This week (it’s still raining, not that I don’t read when it’s sunny) I’ve been reading a collection of essays by William Kittredge, who grew up on a ranch in eastern Oregon and now lives in Montana, and writes about land use and culture in the western US. His main idea seemed to be that methods of agriculture used in the US since World War II, and perhaps for most of the 20th century, are deleterious, in that their costs outweigh their benefits.

Although the claim surprised me, I didn’t have to think about it very long to come up with my own examples. Nitrogen fertilizer brought us a worldwide population explosion, then coastal dead zones than are now starting to encircle continents. Antibiotic use in animals seems to be increasing the number of resistant pathogens for humans, and manure lake runoff poisons water and air. Nature’s pesticide, Bt, has been engineered into some GMO plants in an “always on” fashion, allowing plant pests to develop immunity, which Nature avoided for eons by having plants only produce Bt for short spurts as needed. GMO plants are clones, hundreds of square miles of clones, monoculture, a mega potato famine waiting to happen.

Kittredge mostly writes about destruction of habitat. Changing swampland, forests, prairies, estuaries, deserts, and low- and high-altitude meadows to farmland has consequences for wildlife, water supply, soil productivity, and human health. He feels that in his lifetime–he was born in the 1930s–the West has become significantly less diverse and beautiful, due to practices in ranching, farming, and mining.

While it’s easy to say that what humans do is maximize growth and profit over sustainability and long-term health, we haven’t always done so, and not all of us always make that choice, so I have been thinking about what might be the difference now. I think it is what the Once-ler would term, Biggering. Many things seem to be global now, yet decisions made locally, on a small scale, are more accurate and more responsive than those made on a large scale. Think about making a choice for your local school, as opposed to having the school board choose. If you get involved when your children are young, you will still be tweaking the process five or ten years on. There will be a learning curve, and possibly an evolution in priorities, and you will be discussing the nuances the entire time.

Sounds good, but of course Kittredge’s family was managing their ranch devotedly for three generations, and they managed it out of existence. Looking at the big picture is important, too. It didn’t occur to any one rancher than if they all drained the swamps and dammed the streams there would be no more wading birds or fish, and the absence of these species would lead to irreversible changes. Perhaps one person could do those things with relative impunity, but everyone did them.

So here’s a blog that’s more like my normal, daily thinking, that is, circular and inconclusive. Life is complicated, and answers aren’t obvious. Those of us who are willing to try to navigate that will, I hope, continue to do so. Like the Lorax, we can speak for the trees. Or the children. Or the community. For wildlife, the dispossessed, science, democracy, civil discourse. For coral reefs, music and art, reasoning, education, voting rights, police restraint, and darkness at night.

I left off the emotions, did you notice? Choose something concrete, something you can delve into.