Aldo Leopold's Sand County Almanac, published in 1949, was a benchmark in the environmental movement. It was written in and about Wisconsin. In the chapter "Thinking Like a Mountain," Leopold develops the idea of the interconnectedness of the biotic community. The phrase implies a time frame that extends far beyond our immediate needs and gratifications. Leopold taught for most of his career at the University of Wisconsin, and was by all accounts an inspirational teacher. His writing is both precise and poetic. He also worked on policy and played a significant role in establishing The Wilderness Society.
John Muir, co-founder of the Sierra Club, took his first botany class at the University of Wisconsin. A transcendentalist at heart, Muir supplied us with much of the vocabulary that forms the spiritual bedrock of the environmental movement. We wouldn't have Yosemite National Park without his preservation efforts, and probably wouldn't have the Sierra Club.
Gaylord Nelson served as both a United States Senator and as Governor of Wisconsin. He was the founder of Earth Day. We wouldn't have the Apostle Islands National Lakeshore wilderness area without his advocacy, and possibly wouldn't have the EPA, the Clean Air and Water act, the Endangered Species Act - themselves outcomes of the transformative power and political urgency of Earth Day.
These three men were brilliant and principled leaders. The world is definitively better for their efforts. They stood for something beyond greed, beyond avarice, beyond the rapacious extraction of resources intended to build massive wealth for robber barons.
Wisconsin has a long and proud legacy regarding the environment. This is a stunningly beautiful state, amazingly diverse in its landscape and waterscape. However, Scott Walker, in one long year, has torn away decades of environmental policy that has helped balance the long term health of our natural resources with the immediate needs of the economy, recreation and tourism. This has been working. It was not broken. There is no crisis here. But Walker is too ignorant and spiritually pinched to see beyond his corporate Koch campaign contributors.
Due to this environmental negligence, the John Muir Chapter of the Sierra Club's executive committee has strongly and unanimously endorsed the recall, and is asking all of its members to do the same.
Here is what Walker has managed to do in just one demented year:
1) Effectively stopped all new wind energy projects in the state
2) Cut funding for the Gaylord Nelson – Warren Knowles Stewardship Funding by 30%
3) Undermined Wisconsin nationally recognized energy conservation program
4) Abolished the state Office of Energy Independence
5) Carved out a special exemption from wetlands protections for a campaign contributor
6) Eliminated the requirement that municipal water supplies be disinfected
7) Called a special session for the purpose of passing legislation to roll back water pollution and wetlands law .
8) Appointed as DNR Secretary the state Senator with one of the worst environment voting records in the Legislature.
9) Sought to severely weaken mining laws to benefit an Appalachian mining company that want to build a massive strip mine in our north woods.
The Sierra Club goes on to warn:
If we just sit by and watch, Wisconsin will be a very different place. A place where our natural resources have scant protection – where pollution is allowed and the North Woods are handed over to a strip mining corporation – where any efforts to reduce our dependence on coal and oil are stifled.
Our best, and very possibly only, chance to stop this onslaught on environmental protection is to help recall Scott Walker and Rebecca Kleefisch.
Please join with hundreds of other Sierra Club volunteers to reclaim our Badger environmental heritage.
Not that we need any more reasons for a recall, but if union busting and teacher vilification campaigns aren't compelling, if tearing down one of the best university systems in the country doesn't convince, if starving public schools and denying healthcare to the families who need it the most doesn't move your soul, then perhaps this gobshite governor's attack on our land, air and water will remind us why we are out in the cold getting strangers to sign white and yellow petition papers day in and day out.
I can think of things that I'd rather be doing with my time, but then, that wouldn't be thinking like a mountain, would it?