it would be unthinkable to own a car that ran on less than 100 miles per gallon of any kind of fuel? What if anyone entering an endangered ecosystem of more than 5 square miles, anywhere in the world, were required to undergo three years of intensive environmental education monitored by Indigenous Peoples to earn a license that would be revokable in five years? And the penalty were death by being staked to an ant hill and covered with honey?
Because we are killing our children. They will not have water or food or breathable air. What if we thought in terms of every child born kills 1000 future children by what they will consume of available resources? What if we tallied how many dead animals it costs to drive one mile? What if people were charged with environmental war crimes any time they exercised their greed at the expense of the environment? What if a family compound with a 10 000 square foot home were regarded as mass murder?
What if these are not extreme questions but actually conservative?
March 20 is the date for a final formal walking event to close out the project on the physical site (I would welcome any of you who can join me literally or vitrually that day) and a deadline for some major changes, including sound to the web site. I am satisfied with all this curtain closing.
All this week, I have been looking back on what was accomplished or learned; much of it either very sobering, humbling or confusing but all of it part of the web we are all weaving, I believe, to protect our life on this little planet.
Briefly, because I am asked a lot, "what will you do next?" I have a lot to do as 'mop-up' and extrapolation to do from Ghost Nets that will probably take a few years, including environmental restoration work that reaches out from this center into the world. I have every intention of continuing the Ghost Nets web site into the forseeable future as part of the outreach process I have already begun. I see that as separate from the actual project, which was about what could be learned and accomplished in the earth blip of ten years.
I want to thank all of you who have become or continued as my friends and colleagues here and accompanied me on this wonderful, long & difficult journey (even in the rough spots which were really just about taking the trip, no?).
January 7, 2000
- Art -- January 18, 2000: Ghost Nets, An Earth Art Project, Celebrates Completion
- Science -- January 30, 2000: Ghost Nets, An Earth Art Project, Celebrates Completion