Arizona's 5th C: Conflict?

Site of the proposed Rosemont Copper Mine in the
Santa Rita Mountains, 30 miles south of Tucson, AZ.

When I was in fourth grade, I remember learning about the 3 C's of Arizona's economy: cotton, copper, and cattle (and oh, the havoc those three have wreaked). At the time, I didn't understand why so much fuss was made over this; I'm not sure anyone really made a true effort to explain economics to fourth graders, and I don't blame them, since I'm hard pressed to understand any of it today. I did know that many of my not-so-distant Arizona relatives - people that I met at family reunions, people who wore cowboy boots and smoked Marlboros on the back porch - really! - were either ranchers or miners, and when I thought of them I inevitably felt the romantic pull of a notion I had, impossible to articulate but very real, of my family as makers of the Wild West.

In recent years, I've heard that a 4th C has been added: climate. Our lovely winter weather draws retirees' Winnebagos to Arizona like lumbering moths to a flame, and fueled a frenzy of building and development that only the near-collapse of the domestic economy could slow - which it did. But that doesn't mean that the other three C's are gone; in fact, yesterday I attended a Forest Service hearing regarding the draft environmental impact statement for the development of the Rosemont Copper mine, 30 miles southeast of Tucson in the Santa Rita mountain range.

I attended the hearing to speak out against this mine, and I did so. But it wasn't without acknowledgment of the complexity of this issue, which I feel is often lost as both sides batten down the hatches and prepare for a war in which the other side not only has no claim to legitimacy, but is morally repugnant. As much as I oppose the mine itself, I have to acknowledge that those who support it are simply coming from a different perspective - they are not necessarily scientifically illiterate morons, as the anti-mine crowd seemed to perceive (ok, so there's a high level of scientific illiteracy happening, but that doesn't make those who suffer from it morons, or somehow inherently less valuable humans than the rest of us).

There are plenty of reasons to oppose this project. It would destroy a large swath of the Santa Ritas, one of the least-trammeled ranges in southern Arizona. It would have unpredictable consequences for the watershed, including reducing groundwater levels and the flow of springs that feed important riparian areas throughout the range (well, the only thing that's unpredictable is how much impact the mine will actually have; there's no question that it will be highly destructive.) In a regional economy that currently brings in millions of dollars from tourism, the mine would destroy land of significant scenic, biological, and recreational value. The list goes on and on. I heard several interesting arguments during the hearing yesterday, one from a former mining engineer, saying that the copper vein that is to be mined is weak, and that the project is doomed to failure for many technical reasons that I wish I understood.

The argument for the mine, of course, is jobs. In an economy where the real estate, construction, and development industries have all crashed, Arizona's 4th C is no longer working out so well. And so the lure of copper once again has a hold on us - mining can provide jobs, and copper is an increasingly valuable commodity due to its use in high-tech applications. I fully acknowledge that without copper, I wouldn't be typing on a computer right now. I wouldn't have been able to drive a car to the hearing yesterday. We all use the products of these extractive industries, so how can we actually reconcile opposing them in our own backyards?

Then there's the uncomfortable question of what I can only think to call a kind of class warfare around these issues. Overwhelmingly, though not without exception, those who spoke out against the mine were well-educated, well-off folks who opposed the project on environmental grounds or because it threatened their way of life, which often involved a ranchette where they had retired a few years before to run a few horses and open a bed-and-breakfast. Those who spoke in support of the mine did so because it would support their jobs - for example, a trucking company brought in a busload of their employees who would be hired to truck copper away from the mine. The privilege of opposing these projects belongs to the wealthier folks in our society, or at least those of us whose jobs don't rely on these types of industries. And who are we to try to argue that habitat is more important that jobs?

Despite these complications, I still oppose this mine, mostly because it seems to cost so much for so little (or unpredictable) potential benefit. Assuming a cost-benefit analysis could accurately value things like habitat and scenic beauty, I feel confident that the costs of the project would outweigh the benefits. The deeper conflict is how to find alternatives to the cultural and economic paradigms that require such a heavy toll in terms of natural resource extraction, and deeper still seems to be the divide between worldviews represented at the hearing yesterday. The people around me were dismissive and demeaning towards those who spoke in favor of the mine; I have no doubt that the other side of the room snickered when I talked about the threats to riparian habitat. After all, what use is a bird when there's no food on the table?

Reflections: Organ Pipe National Monument

A small tinaja, Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, AZ.

A raven is cruising the campground, sweeping by and landing with trills and squawks and all manner of raven-speak. They are one of my favorite birds - so iconically Southwestern, they always make me think of the wild desert places I've visited, lived in, loved. Where do they find water here? Come to think of it, where do the many birds here - Gila woodpeckers, Northern flickers, cactus wrens, desert quail - find water? They're here, so it's somewhere. But apparently it's easier to find on two wings than on two feet.

Craig Childs writes about this general area in his book, The Secret Knowledge of Water (he focuses on Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge, which is just west of Organ Pipe). He has traveled through many arid places, always on foot, in search of water, and in this region he says you must go to the mountains to find it, where it is stored in tinajas, or waterpockets within the rock. If you just understand the lay of the land, the geographic circumstances required for such catchment, you will find it. This knowledge has been passed on, from generations of indigenous people and even to Spanish missionaries like Father Kino, who explored a large portion of this region in the early 1700s. But now, people cross this desert under dire circumstances and can't find water, because they don't know where to look for it. It can't be found along what seems to be the path of least resistance: the mesquite flats crisscrossed by dry washes that flash during storms only briefly, and then only a few times a year. The water is stored in the mountains, but to traverse them would make an already difficult journey both longer and more dangerous.

For all the beauty of this place, it has become impossible to ignore what's happening along the border. As we drove back from a hike yesterday, we came across at least a dozen Border Patrol vehicles, parked at angles along the dirt road, not an agent to be seen. Clearly they were out on foot. Any consideration for the fragile ecosystem is lost completely in the pursuit of those who, at best, simply wish to pursue economic opportunities that are made readily available to them once they cross the border, and at worst, are smuggling drugs that current US policies have made highly profitable.

Of course, the impact on the ecosystem, though at the forefront of my own mind having just hiked through it, pales in comparison to the crisis of violence and meaningless suffering that currently pervades the borderlands. I am often struck when hiking in this area, comfy in my synthetic, wicking clothing and three-liter Camelbak full of cool water, by the level of desperation that would motivate someone to cross this landscape in the summer, in the dark, in second-hand tennis shoes and with a gallon jug of water painted black to avoid detection. It's an unimaginable journey. (I should say that I'm referring here to migrant workers, not drug smugglers - that's a whole different issue.)

I sometimes long to just forget it all, to see this place as one of simple and immense beauty, and not as symbolic of a conflict born of economic disparity, in which I am both complicit and on the privileged side. I want the natural world to transcend the muck of human affairs, and I want it to take me with it. And yet, that would be deny the interconnectedness of all things: of humans to the natural world and of it to us; of me to the Gila woodpecker and of the migrant to me. And so here we are in the muck, without answers, except the knowledge that the paradox of pain and beauty represented by such a place is surely one small, inescapable piece of being human.

Rise Up, Egypt!

An obelisk at the Temple of Luxor, Egypt.

A little over two years ago, I traveled to Egypt with my family. I haven't written much at all about that trip, but with the recent events there, now seems like a good time to start.

As is often the case with travel, although we saw many incredible sights - the Great Pyramids, the Sphinx, the Valley of the Kings - I find myself more often reflecting upon two less iconic experiences there.

The first was a visit to the Unfinished Obelisk, in the city of Aswan. We had already visited temple after temple, many of them containing huge, hand-carved obelisks decorated by intricate hieroglyphs. As we approached what our guide had referred to as "the unfinished obelisk," I suppose I was expecting half an obelisk, or perhaps one uncarved, barren of hieroglyphs. But as we walked to the edge of the stone quarry, what we found was an obelisk on its side, only partially carved out of the surrounding rock. It was cracked.

The Unfinished Obelisk, Aswan, Egypt.

Only then did I truly understand, not just intellectually but emotionally, that real people had carved this obelisk, and all the others we had seen. Probably, some guy was chipping away with the ancient Egyptian version of a hammer and chisel, when pow! he hit a weak spot in the rock, and the crack snaked instantly up the smooth carving, destroying years of collective work. The obelisk was abandoned. How tragic! How frustrating, to put in years of work only for forces beyond your control to instantly take it all away! How very human.

I also often think of another moment in Egypt that occurred at a mosque in Cairo. For days we had heard the Islamic call to prayer, the adhan, ringing through villages, broadcast over loudspeakers, echoing across the waters of the Nile. As we entered the main room of this mosque, there was the muezzin, preparing to make the call. We stood before him as he sang, the familiar yet foreign words echoing off the huge domed ceiling, haunting, beautiful, and full of a reverence identifiable across language and culture. If only we all could see that this, too, is Islam: not scary, not "other," but perfectly recognizable to all of us as an expression of human beauty, ritual, and faith.

If the Unfinished Obelisk removed the temporal distance separating me from the ancient Egyptians, witnessing the call to prayer bridged, at least in part, the cultural distance that had separated me from contemporary ones. I remember that now as I watch them celebrate, in the hope that those people in the streets will soon truly govern themselves, and will keep striving, as we all do, for lives lived boldly in the pursuit of happiness.

Heal America? Let's start with our local communities.

A horrific day in Tucson yesterday. Representative Gabrielle Giffords shot and severely injured, six others dead, thirteen wounded. Right up the road, on Ina and Oracle. So tragic for Tucson, and the whole country, really. Regardless of the motive (and, really, insanity was the motive, politics merely the channel through which it was funneled) this has become politicized, has become something to blame each other for, a talking point in the endless stream of "news." I do agree that the current hateful tenor of politics contributed to this, but clearly the individual responsible was seriously unhinged, and perhaps his rage would have been directed elsewhere if not here. Who knows what pushes people over the edge, but the bottom line remains: we must bring civility back to our political debates. We must stop the fear-mongering, the stunning lack of empathy, the scapegoating, the oversimplification of complex issues into vitriolic soundbites.

How do we go about doing that? How do we keep our politicians and media accountable for the way they frame things? (I conflate the two here because it's hard to know the difference anymore. They seem to be two sides of an equally toxic coin.) Are they a mirror, simply reflecting what we, the public, demands? Violence and hate sell, so that must be what we want?

I tend to think the contemporary media plays a more active role than that. There is a concerted effort to shape people's entire worldviews - to develop a mythology that can be applied to any situation and demonize any point of view labeled as "other." I frankly can't comment intelligently on much of this, since I never watch television news, but suffice it to say that's because it ceased to be news a while ago. So the question remains: what can we do about it?

My cynical side tells me: "nothing." But the earnest urban planner in me believes that most people really want something better for our country and for their communities. But how to fight propaganda? It can't be with more of the same.

Sometimes I think this country is just too big, that part of the problem is that we all feel so disconnected from each other, our communities, the politicians in Washington, and certainly from the rest of "the American public." What is that, anyway? How can we possibly refer to a group of 350 million people spread across thousands of miles of geography as a generalized or cohesive group? There is no "American public."

And so we must localize. It's the idea I come back to again and again when thinking about national- and global-scale problems. If the world is not how we think it should be, perhaps it's because of this disconnection from our local communities. At the very least, since we cannot change the world, the only way to feel any measure of empowerment is to start to work and connect locally. So turn off the mainstream media and go dig in a community garden, volunteer at a school, introduce yourself to your neighbors. We have more in common than the talking heads want us to think. It's so much easier to hate each other if we don't know each other, but it's nearly impossible if we do. That's the level at which we average citizens can have an impact. That's what would make Gabrielle Giffords proud.