[Vision2020] Am I My Brother's Oily Keeper

[Tom Hansen]

Courtesy of today's (July 16, 2011) Moscow-Pullman Daily News with special thanks to Chuck Pezeshki.

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HIS VIEW: Am I my brother's oily keeper?
By Chuck Pezeshki

The megaloads controversy keeps boiling away in our neck of the woods - quite literally. Earth First! held their Wild Rockies Rendezvous on the Lochsa, no megaloads were present, and no news was made. Now new shipments are soon to be moving up both tracks - U.S. Highway 12 over Lolo Pass, as well as U.S. Highway 95 through Moscow. Roads have been strengthened, and trees have been trimmed on the "pro-megaload" side of the equation. Protests have been prepared, and street parties organized on the opposite side.

I've stated my opinion previously that I think the megaloads issue is one of the most insane I've encountered in our backyard. Having worked on timber and Forest Service roadless area issues, I at least understood the opposition from various parties to my positions about preserving wild country. Even though the remaining trees left on the National Forests weren't worth much, the jobs of the Forest Service employees in the timber program, as well as all the blue-collar jobs building worthless and unnecessary roads into the backcountry had dollar value. Even if you were a logger who cared about fish, the reality was you probably had a Caterpillar D-8 sitting in your driveway that you had to make payments on, and a mortgage and mouths to feed.

But there's just none of this with the megaloads. There are no real jobs that the loads produce. On a local level, the impact is economically detrimental. Anyone who thinks that hauling huge boilers up Idaho roads that were never designed for such use is not going to cause damage is smoking something that they're often accusing protesters of smoking. And not to mention the inconvenience everyone is going to experience when the Idaho Transportation Department's bizarre definition of delays finally reaches the driving public. Plan on being stuck in traffic if you're out when these giant beasts are out. The comments about hotel revenue from the Moscow City Council are positively nonsensical and display such a level of ignorance it's really hard to wrap one's head around all of it.

But the substantive and scary thing that makes me wonder is the constant criticism of the protesters themselves by some in the community. The comments are mostly along the line of "You're really not protesting the movement of the megaloads - you're protesting the destination of the equipment." And the theme behind this is that having a larger view of the world bigger than the space between your toes is somehow evil and egocentric. If you asked me if I am concerned about the Alberta tar sands, I'd answer "Hell, yes. They're digging a pit that you can see from space. Communities full of people are getting cancerous dust blown into their backyard, and the dirty oil that we're digging up there isn't light Texas crude. It's full of sulfur and Lord-knows-what. It's only about one step away from getting our oil addiction fed by rendering baby fat, and it's doing something beyond desertification to a huge piece of the planet that never asked for any of it."

And so people are concerned enough to protest, in places from Kooskia to Moscow. Thank goodness. It shows that we're not completely dead as a nation, and that there are still people in our society that view their active role as citizens greater than a passive role as a consumer.

Somehow, our larger myopia has to stop, and the local reaction to supporting the megaloads is just a symptom of our larger problems. I'm familiar with the Founding Fathers, and many were indeed rationalist Christians. I'm sure if they were confronted with the phrase, "Am I my brother's keeper?" they would know whether it was Cain or Abel who said it, and how God viewed the answer. Maybe the next time the critics go after our local political voice, they might think about a higher power and how the Bible judges a collapsed worldview.

Chuck Pezeshki is a professor in mechanical and materials engineering at Washington State University.

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Seeya round town, Moscow.

Tom Hansen
Moscow, Idaho
 
"The Pessimist complains about the wind, the Optimist expects it to change and the Realist adjusts his sails."

- Unknown