What Unites Us

by Dan Rather

  The moral weight of Carson’s argument changed the equation for how we measured our actions; the health of the earth became part of the discussion. That book contributed to the rising pressure on government officials to act to protect our planet, and in 1970 we saw both the founding of the Environmental Protection Agency (signed into law by President Richard Nixon) and the first Earth Day (organized by Wisconsin’s Democratic senator Gaylord Nelson). The year also saw an important expansion of the Clean Air Act (first passed in 1963). The Clean Water Act would come in 1972. The environment was now an important national priority, and support for it was bipartisan.

  For all the talk of Spaceship Earth and Earth Day, however, there was a belief at the time that environmentalism was a series of local battles. When it came to air and water pollution, we worried about the health of the smog over Los Angeles and the chemical runoff into the Hudson River. Over time, we saw environmental threats become more regional, with acid rain and the depletion of the ozone layer. It was hard to imagine, though, that we could harm the planet on a global scale. But all the while, ever since the start of the industrial revolution, an odorless and invisible pollutant was being pumped into our atmosphere with increasing volume—from our tailpipes, smokestacks, and the clear-cutting of forests. We now know that carbon dioxide and the resulting climate change is a threat of a magnitude unlike anything we have ever seen before. Those are the stakes we face today.

  In the summer of 2007, I traveled 450 miles north of the Arctic Circle to the Canadian tundra to report on a development that was shocking for any student of history. For centuries, famed explorers had searched for a shipping route from Europe to Asia through the frigid north. It was dubbed the Northwest Passage, and it proved to be a deadly and illusory dream, as many ships and men went in to never return. So when my colleagues and I heard reports that melting sea ice was possibly unlocking the passage, we set about to document the dramatic climate change at the end of the earth. Some of my crew spent days aboard a Canadian Coast Guard research icebreaker, and I met them in the Inuit village of Arctic Bay, population about 700 hardy souls.

  What both the scientists and the local inhabitants understood was that a world of ice was undergoing rapid and unpredictable change. I remember taking a walk along a rocky shoreline with an elderly Inuit woman, who pointed at the open water and explained how, even in the summer, it had once been largely ice. She talked of seal pelts that were not as thick because of the warmer water and her worries that her people’s way of life was in danger of being irrevocably lost. Meanwhile, on the research boat, scientists were rushing to understand how this changing climate was affecting marine life and whether they could find clues to the arctic environment of the past by dredging the bottom of the sea.

  It is an awesome realization that Earth, which has always seemed boundless, is so susceptible to the negative byproducts of human activity. Perhaps that is what makes it difficult for some to accept climate change. As we walk through nature, it seems so robust and permanent. And for the vast majority of the history of our species, we did not have the power to destroy the planet.

  But if you look back to the beginning of the environmental movement, you will see that it sprang from a dawning realization of how damaging humans could be. In the late nineteenth century, the mighty bison of the American West, estimated to once have numbered in the tens of millions, were slaughtered over just a few decades to the brink of extinction. Hunting parties would shoot indiscriminately from train windows as sport, leaving thousands of carcasses to rot in the sun. A seemingly limitless resource suddenly was on the verge of disappearing. By then, a growing spirit of naturalism was capturing the nation’s attention, personified by writers like Henry David Thoreau. And leading citizens in the United States, men with political power like Theodore Roosevelt, decided to act.

  They formed conservation clubs that began to have an effect on the federal government. Yellowstone National Park, considered the first national park in the world, was founded in 1872. Yosemite was added in 1890. A movement had been born. But meanwhile, a very different revolution had begun half a world away. The first modern internal combustion engine was built in the 1870s, and in 1886 German engineer Karl Benz patented the first motorcar. Over the ensuing century and decades, as the environmental movement grew in its scope and importance, Earth was getting sicker.

  None of this was known when I was growing up. The Texas economy of my youth was literally being fueled by oil, and there seemed to be nothing incompatible with black gold and the health of the wide world outside my door. Some of my earliest memories were of running through the wild meadow that bordered my neighborhood on the outskirts of Houston, looking at bugs, lizards, and, it being Texas, a lot of snakes. There was a creek a little farther out, and when I was young, my mother made it known to me that it was a boundary I dare not cross. Beyond the creek lay deep woods, and as I grew older, I was allowed to wander alone beneath the strong oaks and towering pines, turned loose in nature. In the midst of the woods was the Buffalo Bayou, and I learned how to swim in its languid waters. In truth, the bayou had already been polluted by the oil refineries and chemical plants around Houston. But we boys, frolicking in the water, didn’t know that. We were living out our fantasies of being latter-day Tom Sawyers and Huck Finns.

  In that great meadow and the forest beyond, the world seemed exciting and alive. It was teeming with rabbits, squirrels, and the occasional coyote. There were birds in the skies and all those snakes on the ground. Most were harmless, but there were poisonous ones as well—rattlesnakes, water moccasins, coral snakes, and the spreading adder, what we called the “spreadin’ adder.” My mother worried about snakes, but she knew that they were part of the Lone Star way of life. You had to be alert, knowledgeable, careful, and a bit lucky—just like in life.

  My father was the kind of hunter who believed that you shouldn’t hunt something you don’t know a lot about, and he instilled in me a deep respect for the natural world. As we walked together on warm summer evenings, his hunting rifle in hand, he would explain the life cycle of rabbits and that the best place to find squirrels was where the “hardwoods met the pine trees,” because squirrels liked the height of the pine trees and the nuts of the hardwoods. Whether this was provable from scientific study, or even whether someone has ever chosen to study such a thing, I do not know. But it was the kind of wisdom that came from a lifetime of observation, and nature tends to make all of us open our eyes and think.

  My father also believed that you ate what you killed, and so my mother had a number of recipes that fit both rabbit and squirrel interchangeably. Sometimes we just ate the meat broiled with a side of sliced tomatoes or homemade pickles. Other times it was stewed. More often, it was fried. It might not sound like much, but it was pretty good. My father would also usually get a couple of deer during the hunting season, which was the legal limit. We would eat every bit that was edible, and that could take quite a while. Dad was terrific with a shotgun, so we spent many a time cleaning, then eating, ducks and quail.

  In the nature around my house I learned life lessons—an overworked phrase, I grant you, but an apt one. When I was nine years old, my friends and I came across a giant softshell turtle in the Buffalo Bayou. It was the biggest one we had ever seen, and we spent the entire day tracking it. After many foiled attempts, we finally snared it, bound it up, and walked back the mile or so to my parents’ house. We filled a tub with water in the backyard and put it in. We felt like conquering heroes, but that only lasted until my father came home from work. When he saw what we had done, he was furious and explained to me how such behavior could harm a wild animal like this turtle. Even though it was after dark, he insisted that I carry the turtle back to where we’d found it. Now, this wasn’t the equivalent of a valiant effort to save an endangered species, but my father’s instinct was the same: Nature was not there for us to exploit or toy with. It is a lesson I have never forgotten.

  Going into the forest with my dad was a
backdrop to my young life. It was just what people did. I was expected to be able to identify the species of trees and to know how to avoid getting lost. Nature wasn’t something that you drove to, or planned on seeing, or for which you bought a fancy outdoor wardrobe. I worry that now it is an activity that must compete with soccer practices, homework, piano lessons, and all the other responsibilities that fill up the calendar of a family with children. All those are surely wonderful and rewarding, but so too is just letting your legs wander through the trees and meadows, and having your mind wander as well.

  Today most of us encounter few animals and plants in our daily lives, and most of what we do see are either the ones we have domesticated or the vermin and weeds that can thrive in the cracks of modernity. Growing up I was enthralled by the night sky. But now most of us can see only a few faint stars at night, the ones bright enough to make it through the domes of light that enclose our metropolises. For all of human history, the night sky told stories, delineated time, and guided voyagers. Now 30 percent of the people on the planet can’t even see the Milky Way from their homes. And in the United States, 80 percent of us can’t.

  We as a nation have done much to exploit the land, despoil it, and pollute it. From wildlife to wildfires, we have been shortsighted in our management. For too long the cost of doing business ignored the cost of that business to the environment. Still, we have been world leaders in conservation, preservation, and environmentalism. And that is what makes this moment in time so baffling and worrisome. Somehow the environment has become yet another point of contention between Democrats and Republicans. It is striking that those who live in urban centers and are more isolated from the natural world tend to vote for Democratic candidates who mostly favor stricter environmental regulations. Meanwhile, those in rural areas tend to vote for Republican candidates who more often advocate for laxer oversight of land, water, and pollution. I am not exactly sure how this came to be. Some of it likely has to do with the coarsening of dialogue between the two major parties on almost every issue, and ultimately the environment gets sorted along those binary lines as well. Research also suggests that those states whose economies are built on oil, gas, coal, and mining tend to be less likely to support environmental regulations, and understandably so. But whatever the cause, it is important to note that these political and social divides over the environment were not always this way.

  It was an odd experience watching the heated debate as a cap and trade bill for carbon dioxide emissions and climate change made its way through Congress in 2009. The opposition from Republicans was fierce, with only a handful voting for final passage in the House of Representatives. Dozens of Democrats in conservative districts also voted against the bill. In the end, the legislation barely passed the House and was never even brought up in the Senate. And yet the very idea of cap and trade as a way to deal with environmental problems, where you set limits and allow polluters to trade in credits, had been the brainchild of Republicans. President Ronald Reagan had used cap and trade to phase out lead in gasoline, and President George H. W. Bush had used it to cut the pollutants causing acid rain.

  When I sat down recently with George Shultz, who had served as secretary of state under President Reagan, he spoke with pride of the Republican legacy on the environment, stretching back to President Theodore Roosevelt. Secretary Shultz has become a vocal advocate for protecting the planet against climate change, and he reminded me that major environmental progress—from the founding of the EPA to tackling the ozone and acid rain problems, to strengthening clean water and air acts—had happened under Republican administrations.

  Questions of the environment boil down to acts of leadership. Most people would say that they want clean air and water. The concerns that you hear about pitting economic growth against environmental protections are legitimate; we need a balanced approach. Our modern lives require that we mine, till, fish, generate electricity, and discard refuse. We will never return to some mythic state of environmental purity. Nor would we want to. But that doesn’t mean we can’t be wiser about how we use our limited resources and protect our planet. I believe that if there was leadership on this issue in both political parties, the American people would rally to action.

  We humans seem to have a hard time measuring risk. We can see the dangers in the moment, but threats that stretch over the course of generations are hard for us to judge, let alone act to remedy. Climate change is just such a problem. Even though we already see very worrisome fluctuations in Earth’s functions—extreme weather, vanishing sea ice, rising temperatures, and rising oceans—the most dire effects will not strike with full force until well after I am gone. We can hide from the truth for now, but it will not last. In my interview with Secretary Shultz, he described climate change as a clear and present danger even if many of his fellow Republicans do not see it that way. I asked him how he felt about this state of affairs. He said those who deny climate change now will ultimately be “mugged by reality.” Mugged by reality. It is a strong phrase. The danger is that when the climate deniers are finally mugged, it will be, by definition, too late. Already we are seeing the glaciers melt in Greenland and massive ice sheets breaking off Antarctica.

  Often I find myself thinking back to my boyhood out in the forests and meadows and how those experiences spurred in me a love of our natural world. One of the joys of my later life has been the summer days I spend in quiet contentment fishing in the upper Beaverkill River in the Catskill mountain range of western New York State. My eyes are mostly focused on the action in the stream, watching the currents and eddies, casting flies, looking for trout willing to bite. But I often glance up to contemplate the flora and fauna of the riverbank—particularly the birch trees that are rooted just on the edge of the water. They favor the embankments in many northern climes, and sometimes, as I take in the scene, an old African American spiritual comes to mind. I begin singing slowly, “Just like a tree planted by the water, I shall not be moved. I shall not be, I shall not be moved. . . .” The hymn may say I shall not be moved, but I often am, in that strange and mystical way engaging in nature often moves us.

  There is an elegance to birches, tall and slender, with their distinctive white bark. I’ve always liked them because my long-departed mother loved them so. Born, raised, and buried on the semitropical Texas Gulf Coast, she never saw a live birch, only pictures in a book. Mother’s favorite tree, however, was the native magnolia, which flourishes all along the Texas Gulf Coast and adjacent piney woods. She loved their strength and the fragrance of their large white blossoms. That scent permeating and enveloping in the heavy humidity of Texas nights is among the fondest memories of my childhood. I smell it often, even when a magnolia is nowhere in sight.

  I like to sit out there on the river for a long while, and take a deep breath and close my eyes. Nature doesn’t please only our sense of sight. I can hear the soothing sounds of running water and swaying leaves in the background. Nature has the power to inspire one’s mind and move one’s soul like great music or poetry. It can fill you with humility when you encounter the otherworldliness of the Grand Canyon. It can fill you with awe when you tilt your head back and try to tease out the top of a towering redwood. It can spark your imagination as you try to visualize a time when the entire continent was as wild as Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. And it can fill you with sadness when you see how much the glaciers in Glacier National Park are receding. What are we doing? What have we done?

  I am an optimist by nature, and I believe we can find a will to save the planet. We have a strong and growing environmental sensibility in this country and around the world—especially among the young. But there are hurdles, not the least of which come from many of our elected officials. We have seen the undue influence of big money from the fossil fuel industry, along with their allies in government, actively undermine climate science. We have seen crises like what has taken place in Flint, Michigan, call into question our national commitment to equal access to clean water and air.
To the countless generations yet to be born, what world will we leave for them? We have seen that we can make progress and repair damage to the environment. But now, when it is needed with an urgency we haven’t really seen before, we are blinking. How can we open our eyes once again to the notion of a fragile planet, our only home?

  Apollo 8 was on its fourth pass around the moon when the commander, Frank Borman, initiated a scheduled roll of the spacecraft. On the audio recordings, you can hear William Anders, who was the lunar module’s pilot, react to a sight no human had ever seen before: “Oh my God! Look at that picture over there! There’s the earth coming up. Wow, is that pretty.” Anders called out to the third crew member, Jim Lovell, asking if he had color film. There was a scramble inside the spacecraft to get the picture taken before it was too late. They got their shot.

  The astronauts were not looking for Earth when they went on their mission. The space historian Andrew Chaikin said Anders told him later, “We were trained to go to the moon. We were focused on the moon, observing the moon, studying the moon, and the earth was not really in our thoughts until it popped up above that horizon.” We need this vision of a unified and cohesive Earth to pop up once again over the horizon of our global complacency. We need to consider, with awe and humility, the future of our fragile home.

  Public Education

  When I entered first grade in 1937, Texas was still mostly rural, and Houston was a far cry from the sprawling metropolis it is today. William G. Love Elementary School was in one of the poorer sections of town, but it was rich in leadership and dedicated, talented teachers. All of them were women. In that period, with few exceptions, the only work outside the home open to a woman was as a nurse, a secretary, a waitress, or a teacher. And teaching was an option for only the comparatively few women who had finished college. So it is no wonder that Love Elementary, in the heart of “the wrong part of town,” was loaded not just with women, but with very smart, hardworking women.