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We came to Alaska to learn about sustainability [View all]
I finally got around to reading this piece my niece wrote as part of her experience at Inian Islands Institute. I might be biased, but I think it's insightful.
Reflecting on my time in Alaska, I begin to see that perhaps this is part of the difficulty in promoting the idea of sustainability. So many of us will live our entire lives in this comfortable constructed reality, so acclimated to our “normal reference frames” that they feel more natural than Wilderness. But what’s missing from this landscape is the connection between the goods we use and their origins. We look at an apple and see only sanitized store shelves and the anticipation of a warm apple pie, not the seed it grew from, the water that a farmer fought for the right to use, and the human hands that picked it, packaged it, and drove the truck that brought it to us.
--snip--
The cycle of purchase, use, and disposal is offhand and superficial because we see the cost only in terms of monetary loss. For some, the financial loss is enough to curb this replacement mindset, for others it only enables it. In a world where virtually any conceivable item, large or small, trivial or exotic, can be bought and delivered to your door in two days or less, it is incredibly easy to forget that resources are finite. The majority of us live a life so distanced from its origins that we do not even notice the umbilical cord to the natural world being snipped.
In Southeast Alaska, it is impossible to ignore one’s relationship to the land. Not only are livelihoods tied to the natural resources, financially and for basic subsistence, but the imposing landscape is always visually present, always a reminder of the relative scope of the power of humanity in relation to the natural world. The resource-based economies of Southeast, I believe, will always tend towards sustainability because the consequences of greed are clear: if you take beyond your need, the natural world that defines your sense of home will wither before your eyes. However, most of us are not fortunate enough to live enfolded in the cradle of our own survival, which makes it far too easy to blind beyond our own noses.
--snip--
The cycle of purchase, use, and disposal is offhand and superficial because we see the cost only in terms of monetary loss. For some, the financial loss is enough to curb this replacement mindset, for others it only enables it. In a world where virtually any conceivable item, large or small, trivial or exotic, can be bought and delivered to your door in two days or less, it is incredibly easy to forget that resources are finite. The majority of us live a life so distanced from its origins that we do not even notice the umbilical cord to the natural world being snipped.
In Southeast Alaska, it is impossible to ignore one’s relationship to the land. Not only are livelihoods tied to the natural resources, financially and for basic subsistence, but the imposing landscape is always visually present, always a reminder of the relative scope of the power of humanity in relation to the natural world. The resource-based economies of Southeast, I believe, will always tend towards sustainability because the consequences of greed are clear: if you take beyond your need, the natural world that defines your sense of home will wither before your eyes. However, most of us are not fortunate enough to live enfolded in the cradle of our own survival, which makes it far too easy to blind beyond our own noses.
The rest is here.
