Rights with Obligations

Bill of Rights

Maybe a Rights with Obligations?

A dear friend sent me a link to the reputable international newspaper, “The Guardian”. The article she directed me to was written by mountaineer Dahr Jamail. It was an edited excerpt from his new book called, “The End of Ice”.

At this point I want to pause and thank Andy for turning a blind eye to the word count of my column. It is near impossible for a writer to tell a little story, a little science, and try to come to a meaningful observation in 400 words. This commitment to the “Long Read” bucks societal trends, the regulations of twitter, and the rapidly shrinking attention span of the American Public.

 Dahr’s story in the Guardian is a commitment to the Long Read. His story is one shared by today’s mountain climbers as they journey over ancient ice.  To lend scientific credibility to Dahr’s intriguing story the Guardian imbeds links to reputable scientific sites like NASA. This makes critical vetting, to uncover lies or discover truths, easy.

I have experienced the power but not necessarily the wisdom of ice.  My parents’ home was on the banks of the Mississippi. One Spring the river ice did not melt but heaved and let loose in an instant. It tore out trees and anything made by nature or by man. You may have seen this power when Lake Superior breaks up with a strong off-shore wind.

Glacier and icefield ice are different. The ice is compressed by gravity and time. Its color is no longer white but an iridescent blue. It is not seasonal but ancient. It does not live and die by the seasons but in 100,000-year cycles coupled to the orbit and tilt of mother earth. That is up until now.

When a climate scientist starts an ice core on the Antarctic Ice Field, he or she knows they are standing above ice a million years old. They are, by boring layer by layer, opening a history book a million years old page by page. The only being who held the wisdom of this book prior to their work was the Lord.

I must apologize, I cannot communicate this wisdom of ancient ice to you. I must, though, feel it since I am drawn to the ice.  I’ve skied across the arctic ice. I’ve had the privilege to fly over the ice sheets, sailed and kayaked up to edge of glaciers, walked at length over them and crawled inside. I’ve forded their rivers at their base.

The water of glacier streams at their base feels like its temperature is approaching absolute zero. The blood in your legs thickens and slows immediately. You can feel it struggle up from your legs to the pump. The heart cramps. It hurts like hell.

I feel this pain again as I write. It is real.  Mountaineers are far more articulate expressing themselves than me. As the glaciers disappear, we feel our chest constrict. John Muir founder of the Sierra Club knew this pain. Extreme snowboarder and founder of Protect Our Winters, Jeremy Jones, knows this pain.

When Donald Trump left the Paris Climate Accord, turning his back on our kids’ future, world famous climber and Patagonia businessman Yvon Chenard felt the pain. He gave all the 10 million dollars that his company saved, due to the tax cut, to organizations committed to protecting the earth.

These are kindred souls whose unifying core is knowledge and spiritual kinship. They all know their right to experience the joy of mother nature is coupled with an obligation to protect her.   

What a different world we would live in if our founding fathers had written the Bill of Rights and simply included, “But with these rights come these obligations.” This omission may have been our historical fatal flaw.

If I was articulate, I would rephrase what Dahr Jamail tells us. His wisdom is one that comes from knowledge, the heart, and a commitment to the struggle.

“While western colonialist culture believes in “rights”, many indigenous cultures teach of “obligations” that we are born into: obligations to those who came before, to those who will come after, and to the Earth itself. When I orient myself around the question of what my obligations are, a deeper question immediately arises: from this moment on, knowing what is happening to the planet, to what do I devote my life?”

NASA: https://climate.nasa.gov/vital-signs/arctic-sea-ice/

Finnish President Niinisto: https://finlandtoday.fi/president-niinisto-in-north-russia-if-we-lose-the-arctic-we-lose-the-world/  “If we lose the Arctic, we lose the whole world.”

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